THE FUTURE OF BUILDINGS - A program created by Rotary scholar Marco Faggella is training engineers around the world to make buildings safer in earthquakes
"We’re in the car, and my traveling companion and local guide Marco
Faggella is blasting the stereo. He wants me to hear the music of a
friend of his, who has reinterpreted southern Italy’s traditional
tarantella rhythms as intoxicating trance tunes. Over dinner the
previous evening, Faggella, a member of the Rotary Club of Roma
Nord-Est, filled me in on his Top Secret Plan to get his friend to play
at the Burning Man art festival. In that conversation, Faggella also
educated me on the finer points of Italian mysticism, Magna Graecia, and
Pythagoras.
Faggella is full of grand plans: When he launched a film festival in
2009 in the beach town of Maratea in partnership with Rotary District
2100 (in part to show off the Oscar-nominated polio film The Final
Inch), he called Francis Ford Coppola, whose grandparents came from the
region. Coppola ended up sending a video message.
I'm here to find out more about another of his big ideas, this one in
his professional life. Faggella, who was trained through a Rotary
scholarship, is a research associate in seismic engineering at Sapienza
University of Rome. He looks at how to construct buildings – or retrofit
existing ones – so that they don’t tumble down if an earthquake
strikes. It’s a passion that makes sense given the earthquake risk in
Italy, including in his hometown of Potenza, the city we are visiting at
the instep of Italy’s boot. "
