ARETE' ABITARE LE ROVINE_BICICLE MUSEUMe di Acis & La Porta Galatea

0. Disused infrastructure in the relationship between ruins and landscape
The always problematic relationship between the need to build an infrastructure within a landscape is often overcome by forgetting the constraints of protection or the peculiarities of the place thanks to the functional pressure that justify its implementation.
All of us are addicted to a "contaminated" landscape where trellises for high voltage, viaducts, artificial canals, and infrastructure run through our territory colonizing it as foreign elements that only time allows us to accept.
The physical impossibility of removing such artifacts due to the huge costs or in relation to alterations that have now occurred become opportunities for reflection in the direction of their reuse, a second life that manages to create opportunities for new functions.
This reflection led to the invention of new landscapes,"Spazi Generosi" (Generated Spaces), not necessarily linked to a specific function, routes without a goal if not that of a return of time and space to the citizen.
This relationship becomes more delicate when these "ROVINE" are inserted in a place such as the "Timpa Nature Reserve", where a particularly characteristic landscape combines the bursting nature of the Mediterranean scrub with the lava rock that creates unexpected landscapes where the red iron oxide, the black lava and the green of Indian figs, the Lentisco della Ginestra olive grove and the air contaminates the air.

1. History of a divestiture
The Messina-Catania railway line built between 1866 and 1871 in order to promote the infrastructure development of the Ionian area. Built on a single track and basically close to the coast to follow the prevailing flat course, the track track varies starting from the interchange stations with the Giarre-Riposto circumetnea railway, passing through a series of tunnels in the vertical landscape of the "Timpa" and connecting to the station of Acireale. In 1981, the stretch in the city was partially enlarged and modified, leading to a progressive abandonment of the stretch between Villa Belvedere and the hamlet of Santa Maria degli Ammalati. Today, the railway links the whole length of the city. The line serves mainly local passenger and freight traffic, which has been declining since the 1990s.

2. City - Landscape - Railway
The "Timpa di Acireale" is a linear morphological articulation extraordinarily representative of the eastern tectonic of Mount Etna Volcano. It looks like a 250,000 year old vertical geological section, open-air, which goes up from the sea to about 161 m asl. with a predominant NS course, an extension of about 6 km, from Capomulini to Santa Tecla. It includes thermal springs and thermal springs and hosts biotopes on alternating successions of volcanic soils. With a total area of about 225 hectares, the Timpa is a Nature Reserve that has been oriented since 1999 and managed by the Sicilian Regional State Forests Agency. Over the centuries, communities have identified in this unique lava complex a healthy outpost on which to migrate, tending to migrate from South to North. Thus, the Aci landscape holds back ancient geomorphologies and memories, permeated by the myth of Aci and Galatea, of the cyclops Polyphemus, from the Greek, Roman, Arab and Norman testimonies. Since the fifteenth century, a bourgeois class of landowners put the fertile volcanic soil into production, benefited from the therapeutic properties of the thermal waters of Santa Venera al Pozzo, established academies and colleges, stabilizing on the plateau of Timpa the center of the city that became "Royal" at the behest of Philip IV of Spain. In recent years, the increased growth in construction has consumed valuable parts of agricultural land, leading to an urban dispersion towards the hinterland and exposing the Timpa to great risks generated by the progressive absence of organic interventions of spatial planning. the recovery of the abandoned railway line of Acireale is an opportunity for the city with which to re-write the inevitable instances of urban transformation with the impending sustainable development of the territory.

3. Project
The ancient lemons' riviera crossed by train, through a railway line, over time becomes the ruin of an uninhabited landscape. Today it is redesigned with the rewriting of the route, which becomes the city's memory with the Gakis Museum, acronym of the'' Acireale gallery'', in the contemporary dimension of places that become accessible for new functions that identify the city for a new strategy of living.
The routes in the gallery reveal places hidden from the public and revisit primordial sensations, from the gardens of the great Aci, reborn and rewritten after the ruins of the terrible earthquake of the eighteenth century. The recovery of the Acireale disused railway line is an opportunity for the city to re-write the inevitable instances of urban transformation with the urgent sustainable development of the territory. The bicycle museum is structured along the existing route of the railway path. The galleries are occasions to host video and paper installations that return a process of knowledge of the historical relationship between water and territory. The Akis river, which gives its name to the territory and the city, is not only the acronym but also the theme around which the museum is structured. Water as matter is read through its geographical configurations by sea, river, etc. and anthropized transformations, canals, wells, etc. Parallelly the akis is a river not visible, since it is lost in the lava construction land, this feature constitutes the other term of definition of the museum theme. The dialectic declination between revealed and secret water/landscape is the element around which the entire contents of the museum is built. The design strategy is implemented through minimum intervention operations: the new cycle path is articulated through a stabilized earth covering and transversal wooden elements. Along this new ribbon, only a small volume of glass and concrete is inserted in the initial gallery (G13), to identify the first urban access to the museum. The other interventions are punctual and non-invasive, individual landscaping devices that emphasize points of view on the landscape and the spontaneous vegetation of the Timpa, others become tools inside the gallery to reveal distant and secret places of Acireale and its territory.

The need to connect a system of bicycle paths already present inside the city with the height of the tunnel, having to win a difference in height of 23 m, is solved through the extension of the terrace of Villa Belvedere with a metal structure connected to a long footbridge that leads to the entrance of the first gallery (G13).
This element that crosses both the main road 114 and the new railway track becomes the new gateway to the city:"Porta Galatea".

The exhibition itinerary
G13 - Entrance to the Gakis Bike Museum. A volume leads to the gallery entrance, signalling the presence of the new project in the city.
G13 - The museum extends at a higher altitude than the cycle path. Two closed volumes contain the historical maps of the city of Acireale. The superimposition of the historical evolution of the urban fabric allowing to discover permanent elements and modifications. The relationship between water and landscape is historically reflected in the urban fabric already in the Roman baths.
G13_G12 - The route is restored through the recovery of the linear path traced by the tracks. A stabilized earth ribbon inside which wooden elements are inserted in memory of the railway sleepers. These define a variable rhythm depending on the landscapes crossed: the tunnel entrances, relevant panoramic views, cave of lava flow.
G12 - The second and third galleries exhibit the water/vegetation ratio. The spontaneous vegetation is visible through two holes inside the gallery. In the first G11, an existing opening is emphasized by means of a metal graft which, in addition to framing the landscape through the sea and the vegetation of the Timpa, defines a wider and more welcoming level of view.
G12 _G11 - The beautiful and luxuriant gardens of Acireale are precious and secret places.
The G12 and G11 galleries contain some panels necessary for the projection of videos revealing these distant and inaccessible secret places, finally revealed to the visitors of the cycling museum. What you do not see directly is seen and through virtually.
G11 - A further opening, made from scratch, reveals the spontaneous landscape towards the "a Muntagna" front. The opposite position of the two openings makes it possible to absorb the modification of the light during the day.
G10 - The last gallery welcomes the museum theme of the relationship between water and landscape, transforming it into a totally immersive experience. The position of the different projections forces the visitor to move the body's gaze to listen as well as see. The greater extension of the gallery compared to the previous ones allows to include three different declinations of the theme in the dialectic water/secretness. The encounter between water and lava formed the ground of Acireale, its presence is visible by raising the eyes: in this first section the upper surface of the gallery is set up to allow the projection of the sky, of the fumes of the volcano.
G10 - A second section reveals the underground presence of the Akis river, which gives its name to the territory and the city of Acireale.A video projected on the pedestrian path allows virtually to perceive its presence and sounds.

G10 - The sea, visible from the path but not perceivable in the sounds and in its most tactile perception, is the protagonist of the last stretch: a fixed camera placed on the lava coast of Acireale, records the different landscape during the day, the seasons and all year round: the sea is not only felt but you can see.

Structures
The large "portal" and the long access ramp that depart from Villa Belvedere and cross the state highway and the new railway track are made up of vertical points of considerable height burdened by large surfaces of metal deck. The context in which they are inserted is characterized by a great danger and significant local amplification phenomena; for this reason the deck is placed on the columns through innovative devices capable of damping the expected seismic effects.
The structures of the cycle path in the section of the old railway line, also in metal carpentry, are conceived with an elementary geometry, which borrows the solution of the shelf with an inclined support strut placed on the intrados, easily adaptable to changes in acclivity of the context.
Other works are planned on the disused railway tunnel: forometries along the route allow better public use of the spaces and simple metal decks allow the construction of small suspended exhibition spaces. Also in this case, the reinforcement works of the tunnel in the perforated parts and the new structures are made of metal carpentry.
The use of Corten steel is envisaged, which through the process of self-oxidation ensures that safety standards are maintained over time, limiting the need for maintenance interventions in a context of difficult accessibility.

Sustainability
Maintenance of environmental colours, verification of the recycling of materials, even on the sediments of the route also through chemical analyses, to identify presence of pollutants. Detection retention by injection of natural materials, micronized earthenware and natural hydraulic lime to stabilize and block any harmful volatile parts.

4. Practical implementation model
The project aims to create new opportunities for financing, management and construction partnerships, which can be implemented over time through the'' Urban Democracy'' model, which puts all synergies in the territory into a system.
The rhetoric of the crisis cannot justify an inability to face an innovative urban renewal, able to change the identity of places with new grafts that redevelop the landscape, in the dynamics of the becoming of the territory.
To start again, we need to focus on a few key words such as individual and collective responsibility, a sense of belonging and trust in the institutions, commitment at all levels to recreate a social citizenship pact to take advantage of funding sources such as European Community funds.