Architecture
Turin has a Baroque face and an Art Nouveau face, it has its Royal Residences, its bridges and 18km of arcades lining the city centre, but there are innovative installations too, set on creating a brand new look.
In Torino, transformation is everywhere for all to see. The ambitious urbanistic revolution that was begun a few years ago and was accelerated by the Games has given the people of Torino a more beautiful, livable city with a more fluid traffic and transport system. The starting point was the project that relocated underground the section of the railway that divided the city in two. These twelve kilometers of underground railway have made way for the "Spina Centrale", a wide avenue that runs from north to south and crosses the subway line. Along the “Spina” there are symbols of the city in transformation: urban parks, stations, technological parks, the recently completed project to expand the Politecnico, new areas for art and culture, and – a few steps away from the historic Lingotto factory – the “Olympic District” that was the heart of the 2006 Games.
In fact, the Olympics have endowed the city with extraordinary multifunctional spaces that have already begun their second life. The Palaolimpico, designed by a group of world-famous architects headed by Arata Isozaki, has already welcomed musicians of classical, pop and rock music; the Palavela, remodeled by Gae Aulenti and Arnaldo De Bernardi, has a future of important manifestations in store; the exhibition area Torino Esposizioni will feature major exhibits; the Oval – designed by Alessandro and Pino Zoppini with John Barrow -, after hosting the Chess Olympics and the World Fencing Championships, has become an area dedicated to conventions and trade fairs and was the location of Terra Madre, the big meeting of the world’s food community; the apartment buildings of one of the Media Villages today are a home for university students, while the other Village has become a new, innovative residential neighborhood.
Isozaki and Aulenti aren’t the only famous architects who were called on to redesign the city: stars of international architecture are a fundamental ingredient of Torino’s reorganization: Renzo Piano, Massimiliano Fuksas, Mario Bellini, Mario Botta, Norman Foster and Jean Nouvel. It’s also thanks to them that transformation is underway in every corner of the city: from the aristocratic downtown area to the “belly” of Porta Palazzo, to the suburbs.
This transformation is looking far into the future: the finished projects and the ones now being completed have been joined by new challenges, like the new building that Massimiliano Fuksas has designed for the Piemonte Region; Renzo Piano’s big skyscraper for the Banca Intesa Sanpaolo; the ambitious plan to convert the vast Mirafiori area – the historic Fiat factory; and the completion of the new Parco della Dora, that is giving 400,000 square meters of parkland back to the people of Torino.
A tour of 20th-century and contemporary Turin combines a history lesson with an introduction to some avant-garde infrastructures and works of art.
