The will to rebalance, to re-insert forgotten pieces of the city into the urban fabric, to bring them back to new life. These are the principles that dictated the work of thesis, contextualized in the reality of Turin that surrounds us and that we live every day. Specifically, the research carried out concerns the area bounded along two sides by the railway axes that divided after Porta Nuova, towards Porta Susa and Lingotto, and on the third side by Corso Dante. The promontory between the tracks extends itself over an area of about fifty thousand square meters, isolated and almost obstructed by the urban context that circumscribes it.
The connection axes that surround it, instead of appearing as a linkage opportunity, are characterized by unsurpassed limits, becoming the determining factors for the abandonment and degradation of most of the area, which was once the protagonist of Turin's industrial history. It was then the sixties, the golden years that transformed this land triangle into a major production center, thanks to the acquisition of the Trafilati-Laminati Company by the Officine Stampaggi Industriali, which came from the union with Ghia. The crisis of the Seventies led to the dismantling of the industrial buildings, divided into three huge industrial artifacts that essentially cover the whole surface of the field. Nowadays, the area presents itself as an industrial wreck, within which from 2010, however, the desire to be reused. The design of the coworking pole Toolbox has in fact refined some of the existing industrial artifacts, but does not involve the remaining buildings, interesting not only from the historical point of view, but also from an architectural one. First of all, we worked on the urban scale and on the theme of the connection: the axes that bordered the area became opportunities for the context and for citizens. We imagine links through cyclopedestrian walkways, which engage more points inside the area, easily accessible from the outside.
The immediate proximity of the intervention area is therefore involved in the regeneration project, which consequently does not confine itself to the physical boundaries of the field, but concerns smaller urban actions. These concretize in the creation of new collective green spaces, which act as micro-urban regeneration interventions associated with the proposed extension of the area's reclamation. The collective hubs are then directly connected with diversified activities and functions: this is how the intervention becomes part of the urban appealing network. Shifting the attention directly into the field, permeability is the principle that best describes the treatment adopted for the existing buildings. The massive industrial artifacts do not allow to imagine their total re-use, without the demolition of few parts, important for the effective usability of the spaces. Thus, volumes were subtracted in order to create an open collective space, a new square, or a new pedestrian connection axis. This is opposed to the addition of new volumes that make the area more functional and more appealing to future users. The area is thought to be a new cultural center in Turin, where business and leisure activities are also included. Everything is imagined as an incremental process: development is divisable in stages, giving priority to the execution of the connections through the footbridges, then gradually focusing on the built-in and the various environments.
The Board:
