Genoa’s architectural heritage under threat from political mismanagement

Emanuele Piccardo argues that Genoa has lost its postwar architectural avant-garde status due to cultural and political decline, especially since 2017 under mayor Marco Bucci. The city's modernist heritage, particularly works by Franco Albini, is being systematically dismantled. Albini's museum installations at Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Sant'Agostino have been altered or removed through public tenders prioritizing populist politics over conservation. The 2019 Palazzo Rosso energy efficiency project by Guicciardini & Magni introduced air conditioning and off-the-shelf lamps, disregarding Albini's original design. At Sant'Agostino, a tender for window replacement and exhibit redesign further erases Albini and Franca Helg's work. The city's November 2020 'Piano dei Caruggi' for the historic center lacks multidisciplinary vision and focuses on vague ideas like a diffused hotel and security measures. The Museo della Città project at Loggia dei Banchi, won by Migliore+Servetto with Go Up (whose member Paolo Raffetto is president of the Architects' Order), proposes an oversized staircase, turning the flexible space into a tourist info point. Piccardo compares this to the neglect of Pier Luigi Nervi's Stadio Franchi in Florence and Stadio Flaminio in Rome, contrasting with Germany's restoration of Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie by David Chipperfield.