La riforma di E. Basile del complesso all’Arenella della Tonnara Florio: le origini dell’imprenditoria climatico-sanitaria a Palermo sul Crepuscolo della Belle Époque

Basile's project for the transformation of the Tonnara Florio dell’Arenella into an overall use structure includes five planimetric versions (marked in sequence with Roman numerals). Of this singular assignment, which Basile must have faced not without some reservations given the inevitable transfiguration of the now historicized building of the "Quattro Pizzi" (small but incisive stereometry that still at the time played the role of coastal reference in the of the Gulf of Palermo, and moreover conceived by Giachery, his father's teacher), there are no known implementation methods, actual wishes of the client and cost estimates. Among the project drawings found to date (but it is not certain that there are no others), in addition to the five floor plans and the single elevation drawing, relating to the elevation of the front towards the gulf which could belong to both the fourth and the fifth version, there are neither sketches nor preparatory studies nor sections and architectural or construction details. Yet it is clear that, despite a clear general order from the start, many second thoughts had to be made during the design process; among other things, it is likely that the different solutions, represented with the same degree of graphic detail, were drawn up by Basile to provide, obviously upon request, the client with some margins of choice, however on the same type of architectural organism that it acts as a common denominator for the different versions (a customary practice at the time for major clients, usually public, whose propensities Basile used to drive in a subliminal way with studied differences with respect to the version he wanted to adopt). The new complex would have had four new buildings around the original courtyard, planted for this purpose with a minimal garden which in the first plan presents a design, replicated with corrective variations in the other versions, with informal flower beds cut out by a double system of avenues ( a primary carriage open to vehicles with an ellipsoid course to connect the entrance hall with the access portico to the hall, and a secondary one with a network of paths), and a forepart wing (for bedrooms, toilet compartments and living rooms ) prominent on the cliff which, once built on the terrace of the pre-existing, should have encapsulated the windmill built by Giachery, whose memory would have been recalled in the roof terrace by a crenellated tower, with an octagonal shape, and on the elevation from a false forepart (set on the string course).The four new buildings on the courtyard, apart from the hallways and vestibules or the different classes of representative rooms and the stairwells and stairways, would have been divided by theories of environments (mainly bedrooms but presumably also local of care or stay) cadenced on the spans of as many galleries (three of which facing the courtyard and the one to the north-west towards the coast) and would have taken the place of the old structures, incorporating the historicist factory of Giachery with a tower quadrangular shape, widely windowed with giant round arch arches (with rusticated radial archivolts and excess key ashlars) and defined by turricular cantonals with a polygonal base soaring above the attic wall and equipped with battlements and lightning rods in wrought iron. Without vertical architectural scores, the various fronts would have presented objective wall facings, characterized only by the isodomal settlements of ashlar blocks (pillow, in the high basement band, and plain ashlar, between the two string courses and the