Urban Center

Contemporary materials and bright colours provide guidance along the route that leads to the inside of a new urban centrality planned on the boundaries of the historical inner city on the Bofim site, a derelict felt-tip pen factory, where a private investor started the development of an urban redesign project. Defined an “urban centre” by the residents themselves because recognized as a municipal centre, the project presents a series of works articulated according to an urban design and an architectural composition intended to give life to a true piece of the city and not to a mere commercial area. The new volumes are arranged around the vital fulcrum of an ellipsoidal public piazza, linked to the historic city centre by the principal street, which is intercepted by a red metal roof entrusted with a symbolic value that goes beyond its function. Similar in purpose to the red carpet that invites and defines a privileged and solemn path, with its soft and curvilinear course, it accompanies and protects the main routes of access and distribution. Red is also the colour of the metal beams supporting the transparent roofs of the mobile ramps at the exit from the car park, emerging scenically into the protected space of the square. The principal element of the new complex of buildings is the shopping mall facing the square with a long concave strip window which invites the public to the entrance. The remaining opaque elevations of the shopping mall speak instead a language entrusted to the geometries and interplay of colouring achieved by the application of perforated steel sheets to the concrete panels of the volume, whose undulating pattern echoes the curvilinear course of the square and identifies white, red and blue areas.
The same pattern is superimposed, with an interplay of slippages, repeats or negations of the metal mesh, in its natural metal colour. this is a formal expedient with a relatively low cost which guarantees depth and colour. On the west side of the shopping mall , like a sort of spaceship landed on the square, there rises the volume of the hotel residence, a three-storey building faced with zinc-copper-titanium grey metal shingles, which dominates the urban scene of the square as its protagonist, rising on tall, thin pillars with a splayed and irregular arrangement.

credit

Project: Benedetto Camerana
with AI Studio
Location: Rivarolo Canavese, corso Indipendenza
Realization: Finished
Client: ICD. Impresa Costruzioni Deiro
Procedure: Direct assignment
Consultants: Attilio Bastianini AI Studio (project coordination); Adriano Venturini e Giorgio Piccarreta AI Studio-AI Engineering s.r.l. (structures); Gian Paolo Bottan AI Studio-AI Engineering s.r.l (installations), Pieracarlo Montaldo AI Studio-AI Engineering s.r.l (infrastructures); Mirna Terenziani AI Studio (environmental and acoustic impact)
Functions: Articulated urban complex with square, commercial area, offices, hotel and residence
Chronology: project (2005-2006), construction (2006-2008)
Collaborators: Hermann Kohllöffel, Sofia Castagneri, Andrea Tonin
Dimensional data: 16.000 sqm
Total cost: 17.700.000,00 €
Photo credits: Alberto Piovano, Paola Robbe