Arte e spazio pubblico. Il podio di Alfredo Pirri.

The paper approaches the concept of transversality and the artistic action which restores to public space one of the multiple visions of the processes characterizing the culture of contemporary design. In particular, the paper concerns the Podio realized by the artist Alfredo Pirri, for the event 'Public space, art and identity: comparing international experiences' organized by the PDTA Department at the Valle theater in Rome. The paper starts introducing the various physical and symbolic meanings that the podium had in the history of architecture, changing shapes, design and arts: this structure represents, from antiquity to modernity, an element of connection with the context and mediation with the soil, but also an object of public and political communication. From the unitary base of the Etruscan-Italic temples, to the carved one of the Malatesta temple by Alberti in Rimini, to the rationalist conception of opaque material or air blocking, up to Lisickij’s lenina tribune, the function of the podium has always been to isolate and to symbolically elevate the architectural organism, as well as to celebrate the status and word of the leader. Pirri’s artwork offers a unique approach, according to which the podium becomes the frame of the word and a sort of listening instrument. In this sense, the theater is a public space in the sign of heterotopy and the artistic object is a communication device which can attribute new values and forms of interaction to the urban context.