Lightness can be hard to bear

Something stinks in the state of Malta. As a rule, we spend our days complaining about second-rate roads, services, and this and that. Then, one fine day, the government decides to bring in a first-rate architect to change Valletta. No matter, dour will be dour, and we take to spending our nights on Facebook peddling gloom and zany 'proposals'.

The resistance to Renzo Piano's plans knows no bounds. To say it comes from an ignorant and tasteless crowd would be both too easy and inaccurate. In fact, it seems that the deepest curses come from the best-educated. Which rather makes me begin to suspect there's something about Piano which cannot but rub us the wrong way.

Let's hear it in his own words: "There is one theme that is very important for me: lightness (and obviously not in reference only to the physical mass of objects)... In my architecture, I try to use immaterial elements like transparency, lightness, and the vibration of the light. I believe that they are as much part of the composition as the shapes and volumes" (Pritzker Prize acceptance speech, the White House, 1998); "I always wanted to be a builder... rather than building heavy things out of brick and sand like my father, I wanted to make light things" (interview with Philip Jodidio, 2002).

Apart from weightlessness, Piano's work has a second, related, characteristic. His buildings have been accused of looking temporary, unfinished almost. He often uses materials that seem flimsy and somewhat reminiscent of camping (though a rather posh and hi-tech tent it would be). Piano is no stranger to the terms being used to describe his Valletta plans: 'on stilts', 'building site', 'likely to be blown off by the first strong wind'. He would probably say that's the point.

There are two questions we need to ask. First, how do these two themes of lightness and ethereality square up with the Maltese understanding of buildings and architecture? And, second, in what way is this relevant to the debate over Piano's plans for our capital?

Let's start with the context. How 'light' is Valletta? My answer is, it depends. On one hand, the massive blocks of its foundations seem to grow out of the bedrock, an impression that's at its most powerful in the ditches around the fortifications. Within these blocks the city is characterised by 'compression', a feeling picked up by Piano himself in his on-site studies. This, then, is the heavy, rooted, earthbound Valletta.

But there's another, equally real, city. The house I now live in looks across the harbour towards the city. I sort of understand the light, rootless, skyward Valletta. Looking at it from Cottonera on a summer morning, the city seems to want to break its moorings and float away like Swift's Laputa.

This is classical Piano fare. He grew up in Genoa, a maritime city. Piano's architecture very much plays with the theme of levitation, and maritime cities are among his favourite playgrounds. So with respect to context, Piano's plans are not necessarily at odds with the local soil. On other counts, alas, they compare less favourably.

Building in Malta is anything but light. The standard Maltese block (kantun) is a devil of a deadweight that yields only to those barons of beef, our bennejja (builders). As if to remind us where it comes from, it is dotted with fossils and sweats salt for hundreds of years after its extraction.

When stone meets stone, divorce is almost unknown - we're understandably proud of our 'oldest free-standing building in the world'. And so on, to the conclusion that our idiom is more cave than cantilever. It's massive, heavy, and very long- term indeed. The exact opposite of Piano's show in fact.

At this point one begins to understand the resistance. If Piano likes to think of himself as a builder, he is certainly no bennej.

There's another thing. Piano has described lightness as an 'attitude of the spirit'. It is not just about building mass but also a certain type of intelligence: "Intelligence can be heavy-going or light, and with age one discovers that a light intelligence is much more interesting." (Jodidio interview).

Whether or not it's more interesting, 'light intelligence' is not the stuff we Maltese are made of. Forget the 'Mediterranean people' nonsense, we're a right solemn bunch. We like our multiple-degreed dottijiet, our self-important Mario Philips, and our 'glorious' buildings. The gypsum lions and mock-baroque balus-trades look funny until one realises there's no humour behind them. They're for real.

Piano then is to Malta what Lady Gaga is to cloistered nuns. We might therefore be tempted to cut the madness loose to the four winds and go instead for a solid and permanent statement which is more in tune with local sentiment.

Mario Botta for one wouldn't be a bad start. Botta's work in Switzerland and elsewhere is a symphony of primary solids in durable and often ancient materials. His buildings are barely punctured by windows and their geometry conveys a sense of classicism which I suspect would sell well in Malta.

But we could also choose lightness and, possibly for the first time in our history, take ourselves - and our structures - a bit less pompously. It's the option I favour, as readers of this column may have noticed.

What Piano is proposing is not simply a matter of 'redesigning' the entrance to Valletta. It's a whole new (to us) philosophy of architecture. In a sense, I can understand why The People seem so lost - they feel they are about to, quite literally, lose their footing.

mafalzon@hotmail.com