Monumental Ground

“Monumental Ground” (completed PhD research, 2022) focuses on ground movements connected with complex infrastructural construction activities and considers, as the main case study, the AlpTransit highspeed railway project, which connects Italy and Germany through Switzerland.

The realization of the Gotthard and the Ceneri tunnels that was carried out between 1999 and 2020 has indeed produced more than 34 million tons of excavated materials. As a result, huge artificial mountains, refilled delta and altered topographies made of inert waste have powerfully reshaped several Swiss territories close to the infrastructural construction sites.

A series of photographs and drawings (temporal maps and topological drawings) provide an interpretative inventory of the major ground movements and inert disposal sites linked to the AlpTransit: the Reuss Delta, Sedrun, Cavienca, Biasca, Sigirino.

The study examines both their monumental character and their deep, material impact on the landscape, disengaging earthworks from an exclusively technical approach. In particular, while the first section mainly questions the meaning of ground movements inside the landscape architecture thinking, language and design process, the second part includes selected drawings of the AlpTransit landscapes, leading to a more careful attention on their forms, their physical sizes and their transformations over time.