In 2015 we have written a guide on contemporary architecture in Turin and Piedmont for DOM Publishers (English and Italian edition).
Turin is known as an industrial city – primarily as the home of Fiat. Anyone who does not know the city at the foot of the Alps will be surprised to find it is a pleasant place to stay amid baroque and art nouveau architecture, the many arcades and spacious streets – even if one does not come here because of the cafés and the good food, but because of the architecture.
The Architectural Guide Turin presents 150 buildings which date back from 1900 to the present day. These can be visited during sixteen longer or shorter tours which start in the Roman, baroque centre. These lead from the large-scale network of streets – when Turin was the first capital of the newly-formed Italy in the nineteenth century – to modern industrial monuments, all the way to regions of northern Piedmont. There may also be found the works of Oscar Niemeyer in Pianezza and San Mauro, the modern architecture commissioned by Olivetti and the wineries which have recently been protected by UNESCO.
Turin’s architectural history is closely linked to the development of the car m
anufacturer Fiat in the twentieth century. In her introduction to the history of the city, Michela Rosso describes the journey from the first Lingotto factory – which was celebrated as a milestone of modernism – to the Mirafiori plants which followed and the associated residential housing. Prominent representatives of Italian modernism, such as Carlo Mollino or Pier Luigi Nervi, left behind several public and private buildings.
However, it is only in the past twenty years that Turin has witnessed the largest construction boom in its history. In search of a new identity, the city became a laboratory for the transformation of industrial heritage, also in part owing to the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. Today Turin has become a centre of business, culture, leisure and sport with associated events and institutions.
Accordingly, more than a third of the projects presented in this architectural guide were built or reconstructed between 1995 and 2015. The book thus acknowledges the fact that the recent architectural history of Turin has been the subject of very little attention. Following on from Venice and Milan, this is the third architectural guide from DOM publishers which presents the more current architecture of a northern Italian city.
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La Repubblica: “L’”Architectural Guide” di Dom publishers, edita a Berlino in lingua inglese – e presto tradotta in italiano – racconta la città attraverso i segni antichi e moderni. Non per nulla il panorama dal Monte dei Cappuccini che apre il volume identifica nello skyline tre chiavi di volta: il grattacielo di Intesa Sanpaolo, la Torre Littoria e la Mole. Oggi, ieri, l’altroieri.” Leonardo Bizzarro e Marina Paglieri
Espazium.ch: “Torino è conosciuta quale città industriale, soprattutto grazie alla FIAT. Chi non conosce la città ai piedi delle Alpi sarà sorpreso di scopr
ire che è un luogo piacevole dove soggiornare, caratterizzato da architetture che vanno dal barocco allo stile liberty, con numerosi portici e strade spaziose”. Valeria Crescenzi
L’Architetto: “Si tratta di una attenta panoramica che va dai monumenti storici cittadini alle ultime trasformazioni, passando dunque dalle opere di Guarino Guarini a quelle di Pierluigi Nervi, da Bernardo Vittone a Carlo Mollino, dai monumenti di Filippo Juvarra ai recentissimi contributi di Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, Arata Isozaki, Cino Zucchi, Benedetto Camerana. Tutte presenze rintracciate nell’attraversare metodicamente i diversi quartieri e aree cittadine, conducendoci dal centro alla periferia più estrema e meno nota, quella conosciuta dagli addetti ai lavori e che, di fatto, cela presenze architettoniche di grande pregio e inestimabile valore sociologico. Per poi spingersi sul territorio, dal Canavese all’alta val Susa e nelle Langhe, includendo così le costruzioni alpine per lo sci ma anche le cantine vinicole e molto altro.” Maria Vittoria Capitanucci
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Cristiana Chiorino, partner of Comunicarch Associates, has contributed to « La sauvegarde des grandes œuvres d’ingénierie du XXème siècle », by Franz Graf and Yvan Delemontey, the first issue of the Cahiers du TSAM, Techniques et Sauvegarde de l’Architecture Moderne dedicated to the conservation of the 20th century’s great works of engineering, aims to explore the future of some of the most remarkable and emblematic concrete structures of the previous century. Through the personalities of the heroic builders, this publication aims to consider what the engineers – the most daring of whom (Freyssinet, Isler, Maillart, Nervi, Vierendeel, etc.) are represented here – bequeathed to the century. While the conservation of 20th century architecture has in recent years been seen as a discipline in its own right, the conservation of 20th century engineering is still in its infancy. Considered too offen purely from the point of view of security or maintenance, these works are now often seen as true masterpieces, cutting edge achievements of the “engineer’s art”, as stunning for their plastic beauty as for their technical performance. This publication provides an opportunity to stimulate, with reference to concrete examples and projects, an awareness of the heritage challenges to be addressed in the field of engineering. ppur.org
