The 100 years of engineers in the province of Sondrio told in a book

Last October the exhibition at Palazzo Pretorio in Sondrio dedicated to the centenary of the Register of Engineers and the meeting, organized by the Order of Engineers of the province of Sondrio, “At school with… the Engineers” with the students of the scientific high school ” Carlo Donegani”, of the “E. Mattei” and the “A. De Simoni – M. Quadrio” of the capital. In the wake of the initiatives linked to the first century of the Register, the volume presented and donated to members of the Order at the end of the conference of the same name “The hundred years of Engineers in the province of Sondrio – Arguments and testimonies” organized in recent days in the hall also fits Successes of Confartigianato.

A tribute to over a century of activity in the valley, but also to the figure of the engineer himself and to the great diversification of skills compared to the “classical” civil and industrial ones that have made their way over the decades to the figures – defined as “mythical” – of those who really knew how to leave their mark in history, in our history made up of roads, railways, hydroelectric power plants, public and private buildings, entire residential areas, industrial settlements and agriculture certainly not by chance defined as “heroic”. From an idea of ​​the president of the Order, the engineer Felice Mandelli, then developed by a small working group composed of the engineers Enrico Moratti, Antonio Della Torre and Benedetto Abbiati, the volume was born into which they converged, in a happy mix of “arguments and testimonies”, precisely – as the subtitle states – numerous contributions which in various capacities develop multiple ideas of the profession and pay homage to the genius of numerous “colleagues”, from Carlo Donegani, «he who modeled the current territorial structure of province mainly through the Spluga and Stelvio roads”, to Giovan Battista Schiantarelli from Tirano, the centenarian engineer, number 5 in the Register. From Ugo Martinola, “the designer who brought the international architecture of the twentieth century to Sondrio”, to the engineer Giuliano Zuccoli, the “Valtellina entrepreneur in the world of energy”.

“The golden rule of our profession – revealed the engineer Benedetto Abbiati, referring to the genesis of the volume – is to “make a project of the project”, before starting to work. The intent was to also outline the evolution of a profession that has changed a lot over the course of these 100 years: there are engineers who stand out for their great architectural and aesthetic sensitivity, others stand out as protagonists of administrative life, still others specialize in very niche sectors such as cableway systems Then there are the teachers, the experts in Artificial Intelligence and I could go on and on. However, there are three unifying elements and they are the tendency to constantly compare with concrete reality, the willingness to take personal responsibility and the willingness to provide services to the community”.

Examples in this sense, added Enrico Moratti, historic president of the Order from 1987 to 2013, come from the commitment distributed throughout the territory in the post-war period or after the 1987 flood. The volume also revealed the passion for history and the scrupulous documentary research of the engineer Antonio Della Torre, to whom we owe the detailed reconstruction of the long and troubled process that led to the birth of the Order of Engineers, but also the chapters – which must be read as many declinations of the profession – dedicated to railway network in Valtellina and Valchiavenna, to terraces and vine cultivation and to electronic engineering and its applications.

Also significant was the intervention of engineer Cinzia Capelli, invited to write a contribution on her experience as a woman in the field of engineering. “I remember when women’s toilets didn’t yet exist at the “Poli”, at the end of the 90s – she recalled – and yet it remains an incredibly interesting challenge and only apparently we start at a disadvantage”. Capelli also underlined the feminine characteristics that represent an added value to the basic engineering method, such as “observation and listening skills, curiosity and sensitivity”, all founded on a good basis of stoic resistance that women – engineers or not – have as a dowry “just like certain materials”.

At the end of the volume, the auspicious “Thoughts and emotions for the future” by the president of the Order Felice Mandelli. “Years of interesting and exciting work await us to give concrete evidence to the progress of technology, quantum physics and generative artificial intelligence, always with our systemic approach that allows us to find even simple solutions to actually difficult problems. Technology can help us a lot on this path, but at the center of the project there will always be women and men with their creative value.”

The presentation of the volume “The hundred years of engineers in the province of Sondrio” was followed by the annual budget meeting with the approval of both the 2023 final account and the 2024 budget of the Order.