2011 DANTE HOUSING

The project for the transformation of the Ex-Insvor in Dante Street in Turin,  has like target the placement of 30,000 square meters of residence on a lot of 17,000 sqm, within a construction context of beginning ‘900 and high no more than three  floors.

This amount of data suggests what was the biggest challenge during the design phase: that is the comparison, on the one hand, with the context of the Art Nouveau style and the other with the structure of the ex – Insvor factory that,  has been maintained.

These are the themes that have taken me on the drafting of the project of the building N.3 of the complex. It was an hard challenge if one considers that above the old factory was positioned a building long 120 meters which, in addition to dialogue with the preexisting building must also express a construction range compatible with the context.

With this,  the client was adamant, maximize the surfaces was the most important goal, even if one went to the detriment of urban quality and of the environment and,  so the design choices have had as fundamental purpose the diminishing the great mass of the building. To do this, the big  parallelepiped was  “wrapped”  as in a second skin (that are  the balconies), in order to make more homogeneous the volume and perceive it as an “object” put on the old industrial buildings and not as a forced extension of these ones.

This second skin must be easy to realize and especially must be very low-cost; for this reason it was decided to entrust it to the designer of the balconies that run along the entire perimeter of the building. Balconies that, expanding and shrinking according to the dialogue decided case by case with the preexisting building and the planimetric needs of the houses, generate an uninterrupted surface able to give uniformity to the entire volume.