Musmeci, Sergio

Sergio Musmeci was born in Rome where he studied civil engineering and graduated in 1948. The same year in which he embarked on a series of seminal experiences within the two most prestigious Italian engineering studios, first of all collaborating with Morandi and then working alongside Nervi. His was an authentic passion for structural solutions within construction and he expressed this by means of producing a series of extraordinary projects, often carried out in collaboration with other architects, in which he proposed a constant renewal of the relationship between structural science and invention. His creations, in which he often worked together with his wife Zenaide Zanini, include: the Regional Government Headquarters in Trento (with Adalberto Libera, 1956/62); the Basento Bridge in Potenza (1967/69); the Alitalia hangar in Fiumicino (1970/71), and the structure of the Italian Pavilion at the Expo exhibition in Osaka (with Tommaso and Gilberto Valle, 1970). In that same year, he attracted wide interest when he won the first prize ex-aequo in the international competition for the bridge over the Messina strait. This was both a complex and audacious project, as it included both a plan for the territorial restructuring of the area (designed by Ludovico Quaroni and his team) and it also proposed a 3 km single-span suspension bridge. The Sergio Musmeci and Zenaide Zanini archival documentation has been donated to the MAXXI Architettura collection in 2003.

Essential Bibliography
S. Musmeci, La statica e le strutture, Roma, s.l., 1971
Sergio Musmeci o delle tensioni incognite, in “Parametro”, 80, 1979
Sergio Musmeci, C.E.S.I.C.A., Pordenone, 1979
C. La Torre, Sergio Musmeci. Ponti, in “Casabella”, 469, 1981
B. Zevi, Genio delle tensioni incognite, in Cronache di architettura, Bari, Laterza, 1981
R. Pedio, Progetti e realizzazioni di Sergio Musmeci, in “L’architettura, cronache e storia”, 387, 1988
M. Nicoletti, Sergio Musmeci. Organicità di forme e forze nello spazio, Torino 1999
Il ponte e la città. Sergio Musmeci a Potenza, a cura di M. Guccione, Gagemi editore, Roma 2004

Sergio Musmeci, Concorso internazionale di idee per il Ponte sullo stretto di Messina, 1969 – Provini fotografici di A. Fiorelli (part.)