Ingegneri e governance: note intorno a Gian Giacomo Plantery decurione

Technician dealt with the City, the urban planning, the architecture and the administraion of Torino’s Municipality, Gian Giacomo Plantery (1680-1756) is elected in the Council, the so-called Consiglio decurionale of Torino in 1712. Engineer, he worked in the same period during which the dukedom of Savoy became a kingdom because of the treaty of Utrecht. He took care of construction industry, mobility, hydraulic, not only in the city center, the so-called Città vecchia and in the third expansion towards Rivoli and the France, in the area in which it was opened the bigger building sites of the city, but he worked considering the whole area inside the municipal administrative limits. Plantery has worked in the Torino’s Consiglio decurionale for forty-four years, since 1712 to his death, taking on a significant role to discuss the relationship between the engineer, the profession of the engineer, and the governance, according to the contemporary meaning. Plantery is the first technicians identified with his profession in the list of councilors written at the beginning, or at the end of each Ordinati’s volume. Reading the Ordinati and considering especially the period in which Plantery analyzed Filippo Juvarra’s projects for the Città vecchia, it’s possible to outline the first technical governance of the Municipality, probably the first in the sabaudian kingdom.