La costruzione delle Alpi: Il Novecento e il modernismo

alpino (1917–2017) [Building the Alps: The Twentieth

Century and International Style Architecture] by Antonio De
Rossi (review)

Massimo Moraglio

Technology and Culture, Volume 59, Number 1, January 2018, pp. 173-174
(Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2018.0014

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692175

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B O O K R E V I E W S

came to water, downstream property owners in Louisiana overwhelmed by

foul, black waters and fish kills could only initiate nuisance suits. They
could not stop the pollution but did often win monetary settlements. As
Boyd expertly details, this state of affairs persisted until the 1960s because
the industry successfully blocked and captured what limited regulatory
capacity existed at the state level. The industry and their friendly state leg-
islators successfully fought to keep federal pollution controls from usurp-
ing states’ rights for decades. This worked until the Clean Air Act (1970)
and Clean Water Act (1972) created federal standards, new permitting sys-
tems, and enforcement mechanisms to combat interstate pollution and
protect public health and the environment. The industry has survived the
regulatory state, and the region is better for it today.
CHRISTOPHER J. MANGANIELLO
Dr. Christopher J. Manganiello is an environmental historian and the Water Policy Director
for Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

La costruzione delle Alpi: Il Novecento e il modernismo alpino

(1917–2017) [Building the Alps: The Twentieth Century and
International Style Architecture].
By Antonio De Rossi. Rome: Donzelli, 2016. Pp. xvi+658. €42.

In 1986, at the bicentenary of the first recorded ascent of the mountain, the
French historian Philippe Joutard wrote L’Invention du Mont Blanc. Jou-
tard claimed that the successful 1786 ascent marked the start of modern
mountaineering and the development of a complete new understanding of
the Alps by the European elite. Antonio De Rossi, in his book, goes further
and offers an overview of construction of the 20th Century Alps, focusing
on the technologies and architectural style utilized to “conquer” the Euro-
pean Mountains. While the traditional stream of understanding mountains
has been the “discovery” of the Alps, and thus their subjugation via climb-
ing and conquering the peaks, De Rossi analyses the Italian, French, and
German “building” of the Alps, including the use of sophisticated technol-
ogies, transport networks, and the re-invention of whole landscapes via
“gardening” the entire mountain chain.
In his 658-page book, De Rossi focuses on the twentieth century, de-
scribing this technological colonization of the European mountains, and
investigating the cultural and political background of the implementation.
Dams, bridges, railways, roads, condos, and mass tourism (in the past years
we have witnessed approximately 20,000 tourists annually climbing Mont
Blanc) are at the core of this process. It is well known by economic histori-
ans that the Alps’ valleys were the cradle of continental Europe’s first in-
dustrialization, offering necessary hydropower in coal-poor areas. This was
further developed in the building of (often colossal) dams, which altered

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the perception and the physicality of the alpine landscape. Similar radical
changes have been produced by the leisure industry, and De Rossi is excel-
lent in presenting a chronology of the touristic colonization of the Alps.
Here we are at the core of the book’s thesis: the technologicalization of the
mountains was an answer to mass tourism, which was triggered by a
romanticized idea of the Alps as a natural and uncontaminated place, jux-
JANUARY
taposed against the industrialized and corrupted city. This model lasted for
2018 the entire twentieth century, backed by a representation of the mountains’
VOL. 59 economy and lifestyle as backward and antiquated. With a touch of nostal-
gia for the past, De Rossi describes the mega-project for winter resorts
along the Alps, accompanied by massive infrastructural intervention (in-
cluding the hugely water-intensive artificial snow systems), which de-
stroyed communities, lifestyles, and the alpine economy. With an eye to
the present, the author reasons that those areas less involved in this process
are today in a better position to develop future sustainable programs.
The first three chapters devoted to Alpine mobility are particularly in-
teresting. While the conquest of the mountains was made possible by its
accessibility via cars, trains, and cable cars, this opened up a new percep-
tion of the landscape. De Rossi focuses on speed as a key element for un-
derstanding the tourist aesthetic: while for the nineteenth century elite the
pleasure was a slow climb to the peak, a metaphor of conquest, the twenti-
eth century path was the fast and reckless sky descent. Such a transition
transformed the industry, which became a winter-based business, and
asked for a great remodeling of the landscape. The economic boom of the
post-World War II period made a truly democratized tourism possible,
and prompted a shift from hotel accommodations to holiday houses.
Finally, De Rossi does not forget how such a process of technological-
ization happens in extreme conditions, which requires extreme efforts to
counter. The author’s analysis of dams and mountain huts, especially those
higher than 3,000 meters above sea level, is not just aesthetic, showing how
fragile technology can be at those altitudes.
The author’s background in architecture is evident, but it does not limit
his narrative or his research: quite the opposite, it offers interesting angles
to cultural history and, naturally, to technology history. While the book de-
mands a translation into English, its length could be intimidating, and
some chapters (especially 5 and 6) are too local in focus and narrative,
missing the in-depth analysis of other parts. However, the research behind
the book is outstanding, covering not only Italian and French sources, but
offering a detailed analysis of the German-speaking countries’ debate and
realizations.
MASSIMO MORAGLIO
Massimo Moraglio is a senior researcher at the Technische Universität Berlin.

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