world war one: the impact of logistics on european territories

G. Corbellini (edited), Villardjournal 01.018 - Investigate.
Macerata:  Quodlibet, 2018

paper link: www.iuav.it/SCUOLA-DI-/EDITORIA-V/VILLARDJOU/
www.academia.edu/36169185/world_war_one_the_impact_of_logistics_on_european_territories

World War One - the impact of logistics on European territories

What was WWI contribution to the transition towards the contemporary concept of landscape? How has modern warfare become a factor and a value in the territory’s culture and configuration after the war?
From the very beginning of the conflict, the military world exploited industrial production; army leaders were convinced that technology was the main strategic asset.  The impact of this approach on territories was huge, to the point that they could not keep up with the dimension of the military-oriented industrial revolution. For this reason, during the war, the way of both looking at and organizing space changed dramatically. War production and its related technology on the one hand pushed to relentless construction of new infrastructures (for production, mobility and logistics), and on the other they generated the necessity of collecting and managing a lot of complex data (information services, landscape photos, aerial photos, detailed surveys and monographic guides).  That’s why the battle became less important than the movement of people and materials, since their effective management represented a decisive strategic advantage.  The shift  in warfare triggered by the Great War ended up in creating a modern (and then contemporary) idea of logistics, giving to the concept of modern landscape its  final expression and image, its shape and organization.

La geografia serve a fare la guerra? Representation of human beings

Some notes and connections with  La geografia serve a fare la guerra? Representation of human beings, Fondazione Benetton exhibition.

Military world has always supported development of several knowledge and technologies. The wars conducted in end of Nineteenth century show a knowledge lack about territory’s morphology; topographical map is no longer sufficient to describe the complexity of reality. Wars experiences initiate an advancement process in landscape studies that undergoes a strong acceleration during the Word War I. During this war, photographic survey related to territory’s monographs and topography maps are able to define a "three-dimensional" reconstruction of reality. In this conflict territories are map with a lot of new data, signs and systems are overlap on them in a completely different way from the past. Connections system and infrastructure acquire more value than battlefield itself. Management of space and time, flows becomes much more important than the place itself. The greatest legacy of the War is the development of modern logistics, the instrument that redefines and transforms Europe’s territories.
(from Acts of "la Geografia italiana e la prima guerra mondiale: prima, durante e dopo”, Università degli Studi di Trieste – Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici | Febbraio 2016)

La geografia serve a fare la guerra? Representation of human beings
Fondazione Benetton Studi e Ricerche | a cura di M. Rossi
Spazi Bomben, Treviso |  from November 2016  to Febbraio 2017

Learning from war landscape

M. Bassanelli, G Postiglione (edit), Re-Enactingn the past. 

Museography for conflict heritage, 

Sircausa:  LetteraVentidue, 2013
paper link: www.academia.edu/15119539/Learning_about_war_landscape

Learning from war landscape

This was something unheard of: an immense, populated landscape of thousands of acres of fields and roads and farmhouses becoming a monument to an event which had taken place there.
(Jackson J. B. "The necessity for ruins", 1980)

The American Civil War was still not finished, when the desire to declare the Gettysburg battlefield a monument was already widespread.
As a matter of fact, the monument of the Gettysburg battlefield is assumed to be a warning, a guide for the future of the American nation. However, unlike many other monuments that are inspired by the same principle, this is not an exhortative one in the traditional sense: it is a vast environmental area in which the historical memory is recalled without expressing an educational  will that tells us what to do, but it simply explains the battle.
Every age needs  ruins to have restored and preserved to tell people about their present identity, and this is grounded in a principle of the public interest felt and solved in different ways and forms according to epochs. It is probably inevitable that every epoch transfigures and transcends these places transforming them either into exhortative monuments often doomed to oblivion or in tourist centres, where the war is only a background set up for meetings for adults playing dress up in uniforms, marching and drinking beer, such as happened in the celebrations of the D-Day. The risk for these two places seems therefore double, on the one hand the danger of neglect and oblivion, on the other the transformation into a paradoxical phenomenon already known and implemented in other places of great historical and cultural interest, where the actions of enhancement go from one extreme conservative act up to the transfiguration of the meaning of the place; both cases very often involve a restriction of the cultural or daily use of the goods themselves, as pointed out by Rem Koolhaas in the exposition 'Preservation' at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2010.
Nowadays to occupy these spaces involves interpreting and communicating them. Maybe the flexible and experimental nature of the preparation project, lending itself to the use of multiple disciplines and taking on different aspects and values depending on the circumstances, may provide an alternative form of architectural communication and consider whether, in a universe where everything is communication and market, the project will return a different look, a necessary experience to understand what and how these places are.

D-DAY celebrations, Normandy June 2013

#4 Space and Time | Cadorna Line 1916 | Unnamed Road (VA)

The road crosses San Martino Mount on the North front. it was built, developed and maintained during the Great War (1916-1917) by I Army. The road was built for Cadorna Line worksite and than  it connected military position to other road and logistics system.

Data:

Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma

#3 Space and Time | Cadorna Line 1916 | Road SP 62 (VA)

Road SP 62 (VA) linked Varese with the base of S. Martino Mount (Rancio Valcuvia). This road and other during the Great War (1916-1917) was maintained and developed by I Army for the construction of Cadorna Line. On S. Martino mont there are some position ruins of Cadorna Line.

Data:

Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma

#2 Space and Time | Monte Grappa 1916 | Road SP 148 (VI)

The road called "Strada Cadorna" was built in 1916 by the military road service. After Caporetto it become fundamental logistics connection to supply the Army on Monte Grappa

Data:

Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma

Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma

#1 Space and Time | Strafexpedition 1916 | Road SP 72 (VI)

Cadorna planed the action of Italian Army on Karst front and all operations are organized behind this line. 

Trentino front had only a strategic defense importance for Italy, in case of an Italian defeat on Trentino, the Austrian Army are able to occupy all Po plain because there are not more geographical or structured defense point. 

In case of attack on Trentino all Italian Army resources are cut off definitely from the Karst line. 

So when in 1916 Austrian Army attacks on Asiago Plateau generates a great crisis. There are not sufficiently soldiers and material to defense these lines.

The railway and draft animals transport are not able to transport the requested resources in a short time. 

Only the motorization was able to do it, and it represent for the Italian army a really important solution used for the first time on a global scale during this battle.

From this time, Military engineering service takes a fundamental importance in warfare.

Data:

Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma

Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma

First World War | Italian Front | military roads

Motor vehicles use, imposed a general innovation of roads, on one hand motorization allow a better manage of time and resources but on other hand impose to rethink the road typology.
During the War Italian Army built around 4.000 Km of roads, mainly in the mountains area. For example nearest the Karst Plateau front, the road system was extended to manage flows and allow better connections.
There was no time to change the real condition of infrastructures system but the war experiences support the necessity to develop a new road system and it is not a case that the 40% of this system was built in 20 years, between the two World Wars. 

Data:
Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma
Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma

First World War | Italian Front | military railways

The specific case of Italy it is represented also by morphology complexity of the operations zone. The most of Italian borders are in mountain where there are not a lot connections and resources. In case of a mobilization in North-East of Italy, all resources from the centre and south of the country have to cross the Appenines mountains and the Po river where the railway and road system was not sufficiently developed and extended.


Data:
Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma
Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma
Archivio Ministero Infrastrutture e Trasporti, Roma

1918 | First World War | Italian Front | logistics structures

Logistics phenomenon produced a first example of city diffusion over all territories.
Same wild landscape, as Karst for example, are urbanized also with permanent infrastructures as electric, and telephone lines and aqueducts. In same cases, these structures will be a fundamental base for a future and solid colonization of these territories as the Alps for example.
it represent a relevant transformation for architecture and urbanism not in a single work dimension but in a territory scale.
The war logistics necessity begin to diffuse an industrial landscape built by a lot of industrial products in place of handcraft one.

Data:
Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio Storico, Roma
Archivio del Genio Militare, Roma
Archivio Ministero Infrastrutture e Trasporti, Roma