Giving archicultural value to Valletta

Valletta is the designer city of the 16th century, built with vision, coming straight from a drawing board. It was the vision and philosophy, for a new city, the Cittá Nuova that has developed Valletta into a pristine example of an archicultural achievement.

Balance, proportion, style, and meaning was given to Valletta transforming it into a contemporaneous, eternal Cittá Nuova in the first 300 years from its foundation, developing from a port and city of war and conflict, symbol of the European-Christian and the Ottoman-Muslim divide of the mid-16th century, to a principal commercial and cultural city of the 17 and 18th century.

"It is in this regard that it becomes possible to discern the power and the origin of the city, this being on the one hand the work of men and on the other part of context by nature," Massimiliano Finazzer Flory, of the Ottagono and Urban Centre, writing on the Milan Galleria, had said. It is only with this philosophy of space that the regeneration of Valletta and of its sites, including the opera house site and other areas, should be interpreted.

Finazzer Flory also states that "the re-evaluation of the city, even today, passes through the re-evaluation of tradition and culture. Identity constitutes the base and the height for the construction of any urban location that aims to be more than anonymous".

Valletta fits perfectly in this definition. The identity of the city and its architecture are a cultural weave forming and shaping a community, translated in public space. Nevertheless, with this in mind, the opera house structure by Barry, inaugurated in 1866, 300 years from the foundation of Valletta, may be seen as anonymous to the city.

The regeneration of Valletta will not be complete without a clear vision for Fort St Elmo, reviving an integral part of our inherent archiculture and identity. The cultural and historic significance and value of this site is incomparable to that of the opera house site.

With more than Lm170,000,000 being invested by the private sector in and around the city and before seeing the colour, style, materials to be used, design and height for the building of the opera house site, we must all see what we want to achieve of Valletta as a flagship of Malta's revived identity with a serious plan for regeneration of the whole of the city.

It is against this perspective that Fort St Elmo can offer itself as a prominent seat for Parliament and it is with this new or, better still, revived vision that the regeneration of our ports has been identified throughout our history. This is the way forward to shape our new renaissance for Valletta and its ports, focusing not only on the design and architecture of a site but also on the whole area, integrating social and economic regeneration.

In 1993, five years after Malta had already shelved the Renzo Piano guidelines for the rehabilitation of Valletta, appealing for the regeneration of St Elmo and the lower part of Valletta, linking it to the main Axis, Norman Foster was one of 17 foreign architects invited to compete in the renovation of the "new" Parliament building of the Reichstag in Berlin.

Then, the philosophy of the building's transformation was rooted in four issues: (1) the Bundestag's significance as a democratic forum, (2) a commitment to public accessibility, (3) a sensitivity to history and (4) a rigorous environmental agenda, becoming a "living museum" of German history and a beacon of democracy at a time when Germany needed it most.

Parliament must lead by example in the building it chooses for itself, in respect of people sovereignty, in balance with the environment, sensitive to the surroundings, becoming a new archicultural symbol of our revived Euro-Mediterranean identity within a new Europe.

My personal choice of the Royal Opera House site as a new seat for Parliament is only a secondary one and only on condition that the same intense philosophy behind the Reichstag, in context to our identity, is applied to the building.

My first choice goes to what shaped the fate of Valletta: Fort St Elmo, a site unfortunately listed by Unesco as an endangered monument. Without it and Fort St Angelo our history and our identity would be different to who and what we are today as a people and a nation.

Setting up itself in the lower part of St Elmo, integrating cultural, social and leisure amenities in the upper part of the site, the Maltese Parliament would be sending three clear messages:

(i) its obligation to history and heritage through restoration, delisting it from the Unesco endangered monument list;

(ii) its firm vision to the people by opening a war machine to the public realm and democracy, reflecting a contemporary civil society (in line with the vision and philosophy of St James Cavalier) and

(iii) its serious commitment to serve as the catalyst to social and economic growth in the lower parts of the city, integrating this area in the regeneration process of Valletta.

Dr Borg Olivier is mayor of Valletta.