Agnelli Foundation 3.0

The new Agnelli Foundation headquarters, organized around a 3,000-square-meter co-working space have been renovated by Carlo Ratti Associati, within the Agnelli Foundation historical complex in Turin. The 20th century office building has been transformed into a digitally-responsive architecture, offering a glimpse of tomorrow’s way of coworking with an advanced Office 3.0.

  Carlo Ratti Associati has intervened by opening the building to the city and to the garden. A protruding glass body has been added which hosts a café and acts as an inviting element to passerby in the San Salvario neighborhood. The villa’s historical staircase is infused with new life, as it is illuminated by a newlyopened skylight and by Olafur Eliasson’s La congiuntura del tempo (Tempo junction) kaleidoscopic installation. All around the building, an orchard and green areas designed by Louis Benech – the French landscape architect who reshaped the Tuileries gardens in Paris and the Water Theatre Grove at the Palace of Versailles – will offer its occupants the chance to work outdoors, in close contact with nature.

By leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, the new Agnelli Foundation headquarters have become a digitally-augmented building that can adapt in real time to its users’ needs. Carlo Ratti Associati has collaborated with technology company Siemens Italy to equip the century-old edifice with hundreds of sensors that monitor different sets of data, including the location of the building’s occupants, temperature, CO2 concentration, and the availability of meeting rooms.

By interacting with the Building Management System (BMS), each person can customize his or her workspace experience in a streamlined fashion. A smartphone app makes it possible for occupants to customize their working experience. Among its multiple features, the app might put an end to the so-called “thermostat wars” on the workplace. Once a building occupant sets his preferred temperature and illumination settings, the BMS responds accordingly, adjusting the levels of lighting, heating, and air conditioning. As the fan coil units situated in the false ceilings are activated by human presence, the system can potentially follow occupants as they move around the building, creating a personalized “environmental bubble”. When an occupant leaves, the room returns naturally to ‘standby mode” and saves energy.

Another feature of the app is that it allows users to book spaces and facilities – from meeting rooms to shared desks. Because users can make their location within the building known, the project will not only ensure more functional interactions between co-workers, but will also serve as a test bed for researches on the relationship between office design and productivity. In the near future, by analyzing statistics on the building’s use, it will be possible to better understand how people behave in particular space and how this in turn can affect creativity. The redesign by Carlo Ratti Associati shows that the IoT paradigm can be successfully applied not only to new constructions, but to the existing built stock as well.

Agnelli Foundation, Turin, Italy
Program: multiuse building renovation
Design: Carlo Ratti Associati
Team: Carlo Ratti, Saverio Panata, Antonio Atripaldi, Francesco Strocchio, Andrea Cassi, Valentina Grasso, Mariachiara Mondini, Andrea Riva, Nicola Scaramuzza
Technical development: Siemens Italia – Building Technologies Division
Landscape: Louis Benech
Café design: Simmetrico
Interior design of the Agnelli Foundation offices: Natalia Bianchi Studio
Structural and executive project: Studio Ferraresi
Mechanical, microclimatic and BEMS design: Paolo Lazzerini (Studio Lazzerini)
Illuminating engineering: Roberto Pomè
Historical consultancy: Michele Bonino
Coworking space: Talent Garden
Area: 3,000 sqm
Completion: 2017