Talk:Pirellone
I thought I heard this building was 30 stories high. Not really a skyscraper in the modern sense of the word. I think the news used the term to evoke 9/11 flashbacks to increase ratings. --maveric149
No, Google shows that 'Grattacielo Pirelli' was its usual name. Matthew Woodcraft
- It is its official name, too.
- Since in Italy buildings are very seldom higher than, let's say, 50/80 meters, for us it is a Grattacielo, a term that we probably imported from english "skyscraper" as a literal translation. Of course it is a matter of relative proportions, as we are relevantly less used to high buildings and an average urban block is rarely higher than 8/10 floors.
- For the town of Milan, this building was even more shocking, being higher than the Duomo (the main Cathedral). In order to... limit the "architectural offence", Pirelli had to put on the top of its building a copy of the "Madunina", the famous statue of Virgin Mary that is on the top of Duomo; Madunina was then again above the whole town.
- About news: they just literally translated the official name, but I can tell you that here we all immediately thought of 9/11, me too of course, given the particular kind of accident and the alert status that we are still living in. So it was an istinctive idea and, I would say, a natural suspect. Also, the fact that the building was hit in its central part, as if it had been aimed, and reached by an orthogonal trajectory, could not let us immediately exclude terrorism. The president of our Senate declared terrorism was one of the possibilities in its urgent communication to the Parliament. After a few hours we heard instead it was a small plane with an italian pilot. Now the hypothesis that the pilot suicided (in this case, with an evident terrific inspiration eventually in his mind) is becoming more concrete hour after hour. --Gianfranco
- OK, maybee our definition of the term "skyscraper" needs to be modified to include relative usage. -maveric149
ok ok ... why haven't the pilot been specified (or it was taken away)? i went to photograph on the location some 50 minutes after (just the time to arrive there from home) and no panic any more (lots of people with cameras and curious) ... Zisa
The external image bank has now disappeared, so I've removed it.
If anyone has images that can be used instead, that would be fine, obviously. -- Egil 10:55 May 2, 2003 (UTC)