On the occasion of its 110th anniversary, Italy’s Salini Impregilo is celebrating the development of infrastructure across the globe from the early 1900s to the present day. Public works, many of them large and complex, have contributed greatly to the improvement of billions of lives, bringing people together, supplying water, providing electricity, and enabling trade.
Their impact has been witnessed by Salini Impregilo throughout its history, which will be on full display at the multimedia exhibition “Beyond: Delivering the Future for the Past 110 Years” at the Triennale di Milano museum, beginning September 27. The inaugural event, entitled “Present and Future of Infrastructure”, will host the presentation of a book, a video and a stamp to celebrate the Group’s anniversary.
The exhibition will bring visitors on a journey through the world of large, complex infrastructure, offering them an engrossing experience inside this little-known industry. Salini Impregilo’s history runs throughout. Its activities cover 50 countries with 35,000 employees of 100 nationalities. Its size makes it one of the main protagonists of large public projects in the world and the unrivalled leader in the water segment.
Born in 1906 out of the hard work of the families of Italian entrepreneurs, Salini Impregilo has grown from year to year, first in its home country then to the four corners of the world. Its projects were to become monuments to the progress of engineering across the century.
Dams, hydroelectric plants, roads, highways, bridges, metros, railways, airports, canals, civil and industrial buildings… all of them are expressions of a commitment that has endured over time.
It is this story that “Beyond” explores, showing how Man has used his ingenuity to overcome his limits.
The Exhibition
The journey that “Beyond” proposes visitors takes them to the new Panama Canal; the dams and hydroelectric plants that produce clean energy for China, Ethiopia and other countries; the roads and bridges that are the backbone of vast countries such as the Unites States; the railways that move goods; the metros that move people in cities like Paris and Riyadh; and iconic buildings that replicate nature's beauty such as the opera house in Athens.
Panama: The Journey between the Oceans
The first two of the exhibition’s eight zones are dedicated to one of the most complex engineering works in the world: the new Panama Canal. They offer a virtual voyage through the canal aboard a megaship. They conclude with a video and a model that reproduces the functioning of the locks, which save 60% of the water used thanks to Italian ingenuity.
Water Is Life
The third zone looks at some of the most important engineering works ever to harness water to produce clean energy, sustain farming, and quench the thirst of whole cities such as Addis Ababa. From Ethiopia to Las Vegas in the United Stats, its reveals the secrets of the dam, which, since 3,000 B.C., have allowed Mankind to go beyond nature, exploiting its power to his advantage.
The Road to Growth
From the Silk Road and its 8,000 kilometres between the Chinese and Roman Empires to the vast highway system of the United States, the fourth zone looks at how roads have been instrumental to bringing people together, fostering trade and overcoming differences.
Leading a Sustainable Future
By having visitors enter a tunnel aboard a high-speed train, the fifth zone offers an immersive experience that illustrates the marvels of rail transport, whether it be the metros of Copenhagen, Doha and Riyadh, or a high-speed train passing through the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland.
Building Beauty
The sixth zone is dedicated to buildings that draw their inspiration from nature, the result of a fusion between architectural vision and engineering prowess. It offers a virtual tour of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center by Renzo Piano.
110 Years of Future
An illustrative timeline shows how the construction of great infrastructure has coincided with key moments of history, with videos by renowned directors such as Ermanno Olmi. There is also a documentary that reviews five mega projects that tell the story of Salini Impregilo and the people behind every one.
Connectivity Is the Future
The eighth and final zone projects visitors into the future after takking them along a path that winds through the works of Salini Impregilo: 1,017 in Europe, 412 in Africa, 222 in North America, 213 in South America, 54 in the Middle East and 66 in Asia and Oceania to form a total of 2,000 public works.
The Special
In tandem with the exhibition, “We Build Value” that speaks of seven iconic works chosen from chosen out of some 2,000 since 1906 to the present day.
It deals with significant public works relevance is not only found in their technical complexity or the impact they have come to have on the people they serve, but also in the testimony they give to the rise of large, complex infrastructure throughout the world. The projects include the highway system of the United States, the Recco Bridge in Italy, the Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, the Kingdom Centre in Saudi Arabia, the dams of Ethiopia, the Rosario-Victoria Bridge in Argentina and the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Swtzerland.
Their stories are a tribute to the visions of development that have transformed entire nations for more than a century.
