IRRATIONALITY AND/IS REALITY

The Garbatella railbridge: an ironic look at the future of Rome.

text by Sebastian Di Guardo

I reach the Garbatella metro station and there it is: the rail bridge. The weirdness of its lines reminds me of a joke Jack Nicholson makes in “As Good As It Gets,” by James L. Brooks. Someone asks him how come he describes women so well, and he says he pictures a man and deprives him of any reliability and rationality.

I may not seem to be related, but minutes later while paying for coffee, I focus better on the matter, we all hate the fake bridges printed on euro bills, immaginary bridges that could exist. Stereotypes like illustrations in childrens books, with captions for “vase” or “table”. Reality isn’t serial like railbridges, but real because its unique, a work of art.

After finishing my coffee I go back to staring at the weird contorted gridlike beam (statics lectures at university traumatised me), as if a train had hit it. Is it a contradiction when fact it actually hovers above it?

Like the Tiber, railways criss cross the city dictating limits and enclosures that the metropolis of the inter-link would like to ignore, even the holy Tiber is a nuisance, a traffic liability.

To avoid one of these enclosures The town council decided to build this godzilla-like bridge, reminiscent of the Calatrava in Valencia, placing a bet on the new city for the young built over of the ex general markets to Ostiense.

It challenges the actual meaning of bridge as it connects nothing and is useless. An isolated period in brackets amid a linear discourse, often skipped directly.

The railbridge over the Garbatella is unique, autoreferential of its funtion and its place, which will come to be associated with it, therefore fulfilling the requirement for being an icon of the Rome of the future.