Building Sights

Frontiers Bold Challenges Visions Cities Nature Faces Geometries Speed Work Traces The Works of Edoardo Montaina Pietro Salini Franco LaCecla 11 39 85 113 141 179 193 231 254 Nicola Davide Angerame 8 7

6 Switzerland, Val di Lei Dam, 2017

7 PIETRO SALINI Chief Execut ive Officer of Webui ld Frontiers Infra - structure. The base, the support, the structure that is essential to socio-economic development. The etymology of this word instantly makes us think about what underlies our communal living, about works that enable people’s potential and, in many cases, determine the fate of entire communities, beyond frontiers. These are the infrastructures that produce renewable water and energy, improve mobility and exchanges, create economies of scale and specialization, and trigger processes of development that, over time, improve the overall capacity of whole systems. The greater the relations developed between interconnected populations, the greater the well-being generated in the areas involved. This book is a journey in pictures across the works that Webuild has been building for over 115 years all around the world, crossing all sorts of cultural, social, political, and physical barriers. A timeless journey without a specific place, across works born from the intelligence and labor of thousands of men, separated by frontiers, but united in their instinct to create and build. It is a journey beyond political and cultural borders that encourages creativity and building skills to transcend the limits imposed by the spaces, toward new destinations crossing rivers, mountains, and plains. But above all it is a journey through the faces of those people who use their hands to create beautiful and functional works, with dozens of professions to be safeguarded and handed down, skills that are almost artisanal in nature to be carried over into the world of industry 4.0, and to be reinforced through the use of science and technology. In these pages the photographs describe the Group’s works from different points of view and reveal moments and gestures that had been hidden from sight: thanks to industrial photography, which has always contributed to describing society’s trends and evolution, the work and the day-to-day nature of the building site become the protagonists, allowing the reader to re-experience the production process that leads to the improvement of cities and whole countries. Urban planning is policy, it means deciding how people live and how they move around, how they meet and how they work. Planning major infrastructures for the city or for a region signifies deciding how we live and which development models we choose to adopt. The crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the process of investing in new infrastructures in transportation, energy, water, building, both in terms of the planning of the works and in regard to the upkeep of obsolete ones. And this is being done with renewed attention to sustainable investment, in order to create the sort of future society that we want, interpreting the crisis as a challenge and an opportunity to roll up our sleeves and start all over again from hard work. To make a better society for everyone.

8 Bold Challenges Today, indifferent languages thewordwork—travail, lavoro, obra—has twoconnotations.On theone hand, it refers to a person’s job, their employment or their engagement, their competence, or the strain of an occupation. On the other, and especially in the plural, works, grands travaux, lavori, obras, stand for the visible works; these are civil and engineering constructions, infrastructures, bridges, roads, viaducts, dams. This dual connotation somehow indicates what men and women do; actually, in many Indo-European languages this stems from the idea of labor par excellence (French and Spanishhave kept the root of theword), the labor involved in giving birth toa child. Theother great container of meaning concerns works andmajor works, the result of making that remains as something solid and resistant, a heritage of bricks, sand, cement, steel, and materials that are imposed upon the natural geographies. These are the marks that human activity leaves on the world, they are a different type of geography, traces, furrows, cables, wires, tunnels, mountains and artificial lakes, hubs and HGVs, shafts, drills, immense containers. In the images in this book you canmove seamlessly from one meaning to another and see it declined in its various manifestations, building sites, men and women wearing a helmet and coveralls, faces, traces in the ground, geometries, human beings working alongside the immense structures of the works undergoing construction. Because it’s important to never forget that nomajor works have been built that are not the result of teamwork—of the laborers, the technicians, the skilled workers—and of the individual work of the architect and the inventor. What’s most impressive about these photographs is the relationship between our own human dimension, the one that has been a part of us for thousands of years, and those giants undergoing construction. Those tiny figures, those ants standing in front of what is gargantuan by comparison. And yet those works are the product of those tiny actors. The same actors who, according to the most recent discoveries of paleontology, in just one millennium did away with a large part of the mastodons that were living in their environment. There is a vocation to achieve majesty in human activity, a temptation to do things that are huge: and from this is born irrigation and cultivation and navigation, but also cathedrals, towers, and temples. The difference today is the temporal scale. Whole neighborhoods, towers hundreds of floors tall, highways, bridges, dams, and canals can be built in timescales that were unthinkable until fifty years ago. There are machines, there is artificial intelligence, there are vehicles and cranes, but let us not forget that once again these are all the products of the actions of those tiny individuals who look like us. This can frighten us, this can make us fear that Homo Faber will forget that it has to do with a planet with finite characters, with limited resources, but in other ways, it can make us hope that the “major works” are also the ones that are needed to be able to “restore” the natural landscapes, to fix the damage of the past, to tackle the great dangers that the planet is facing. Lastly, let us remember that the huge building sites, the engineering and architectural works, are always cultural ones. They are never neutral. Rather, they contain the meaning that a culture bestows on inhabiting, crossing, connecting, supplying water, and irrigating. And they are a way for cultures tomeasure up to each other. It is what we used to call a clash of civilizations and that today as never beforemust avoid being just that, a clash, and instead be amutual story. FRANCO LA CECLA Anthropologist Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2018

9 Opera, luogo, anno

Visions A vision is the ability to look beyond the physiological horizon of the human eye. Beyond the natural borders, beyond the physical barricades, beyond the limits of what is known. In a great work vision is a leap into the future, the ability to see things with a long-term perspective, three, five, at times even ten years before the idea written on the project has been transformed into an infrastructure open to the citizens. In this journey through time, vision is like a bridge that connects the idea to its fulfillment, the project to what will be, perspective with its future dimension. Because building a great work means looking beyond the present, it means intercepting needs that still do not exist, needs that will be born from the changes of the times, and answering tomorrow’s questions today. And to do so you need a vision. Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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14 ← ↑ Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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16 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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19 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

20 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2017

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23 Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

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26 ← Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

27 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

28 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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31 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

32 New Panama Canal, 2015

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34 Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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37 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

The greatest challenge of infrastructures: to intervene in themost uncultivated places andmake themaccessible, to connect themwith progress, without revolutionizing them. Flexible cities, which change continuously; sustainable, because they are designed around a development that is custom-made for humans; interconnected, and thus served by modern and efficient means of transportation; but above all, intelligent and integrated thanks to the new technologies. The cities of the future are magnets for individuals, they attract experiences, emotions, ambitions, life. Thanks to this they grow, stretch beyond the borders, physical and cultural ones, drawing new routes for human cohabitation. They are living beings, changing day in and day out, and they breathe thanks to their infrastructures. Skyscrapers, roads, bridges, underground lines, water management plants: these are the city’s lungs, instruments of exchange, opportunities for aggregation, engines of growth and development. Cities Panama City, 2015

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42 ← Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

43 Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

44 ↑ ă Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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46 ↑ ă Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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50 ← Panama City, 2015

51 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Road Interchange, 2017

52 ↑ ă Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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55 Panama City, 2015

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57 Panama City, 2015

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59 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Kingdom Centre, 2017

60 Qatar, Doha, 2017

61 Qatar, Doha, 2019

62 Denmark, Copenhagen, 2019

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64 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, 2018

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67 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, 2017

68 Qatar, Doha, 2019

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70 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Great Mosque of Sheikh Zayed, 2018

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72 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Great Mosque of Sheikh Zayed, 2018

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74 ↑ ă United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Great Mosque of Sheikh Zayed, 2018

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77 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Great Mosque of Sheikh Zayed, 2018

78 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Great Mosque of Sheikh Zayed, 2018

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80 Panama City, Casco Viejo, 2016 Pages 82–83: New Panama Canal, Inauguration, 2016

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82 Opera, luogo, anno

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Nature isoneof thebiggest challenges for an infrastructural project: the construction site is called upon to live with it, follow its forms, adapt to its demands. Building the new Panama Canal or a great dam, just like digging in the subsoil to bring drinking water to the city of Las Vegas, require the implementation of a relationship between man and nature. Nature thus becomes the chance to come to terms, by means of technology and human skills, with the most complex challenge, that of the cohabitation between the tension toward development and the protection of the environment to ensure that every work is sustainable. Nature Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

86 New Panama Canal, 2015

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89 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

90 New Panama Canal, 2016

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92 ↑ ă New Panama Canal, 2016

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94 New Panama Canal, 2016

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96 ↑ ă New Panama Canal, 2016

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99 Switzerland, Val di Lei Dam, 2017

100 New Panama Canal, 2016

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103 New Panama Canal, 2016

104 ↑ ă New Panama Canal, 2016

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109 New Panama Canal, 2016

110 New Panama Canal, 2015

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The faces of over 35,000 Salini Impregilo (from 2020 WebuildGroup) workers around theworld tell of profound stories, onesmade of complex challenges to be overcome, of satisfactions achieved after so much work. Ina constructon site the faces tell the story of awork itself. They are the mirror of the difficulties of a great project, the interpreters of tension and joy, concentration and relief. They are the custodians of the experience matured on the field, years spent traveling around theworld, fromtheAsian forests to the Middle Eastern deserts, from the African plateaus to the great rivers of South America, and all the way to major cities of Europe and America. The story of some of the largest infrastructural works of the past few decades is written on those faces, etched in the wrinkles, shared in the gazes, and experienced one step at a time, together with the men and the women who have tied their own lives to that of the construction site. Faces New Panama Canal, 2015

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115 New Panama Canal, 2015

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117 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

118 Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

119 ă Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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122 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

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124 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

125 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelecric Project, 2016

126 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

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129 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

130 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

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133 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

134 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

135 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

136 New Panama Canal, 2016

137 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

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139 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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The forms that are born from the paper of a project and arematerialized on the construction site itself: that is how a great work comes to life. The point, the straight line, the plane. Three basic concepts to describe reality. Three points of departure around which to build great works. This is the secret of geometry, the science whose goal is to measure the earth. And this is the origin of the forms that are born from man-made objects, from the shadows cut by a ray of light, from the parallel lines drawn by the banks of a water canal. Geometries recall the physical boundaries of a construction site, the visible frameworkof aproject written on paper; traces of man’s work that take unexpected directions. Tubes, bulkheads, scaffolding, ropes. The geometries are the shape of the building site. Geometries Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

142 ↑ ă Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

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144 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

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147 United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Road Interchange, 2017

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149 Opera, luogo, anno

150 ← ↑ Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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154 ← ↑ Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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157 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

158 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

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161 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

162 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

163 ă Qatar, Doha Underground Line North, 2019

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166 Opera, luogo, anno

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168 Opera, luogo, anno

169 ← ↑ Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

170 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

171 Qatar, Al Khor, Sports Complex, 2019

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173 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

174 Qatar, Al Khor, Sports Complex, 2019

175 Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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177 Saudi Arabia, Water Desalination Plant, 2017

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In a society that is constantly evolving, time marks our ability to change and to innovate fast, to run toward the future. The world races. And human development, technology, the drive to innovate races too. An evolution that moves between space and time, two variables that change together with speed. It is speed that marks the day, accelerates relations, shortens distances, in essence, rewrites the very perception of time. A train that flashes past is the symbol of this syncopated time in which men move, awaiting a stop that is getting ever closer. Speed Italy, Rome-Turin High-Speed Railway Line, 2016

180 Italy, Rome-Turin High-Speed Railway Line, 2016

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183 Italy, Rome-Turin High-Speed Railway Line, 2016

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185 Italy, Rome-Turin High-Speed Railway Line, 2016

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187 Italy, Rome-Turin High-Speed Railway Line, 2016

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Work Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018 Discover the places where every day people work with talent and commitment to improve our world. Working in a construction site resembles a mission, a life project that ends with the inauguration of a work, but that until then remains incomplete. To be able to do so takes devotion, devotion, the ability toadapt tothedifferentenvironments,culturesandclimates, but also great competence, manual skill, and technical excellence. Because behind every work, behind every construction site, however imposing and immense it may be, is the signature of engineers, specialized technicians, laborers who together contribute to a common purpose. Great achievements realized by men who by comparison seem small; majestic infrastructures erected one brick at a time, like in the days of the Pyramids, thanks to the sweat and passion of those who chose to dedicate their lives to the dream of building epic works capable of changing countries.

194 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

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196 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

197 Saudi Arabia, Water Desalination Plant, 2017

198 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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200 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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203 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

204 ↑ ă Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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207 ← Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016 ↑ New Panama Canal, 2015

209 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

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211 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

212 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

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215 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

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217 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019 ă Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

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220 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

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222 Qatar, Doha Metro System, Red Line North Underground, 2019

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224 ↑ ă Qatar, Al Khor, Sports Complex, 2019

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226 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

227 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019 ă

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A journey through the construction sites, where fleeting signs of the work make way for the indelible traits of a project made to last for years to come. Leaving a footprint means drawing something about oneself with an indelible line, so that no one can ignore that sign. The footprint in a construction site is all this and much more. It is proof of apassage, like the soleof aboot drawnon the sand and swept away by the wind, but it is also an enduring trace. When a construction site is set up, some small completely autonomous cities are created: the same goes for 10,000 people who live in a single environment and are all engaged in the pursuit of a common objective. Once the work is finished, the footprint of that construction site is the work itself, destined to survive in time and to improve the quality of people’s lives. As the photographer states: “We all need to have new challenges. Ever since I started to love photography I quickly understood with joy and fear the distant borders to be reached in order to go beyond. And beyond there are new and endless horizons.” Traces Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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233 Saudi Arabia, Water Desalination Plant, 2017

234 New Panama Canal, 2016

235 United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Meydan One Mall, 2017

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237 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017

238 Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019

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240 ↑ ă Saudi Arabia, Al Faisaliah District Redevelopment Project, 2017

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242 Saudi Arabia, Al Faisaliah District Redevelopment Project, 2017

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244 Saudi Arabia, Al Faisaliah District Redevelopment Project, 2017

245 Kuwait, South Al Mutlaa Residential Area, 2017 ă

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248 Malaysia, Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

249 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

250 Malaysia Ulu Jelai Hydroelectric Project, 2016

251 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Metro, Line 3, 2018

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253 Denmark, Copenhagen Cityringen Metro, 2019

254 The story of the evolution of humankind is also the story of great construction sites. Over thousands of years, pyramids, castles, fortresses, cathedrals, and all the buildings resulting from civil and military engineering have created communities, cities, kingdoms, and empires, defining spaces that before then had been borderless. They instituted frontiers that subsequent constructions would break down, driving people to “found communities.” The photos that Edoardo Montaina has taken for Webuild in recent years, crossing geographical and cultural frontiers, bring to light this ancient meaning of our being in the world as “forming forms.” An interweaving of dreams and intelligence, driven over the century by an atavist yearning to build. Montaina went beyond the ever new conceptual and visual frontiers. His trajectory is akin to a river capable of flowing in different riverbeds, capturing the best opportunities to be able to flow out toward the open sea of expression that is free, instinctive, emotional, yet rigorous, narrating the objectivity of complex phenomena discovered in the life of a construction site or in the building phases of decisive works, that can change the flow of goods and people so significantly as to have social, economic, and geopolitical repercussions of historic bearing. Montaina’s photography evolves within a voluntary “seclusion.” It takes its distance from the fads and the debates to conduct research in the field; this is made easier by the fact that construction sites are closed-off worlds dominated by their own progressive and process-oriented rationale, by specific timescales and ways, in contact with the seasons and meteorology. Montaina’s goal is to rediscover the purity of the child’s gaze that once was, to go in search of an ingenuity of the gaze that will allow him to enter the construction site and be amazed by everything. The history of photography and of Impressionist, Cubist, and Surrealist painting remain at his disposal should there be a need for loans or inspirations to try out with the camera once he has arrived in the places whereWebuild works. The effort of the work joins the pride of the faces of every race and nation. People smile, on those sites, they look into the camera with pride, or amusement. The consistencies of the building materials are often the protagonists of the pictures thanks to which the author explores the intrigue of the ephemeral geometries and architectures that are created during the building phases. Color is his most important ally. Montaina often tends to capture in the forms and the tints of reality certain geometric and chromatic compositions byway of a sublimation treatment thanks towhichwe can actually touch—through vision—the invisible structure of the real. If you observe the construction site on the frontier where work encounters contemplation, it offers a vastness of details and visions that make it a forest of symbols, a book made up of signs and sensations that Montaina’s shots render in an integral way, constituting together a great metaphor: that of human existence and its widest and deepest destiny, the destiny common to our species. Man is at the center, the master of everything by now. We live in the Anthropocene which imposes new challenges, while with preoccupation we celebrate perhaps the last conquest: that of a new horizon that depends on our choices, especially on the industrial and productive policies of the greatest nations. In this book, multiple stories cross paths and the photos stimulate reflections. The Works of Edoardo Montaina NICOLA DAVIDE ANGERAME

255 Edoardo Montaina’s professional career began in 1985. From 1994 to 1996 he published three books. The first was dedicated to Rome: La Galleria Borghese. The other two to are voyages inside ancient Rome: I luoghi del consenso imperiale. Il Foro di Augusto. Il Foro di Traiano, and I Fori Imperiali. These books were published by Progetti Museali Editori, Rome. With his book Invito al Quirinale (Mondadori, 2002) Edoardo Montaina was appointed by the Italian President of the Republic to deliver his interpretation of the Presidential Palace in Rome. From the MAXXI National Art Museum in Rome to Copenhagen to Mexico City, several exhibitions worldwide have been dedicated to his art series The delicate hints of our life (2012). In 2013 the Palazzo Ducale of Genoa hosted a solo exhibition of his pictures: Edoardo Montaina. L’arte della fotografia industriale. In 2015 the city of Beijing hosted his anthological exhibition Visions of Beauty at the Beijing Exhibition Center. His pictures of the construction of the new Panama Canal have been exhibited at the Triennale in Milan and were published in the book Panama Canal. A journey between two oceans (Rizzoli, 2017).

Project Coordination Webuild Corporate Identity and Communication Department Photographs Edoardo Montaina Texts Nicola Davide Angerame, Franco La Cecla Graphic Design Martina Toccafondi English Translation Sylvia Notini © 2021 Mondadori Libri S.p.A. This volume was printed at L.E.G.O. S.p.A., Vicenza Printed in Italy Cover and slipcase photos: © Edoardo Montaina, Qatar, Al Khor, Al Bayt Stadium, 2019 ©All photographs are courtesy of theWebuild Image Library

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