Il disegno come mezzo di comunicazione: il caso del ponte sifone sul Geirato a Genova

The siphon bridge over the Geirato is an extraordinary architectural, engineering and hydraulic work of the late 18th century belonging to the historical aqueduct system of Genoa, whose design and realisation lasted more than a century involving scientists and famous architects of the calibre of Luigi Vanvitelli and Carlo Barabino. For the purposes of knowledge, conservation and valorisation of the artefact, published texts relating to the area of interest were collected, studied and catalogued, which were then compared with unpublished documents found at the ASCG, BUGE and the DocSAI Centre. By pursuing studies on the functioning of the siphon and its historical origins on the one hand and analysing archive documentation on the specific events of the siphon bridge on the Geirato on the other, a discrepancy emerged. While recent literature traces the intuition of the principle of communicating vessels back to the Egyptians and its application in the construction of the first siphons back to the Greeks and Romans, the continuous requests over more than a century for the opinion of approximately fifty experts, the dense correspondence in an attempt to solve the problems encountered, the numerous representations of design variants that emerged during the research, and the lack of historical references related to similar design experiences suggest that we are dealing with a unique work of its kind.