The city, the park and the river: Turin and the Po

Students will be required to learn the vocabulary of the history of the territory and architecture, to seize the instruments for the representation of the landscape and settlements historical structure. Then, after having understood the land logics, they will be asked to define a design process aimed to develop proposals for the territory transformation.

History of contemporary architecture.

The city, the park and the river: Turin and the Po

The studio aims to provide students with useful tools for the development of the design process, starting with the knowledge of the study area and its historical transformation, through the analysis of the elements that have contributed to define its present form: the landscape design and the relationship between the landscape form, the ways of settlement and the design of the architectures.
There will be joint surveys between the disciplines that make up the studio and contributions from experts involved because of their specific expertise. There also could be collegial lessons together with the parallel workshops on relief and representation.

The project topic is the river park in the contemporary city, a zone of transition from the dense urban fabric to the more rarefied areas of the closer countryside, its recognition, the activities taking place there, the modes of use, the types of visitors, studied also in relation to its historical form and its transformation.

The study will take place in the historically relevant area of the two banks of river Po, with a specific attention to the relations between this green fluvial area and the city. The studio will aim also to answer a specific question posed by the GTT (Gruppo Torinese Trasporti): the re-study of the docking point used by the tourist boats named “Valentino” and “Valentina”.

History section
COMOLI, Vera, Turin as a paradigm for the European cities, in HENRY A. MILLON (ed.), The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe 1600-1750, Thames & Hudson, London 1999, pp. 349-369.
COMOLI, Vera and OLMO, Carlo (eds.), Turin. Architectural guide, Allemandi, Torino 2000.
CARDOZA, Anthony L. and SYMCOX, Geoffrey W., A History of Turin, Einaudi, Torino 2006.

Design section
BERGER, John, Ways of Seeing, BBC and Penguin Books, London 1972.
CARERI, Francesco, Walkscapes (Walking as an aesthetic practic), Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002.
ROCCA, Alessandro, Natural architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2007.
AYMONINO, Aldo and MOSCO Valerio Paolo (eds), Contemporary public space : un-volumetric architecture, Skira, Milan 2006.

The historical approach will be verified step by step, checking the quality of the analysis by continuous surveys on the specific area considered, but will be always discussed together with the design choices. The study is carried on with a series of basic exercises starting from the "calm measure of places" mentioned by Roberto Gabetti: the understanding of places, the architectures analysis, the study of negative and void spaces, "the space between things" described by Juan Navarro Baldeweg, by surveys on site and reading of historical and contemporary maps.

Fundamental part of the analysis is the graphical representation and as part of the study prior to the design work.

The second part of the exercises is dedicated to a critical survey on the design theme, by texts reading and international case studies analysis, to compare with the state of the area interested by the project.

The work will done partly in groups, partly individually, starting with a collective analysis of the entire project area to create a map to be used to go on specific design studies on different areas by each smaller group of students.