Discovering the Company that Makes Dreams Come True
The day of 16th November began with a miracle: the discovery of the company that makes dreams concrete. This company proves doing business can also mean change reality: bringing civilization and realizing genuine humanity.
In the year 2000, the adventure of WASP began in Massa Lombarda and – to date – the dreams Massimo Moretti has realized have been so many. Its WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project) was born and lives with business initiative to develop and market 3D printers. Far from this technological utopia, the headquarters is strongly evocative, containing traces of a Renaissance workshop and the idea of an alchemist’s laboratory.
However, if you consider strictly the dreams, Massimo offers us and shows his business card, which, under his name, qualifies him as “Dreamer”. In the same way every good person who realizes dreams does, he has still so many of them to make concrete. His greatest dream? Saving the world.
Moretti explains in order to save the world we must be sustainable in every sense. Therefore, 3D printing can produce technologically advanced and, at the same time, economically and ecologically sustainable units. Espousing the principle of bio imitation, the one of that bees which build their nests independently and efficiently, the future 3D printer WASP allows building a house and the furniture itself at extremely low cost.
Technology is the Common Denominator
From dreams for humanity to the goals represented by the flight metaphor. The technology has been our guideline also at the Aeroclub Baracca in Lugo with the discovery of the latest-generation simulator to achieve the patent for helicopter. Technology becomes freedom of the person, which results in possibilities and which brings new symbols and new meanings to the territory.
History forges the territory and its expressions. The flying club of Lugo has existed since 1982 and is the first school for civil helicopters of Italy that allows to obtain the license to pilot helicopters and aircraft as the Cessna or ultralight (watching these aircrafts is a wonderful emotion) for tourism.
President John Shack, Vice President Oriano Callegati and the Chief Commander Training Roberto Bassi welcomed us with hospitality and kept alive the company during the excellent lunch.
Opportunity for dialogue, construction of new narrations that weave between place, symbolic places and people and that lead, finally, to action. We recognize technology gives us the ability to pursue major projects for us and for civilization, which in this way, every day can make a step forward and can be genuinely realized.
A Territory and its Wine
If wine makes the identity of this territory, we see how the territory makes wine. We meet another excellence of Lugo territory: DIEMME. Since over than 90 years, it has produced instrumentation for its wine production. To date, as the General Director Danilo Bettoli stated during his presentation, DIEMME means worldwide excellence in this field: as in the world the wine industry has grown because the consumption of wine has spread in many cultures, the know how the Italian wine is recognized as primarily important.
The centrality of the territory and its history is clearly visible in DIEMME, managed by the Melandri family, which is now at its fourth generation. DIEMME represents another example that a company is strictly a related practice in the area and finds in it its primary sources and its resources.
Tradition, history, new production, new course of events. Everything is perfectly in harmony with business vocation and with a fully sustainable setting.
The Union of Municipalities of Lower Romagna
From wine to the history of this territory, with a visit to the historical center of the city of Lugo. We focus first and foremost on the Pavaglione, the structure which represents the exchange and economic life of the past, when it hosted one of the largest markets for the silk trade between 1600 and 1700. It makes us think the fact the Pavaglione should be the central feature in the ancient and historical city and represent a symbolic reference.
At the Rocca Estense we meet the representatives of the Union of Municipalities of Lower Romagna. The President of the Union, Luca Piovaccari, presents the project to improve energy efficiency and economic development of the Territory of Alfonsine, Bagnacavallo, Bagnara di Romagna, Conselice, Cotignola, Fusignano, Lugo, Massa Lombarda and Sant’Agata sul Santerno. This Public Institution intends to promote the virtues of the territory and to give attention to the person and the citizen.
In a systemic view, being united on the territory mean greater strength: more people and economic resources. They are able to be more efficient and to participate being involved in a strategic development in the territory, which had been planned and shared by local majors.
The territory that is also a place
During the day, the principles that make our territory a real place have been explained. A “place” means where people reside: stories in history, dreams, plans, hopes, opportunities. A place of growth, knowledge, know how and traditions, but also of strong innovations. A place to live, where you choose to live and to act. We return to Faenza, the starting point of the day. Dinner is enriched by speeches and reflections of the time spent together and the testimony on the history of design and its relationship with the business world of Germano Zanzani, Professor and former Director of the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries in Faenza. The splendid setting of Casa Spadoni welcomes us and we know today we have also built something.
A story written in the Rock
We are at the fourth day of the Territorial School. Territory means a unique feature, a peculiar shape, an image and identity, an exclusive way of being. Territory is what we discover in the fourth day of the School, Friday, November 18th, 2016. Our exceptional guide, the geologist from Faenza Stefano Marabini, accompanied us along with the Mayor involved, Davide Missiroli. We visit the Vena del Gesso, extraordinary geological peculiarities of international interest.
The park was founded in 2006 by the contributions from the University of Bologna and Firenze, the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Province of Ravenna and the town of Brisighella. Unity of purposes in order to realize projects and spread awareness. Here we can observe the different peculiarities of the formation of chalky walls, learning how this rock is characteristic of this territory: rapid temporal connections testify an ongoing relationship over time. A uniform, continuous and narrative dimension.
Before ceramic
Time tells a story that we did not know, a story written on the rock which runs through the man’s narration. The origin of this spectacular geological formation dates back to the Messinian (7.1 million years ago). The geological events run their course, factors and agents determine conditions and premises that coincide only with certain conclusions and results. The perfect coincidence of cause and effect, as science subjects explain, create some situations and not others, and the stories are born after the course of nature happened: they contribute to the great course of humanity. Particular and universal elements coincide, as the large with the small, as the micro with the macro. What they bring is still inscribed in a natural necessity: for us who are observers, the shape of case becomes a destiny for civilization.
Especially in the area of Faenza, from ravines, processing and subsequent decoration of majolica (or precisely faience), known and appreciated throughout the world, derived.
The dynamic movement of the earth determined the rest, giving origin to the Apennines. To recognize the territory its current form, we must go back in time and think of different dimensions, which are not those of man, but of nature. This reflects how everything is whole system and how connections are the key to understand all that exists.
Art, Majolica and Stories
Past and present are very close, almost overlapping. We are walking down the street of Donkeys, characteristic and elevated way where donkeys carried chalky material coming from mines. We are entering the center of Faenza, to visit the historic ceramic art Bottega Gatti.
We are greeted by the proprietor Davide Servadei, who runs the Bottega business with his sister Marta. The shop was founded by his grandfather in 1928. We are impressed by his family history: the ability of building an important dream that continues through generations.
Majolica, like much else, is a matter of style, language and interpretation. For this reason, we can say, since the beginning the Bottega Gatti has meant excellence and research in processing, representing a trend in Italian and contemporary design. In fact, the story of Riccardo Gatti is linked to majolica as an art. It adhered to the Futurist movement of Marinetti and with the artists of the Movement realized a partnership that will enable the workshop to be a reference point for the most celebrated artists of the world scene. Historicity and artistry conveyed from past to present. The creation of compartment, separations and divisions is useless. On the other hand, we can see conceptual continuity and natural continuation, involvement and natural contiguity. Understanding this is understanding how everything is important and everything leads to something in the human field.
Sustainable Wine
The knowledge of the territory means also taking a tour and tasting at Massellina Estate in Castel Bolognese, properties of the wine consortium Cevico of Lugo. In this small wine growing reality, typical wines are produced in a sustainable manner by the great reality of Cevico. In this place of natural beauty, limited series of wine, from Pignoletto to Sangiovese, and a very limited prestigious wine production, seasoned in earthenware jars made by a laboratory in Faenza, see their light.
We are accompanied by Marco Nannetti, head of External Relations of Cevico Group, a consortium of five thousand displaced producer members mainly located in Emilia-Romagna. We learn the nature that makes good this wine and the wisdom that finds its ways to produce it with excellence.
Connections in the Territory
From the heights of Castel Bolognese we return to the historical center of Faenza. In the Municipal Hall, the Mayor Giovanni Malpezzi, President of Romagna Faenza Union, is waiting us. This union was established in 2012 and has brought together the municipalities of Castel Bolognese, Solarolo, Brisighella, Casola Valsenio and Riolo Terme.
Another virtuous example of how to produce durable connections: relationships and practices that come together to promote and defend the territory, with particular regard to people, the actors of daily practices that constitute valuable and unique resources.
Final moment to fix the emotions of the day is dinner at Tenuta Fasano in Riolo Terme. It is enriched by the intervention of the International Museum of Ceramics Director, Claudia Casali, who leads the guests in a fictional though exciting visit between the exhibition of one of the most important museums in the world dedicated to ceramics.
Therefore, today has also ended. It has brought us from the Pliocene to Futurism, from wine to majolica, from the geology to politics: everything makes sense within an itinerary that returns in circularity and harmony to the experiences practiced on the territory.