Coperture metalliche autarchiche alla Cartiera Mecenate di Tivoli: un’applicazione inedita dei brevetti di Gino Covre

In 1938, at autarcky time, the Soc. Cartiere Tiburtine called on Gino Covre to design some large metal roofing. The engineer had arrived in Rome in 1935 when his professional relationship with the Badoni firm in Lecco was already well established. While in Rome Covre registered two patents for «Vaulted arch, composed or constituted with frame elements» (1936) and for «Decomposable corrugated complex for vaults, decks, roofs and walls» (1937). Thus, making use of the first of these patents (No. 343079 of 1936), he designed and built in Tivoli a vaulted roof of metal components for the paper selection room with plan dimensions of m 18.40 x 27.40. The study that is presented here was carried out as part of a comprehensive investigation of the industrial object in agreement between Dicea Sapienza, AIPAI and Institute VaVe Ministry of Culture. It required using the specific tools of construction history which, methodologically, demand to systematize archival, literature and history data with material data and direct constructive architectural survey. It is also a case of lost heritage because that the roof of the pavilion survived a few years, until 1944, when it was compromised by Allied bombing during World War II. The absence of the object gives new importance to all the existing traces-photographic, documentary, construction site-that could provide all the elements to understand the built object and place it in what appears to be an exceptional affair, Gino Covre's experimentation in the autarkic phase with metal structures by means of a very reduced use of material. Until now no other experimental realizations by Covre have been discovered for these early patents before 1938 and the following year Covre began to deal with the great works in metal construction, which would make him a part of the history of construction, such as the roofing of Adalberto Libera's E42 congress building (1939-41). Moreover, as Fausto Giovannardi points out, Covre's biography is still far from complete, and this case study sheds light on the early years of the Roman period, which can rightly be considered those of the "promotion" on great engineering for Covre and thanks to which the fruitful and lasting association with Pierluigi Nervi and many other engineers less engaged in metal construction will also be born.