Open House Torino: 10 places to visit

Designed by Nino Rosani and completed in 1957, Palazzo Lancia, with its 17 floors of mirrored glass, was inspired by the Pirelli Tower in Milan. It housed the headquarters of the car manufacturer, straddling the factories that enlivened the Borgo San Paolo district. Since then, many things have changed, including the view that encompasses the entire city from its 70-meter height, which at the time of its construction made it a “skyscraper”. But even without the large Lancia sign on top, the building remains the giant of Borgo San Paolo.

Completed in 2011 by Luciano Pia, Stefania Naretto, Chiara Otella, and Giovanni Vercelli, 25verde emerges from the urban texture like a kind of “habitable forest”, with the charm of a treehouse: walkways pass over water, and vegetable gardens and lush greenery grows on the roof. The plants that envelop the irregularly shaped terraces of the 63 apartments change with the seasons, producing oxygen, absorbing carbon dioxide, and trapping fine dust particles.

Completed in 1963 and designed by Bruno Zevi and Vittorio Gigliotti, the Beinasco Library, now a Cultural Hub, was recently restored by Carlo Ostorero of Dedalo Architettura. Its history is closely linked to that of the Einaudi family. In 1961, following the death of President Luigi Einaudi, the Municipality of Dogliani asked his son, the publisher Giulio Einaudi, for a monument to commemorate his father, who had familial ties to the town. Giulio decided to donate a library to the community, which was inaugurated in 1963. For the project, he involved Zevi from Rome, who designed a strongly contemporary building based on a civic vision of architecture as an opportunity for the country renewal. From that library, Zevi developed a highly functional and economical prefabricated module, with the idea of fostering a network of similar constructions in small and medium-sized Italian towns. Today, however, the former Nino Colombo library in Beinasco remains the only completed example of this type.

Città Giardino district and its surroundings are a semi-unknown area of Turin, appreciated by true connoisseurs of the city, characterized by small houses built immediately after World War II beyond the current Via Guido Reni, towards the peripheral fields of the Gerbido area. La Casetta is a renovation project by Studioata that breathes new life into a two-story independent building with a garden from the 1960s, transforming it into a sustainable urban villa. The project aims to enhance the indoor-outdoor dialogue through large windows overlooking the small courtyard. On the first floor, special installations and custom-made furniture generate a welcoming and refined atmosphere.

Turin is a city with a powerful underground culture that emerges at different levels, even where you least expect it. 515 is a communication and design agency with an exhibition space and a skateboard ramp at its center. The wooden ramp that dominates the space also functions as a bookshelf and can be used as a seating area. The large industrial windows, which once belonged to a pinball factory and later an art gallery, overlook a tree-lined internal courtyard. For the occasion, Gosia Turzeniecka's exhibition will be installed in the space, with an irregular and free arrangement of surrealistic lightness.

In an area that stays on the sidelines of Turin’s latest major transformations, Beeozanam is home to a group of associations, a community incubator that aims to fight cultural poverty and foster the growth of a new sustainable generation. The building that houses it is an old industrial structure, specifically the “machine-ship” designed by futurist Nicolaj Diulgheroff for the Opificio Simbi, a sheet metal printing factory, between 1938 and 1941. The street art on the walls and the rooftop garden are the most evident signs of the new energies inhabiting it.

On the top floor of a building in San Salvario district, this typical Turin apartment overlooks the surrounding rooftops. The choice of colors and their combination is the language through which the personal sensibility of a couple of designers – Unduo and Andrea Zanero – becomes a home. The interiors, completely renovated with informal solutions, pay great attention to light.

The Annibale Trinchieri vermouth factory opened in 1900 among the houses of the old Barriera di Lanzo district. The scents of medicinal herbs and spices spread through the neighborhood until its closure in 1950. Today, it has been transformed into a loft by Alessandra Aires. Behind the simple facade is a garden that echoes the tones of vermouth, an apartment with large windows and vibrant colors, with the ancient wooden beams framing the new rooms.

Giovanni Antonio Porcheddu, a Sardinian from the Sassari area, studied in Pisa and then in Turin. He is the engineer credited with introducing reinforced concrete as a construction technique in Italy. In the early 20th century, the Porcheddu Company undertook major projects in the northern part of the country, including the reconstruction of the Campanile of San Marco in Venice. However, it was in Turin that the ideas of the engineer found a special space. He collaborated on the construction sites of the Stadium, later dismantled, and the Lingotto plant. The tour, in collaboration with vivoin, offers a guided exploration of this pioneering figure and the archaeology of reinforced concrete in Italy, through the main constructions in the Barriera di Milano area, such as the Docks Dora.

Located in the northwest outskirts of Turin, Le Vallette is a neighborhood with North European inspirations and unexpectedly interesting architecture, studied abroad for the model it presents. Volunteers from the Historical Documentation Center will lead visitors on a tour through the streets and common spaces of these houses built in the 1960s to accommodate the many new residents coming to work in the factories: a kind of city within the city, established as part of the Ina-Casa plan.