In Italy, around the 1980s, housing cooperatives were a significant source of work for architects and engineers. There were various kinds of cooperatives, large or small, Catholic or Communist oriented, structured as ministries or simply do-it-yourself, scheming or fair. In Florence there was one properly managed, led by members dedicated to the common good and nothing else. Just nothing else.
After having overcame many bureaucratic and administrative hurdles, that cooperative could sign the housing contract of for its many members with a builder not well known which submitted an offer a few lower than another of a builder from long since serious and reliable. A little difference that the cooperative’s board could easily ignore – but fairness prevailed.
So the work began and that builder had a great satisfaction, also because he received the payments of his bills immediately, just when issued. Unbelievable stuff.
But…
But one night someone enters the building site and devastates scaffoldings, formworks, props. Chaos everywhere. What is it? Intimidation? Threats? Warnings?
Headlines in the newspapers: mafia in a construction site.
Nothing of that; only workers who didn’t receive a penny of what had been paid by the cooperative and cashed by the builder.
Perhaps also a chance event made someone very enraged.
On a beautiful spring Sunday, the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monte Carlo was on air in TV. Before the race, the cameras frame panoramic views and the crowd. One camera lingers on the façade of a grand hotel on the seafront, where a figure is leaning out of a balcony waving bye-bye. Yes, it’s he, the builder himself, and says hello from Monte Carlo.
That was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Legal issues that arose between this gentleman and his workers could involve the cooperators, dangerously delaying the delivery of their houses. Months of great tension followed: the work should not slow down, we had to get the goal. Every act, every uncertainty, every request, could lead to delays, increased costs, litigations, perhaps even the seizure of the site: unimaginable consequences.
But as God would, the housing was delivered, albeit with some minor delays and consequences, the assignments were done, the partners’ families took possession of their houses and the condominium was set.
The first assembly had only one point to discuss: when raining, some water remained in the external dimple that contained the doormat, so was necessary to find a solution.
Agenda: “The doormat issue”.
I put that in a frame.
