Elementi di comunicazione verticale: dalla prima industrializzazione all’attualità

The history of mechanized vertical communication elements is undoubtedly linked, on one hand, to the heroic process of industrialization and, on the other hand, to the desire to allow people with reduced or impaired motor skills to travel vertically. In their functional, technical and construction specificity, they are well suited to represent how much the long and inexorable process of industrialization has influenced not only their development and diffusion, but on the more general history of the architectural organism and urban spaces, allowing to “ show” how much and how the inseparable intertwining of technology, technique, culture, design at various scales, theoretical and applied research, regulatory apparatus can lead to effective solutions even before the related needs (comfort, safety, accessibility, aesthetics...) have been expressly warned by users and construction professionals. The paper deals with the gradual technical-regulatory evolution of mechanized vertical communication elements through technological progress and the equal cultural revolution on the rights of people with different abilities found in Italian and European regulations (from Presidential Decree 1497/63 to EN 81-20 and EN 81-70), and in the most recent judgments of the Corte di Cassazione on the “indispensability of the lift for the accessibility of the building”.