The steel alcove

This installation has been inspired by "The steel alcove", a novel in which Filippo Tommaso Marinetti recounts his war experience as driver of Lancia-Ansaldo 1ZM armored car during the First World War. The work reinterprets in an anti-war key the innovative assault vehicle celebrated by Marinetti in the name of the Machine Myth, typical of futurism. Umberto Cavenago's steel alcove is a powerful vehicle in CorTen, stripped of any belligerent purpose and built with solid, geometrically clear volumes. Dissimulated in a wood that grows and thickens, it is destined to be more and more hidden and apparently impregnable: a perfect shelter to take refuge in silence. The characteristic of the CorTen is to protect itself from the aggression of atmospheric agents, through the superficial formation of a passivating patina, consisting of the oxides of its elements. Passivation protects against corrosion and changes color shades over time. It is a very different behavior in comparison to carbon steel which is vulnerable to the corrosive action that turns the metal itself into a porous and fragile surface. Carbon steel rust advances, damaging the underlying part up to its total consumption.