CAVALLERIZZA REALE

International Competition

Tipology Competition // Location Turin, Italy // Timetable 2023 // Client Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo // Surface 20.000 mq // State Finalist // Project Team Balance Architettura, Archisbang, 2MIX, Bollinger&Grohmann //

The refurbishing of the Complex of the Cavallerizza Reale returns to Turin an important portion of the Historic Center located right in the beating heart of the city. The density of the present traces bears witness to an urban history which, within the walls of the Compendium, has found an incredibly fertile scenario over the centuries: projects, overlapping, fragments and contradictions are welcomed and told as the true potential of a space of complexities which can once again become the protagonist in the life of a contemporary metropolis. The fundamental elements of our proposal are the reconnection of open spaces, through gates that reveal new unexplored squares and courtyards, unexpected shortcuts that eliminate separations and merge the complex with the rest of the city. The concept of heritage extends to the social sphere and allows city and memory not to crystallize. The city enters the Cavallerizza and the Cavallerizza opens up to the community, an artistic and cultural pole, porous and welcoming 24 hours a day. The operation of creating a new civic attraction within the walls of a historically introspective military complex necessarily requires an important transformation. The project punctually responds to the requests for a clear program and introduces some new elements with the aim of completing the scope activation framework:
1. a completely permeable zero level, made up of open spaces, covered spaces and traversable public functions, available to students, performers, spectators and citizens at all hours of the day.
2. three reinterpreted entrance thresholds that invite you to enter, penetrate, cross: the open arches of via Rossini, the cut of via Verdi on the visual axis that looks up to Corso Vittorio, the passage of the Royal Gardens - a rediscovered front.
3. a horizontal impulse: the abstract grid which, built on the ancient matrix of the ramparts, lights up and decorates, becoming a recognizable iconic attraction.
4. a vertical impulse: a courageous viewpoint that embodies an ancient aspiration and stands on the Rotonda Castellamontiana to look the Mole face to face, with admiration and without competition, though remembering that cities and eras need their symbols.
5. an innovative, sustainable headquarter for the authoritative Home of an authoritative Foundation, which has been so much a leading actor, over the centuries, to the cultural development of the City.
6. a reconversion that does not rebuild but uses the void to welcome citizens and nature in the new urban platform dedicated to culture.
7. a careful and delicate restoration, which preserves and differentiates, reinterprets but does not forget, and restores the patina of time authentically.