Week 25 – The Kindness of Strangers, and the Clay Roofing Tile Overhang at Palazetto Cenci
Clay tile roof work in progress at Palazetto Cenci
Living abroad these past five months, one thing I’ve noticed is the remarkable kindness shown by the locals to me, a foreigner. Time and again when I get on the bus carrying my baby daughter, a stranger will kindly offer me his or her seat. Often they will ask me my daughter’s name, how old she is (Come se chiama? Quanti anni ha?) and remark “How cute!” (Che carina!)
Like other romance languages, Italian has both a formal and informal form of “you”, and also formal and informal greetings and other expressions. Although Italian teens tend to use the informal (e.g., tu, ciao) almost right away, the senior citizens use the formal (e.g., lei, buon giorno) unless and until they know the person very well. With seniors, the informal is gradually earned over a much longer period of acquaintance. At the small shops that I frequent – a favorite pasticceria (pastry shop), a barbiere (barber), a forno (bread and pizza bakery), the older shopkeepers now address me in the informal. It’s a nice feeling – it makes me feel more at home here, like I am in some way a part of the local communities beyond the walls of the Academy.
Interior of my favorite pasticceria, on Via Natale del Grande, in the Trastevere section of Rome
I went in to my favorite pasticceria on Christmas eve to buy a birthday cake for my wife’s sister, whose birthday is on Christmas day. By then a regular at this shop, I chatted with the (older) owner/baker and mentioned that the cake was for my sister-in-law’s birthday the next day, on Christmas Day. She stopped pulling the cake out of the case, and said (in Italian) – “Oh, this is for tomorrow?” – and she put it back on the shelf.
Birthday cake
She told me she’d make me a fresh cake early tomorrow morning, and that I should come back tomorrow morning to pick it up. Surprised, I asked if she would be open on Christmas day, and she said for a couple hours in the morning – come in early and she’d have it all ready for me. I then asked if I needed to put-down any money now as a deposit and she said “No, not you”.
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Diaper change inside a clothing shop on a damp Dec. day in Positano
When my family and I visited Positano, a small town on the Amalfi coast, we stopped on a damp, dreary, gray day in late December to change our baby daughter’s diaper at a bench on the sidewalk. We spread out the changing pad on the bench, and started to undress her bottom, when the women (complete strangers) working in the upscale women’s clothing store across the narrow street called out to us in Italian to not change the baby on that cold, damp bench – to come on into their shop and we could change her there. We came over and entered the store, thanking them, and they offered us a table completely covered with neatly folded expensive sweaters, piled 5 or 6 high. They told us we could change our baby’s diaper on top of all those sweaters, patting them to indicate how fluffy and cozy they were, like a little nest (nido). My wife and I glanced at the price tags on the expensive sweaters, looked at each other, and I explained as best I could in Italian that there could be “an accident” while we change her. They said it was okay, but for our own peace of mind, we cleared an area of the table, spread out our pad, and changed her without the expensive sweater padding below. We thanked them profusely, and even took a couple pictures with them.
My wife and daughter with two kind shopkepers in Positano, after a diaper change.
This kindness has extended not only to my encounters in day-to-day life here in Italy, but also to my project. The normal permesso process in Italy for seeing historic structures or monuments with restricted access doesn’t work very well for getting on construction sites or scaffolding – too many safety and liability concerns, and construction sites are too far outside the bureaucratic “box” of more typical permesso requests. Thus, I’ve had to rely largely on the kindness of strangers and new acquaintances within the restoration and construction industry to allow me to visit their sites, as their guest.
Roberta (l) and Matteo (r) lead me on a tour of Casetta Rossa during the restoration.
I feel very fortunate that so many of the architects, conservators, contractors, archaeologists, and soprintendenze that I’ve met have been so kind in allowing me to visit their sites, and in giving of their time to walk me through the site and explain their projects to me. I’m amazed how many of these people have not just given me their work e-mail and phone, but even their cell number and home phones, telling me to just call them if I want to see the project again. At the counter of a local pizzeria, I ran into Roberta, a very kind city architect who’d previously shown me three restoration projects she is managing, and after greeting me warmly, she promptly led me across the pizzeria to introduce me to her husband and daughter.
On the roofing and exterior restoration work I observed on Palazetto Cenci (a 16th c. Renaissance palazzo), the construction foreman, Comon, was extremely helpful to me in explaining their work, and why they do things a certain way.
Clay roofing tile overhang at eave, Palazetto Cenci
As we discussed the eave detail on the clay tile roofing, Comon explained to me that on roof eave edges without gutters, it is his experience that the clay tile should overhang the roof deck by 7 centimeters (about 2 -3/4 inches), which is the perfect dimension. He explained that he has found that when the clay tile overhang the deck by only 3 or 4 cm (about 1-1/2 inches), the water run-off from the roof curls back around the underside of the tile, wets the exposed wood framing, and the wood rots. He further explained that if the clay tile overhang the roof too far, which he has found to be 10 cm (about 4 inches) or more, then the tile will break when someone steps on them. Thus, from his experience restoring and replacing clay tile roofs, he has found 7 cm. to be the perfect dimension for durability, both of the clay tile, and of the exposed wood framing.
Construction foreman Comon on-site at Palazetto Cenci
Building durability is tested over time, and there’s nothing that can quite replace this type of experience of what has proven durable in the real world, what hasn’t, and why – in fact, this is the very essence of my project here. Though neither an architect nor engineer, Comon has much in common with Vitruvius – like Vitruvius did in Book 2 of De Architectura, Comon has noticed what has worked, what has failed, drawn conclusions as to why, and learned from it in order that he might build better and more durably. Like Vitruvius, Comon also has my sincere admiration.
mbronski
First, your daughter’s a beauty, and kudos to the sweater shop ladies – what sweethearts!
Comon has a lot in common with the best contractors I’ve met in the field. They’re usually with the smaller construction companies, the ones who don’t have another company to go to, those with more to lose if they guess wrong, the restoration/rehad contractors. They pay attention to all details, and usually are willing to share with the architect/engineer so they don’t foster mistakes.
What’s telling to me though: this attitude of attention and care does not exist as much with new construction. Perhaps the undertaking of modern buildings is more complex, with so many system interactions, and budgets too small to have enough people to pay attention to all the details. Perhaps contractors feel the liability lies more with designers than themselves, I cannot say. But, I do know that with modern construction, you’re more likely to get an RFI asking for the tile overhang dimension, than a contractor offering you the “perfect dimension”. ;^)