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THE PLAN
The Media Village area, included in the Spina 3 Urban Transformation Plan, is located on the corner of Corso Mortara and Via Orvieto and extends to via Tesso in the north and to a new road in the east (perpendicular to it and Corso Mortara), which serves as a separation from the curtain wall of the ex Savigliano plant.
The area is earmarked by the Urban Renewal Programme as a residential area and for service activities for the general public and business community.
Once the internal furnishings to accommodate journalists during the 2006 Olympic Winter Games are removed, it will be permanently used as a residential area (with several extensions to special categories of users, such as housing for elderly people) with small businesses and commercial activities located on the ground floor.
The height of the four-sided building is practically constant along Corso Mortara and there are more prominent differences in height on Via Tesso and the side roads.
The configuration of the buildings within the urban layout emphasizes its central role and residential services for a part of the town where the transformation is completely changing the traditional landmarks, perspectives and environment.
A new town section of the Dora River Park is being set up.
When the overpass is demolished (at the same time the underground railway line will be built), the area will overlook the river park and will able to take advantage, with the Corso Mortara centre and separation from the river, of a large completely free area to the south.
From this point of view, the concentration and relation of the buildings planned under the Urban Renewal Plan with the surrounding areas, due to the building rights created in the Michelin area, acquire significance and importance.
What is the significance? The rehabilitation of an industrial district with residential housing and services for its inhabitants, applying traditional building standards.
The high buildings, called towers, only to stress their difference with respect to those lower than 6 storeys high, are in reality standard and open types communicating with each other and the urban landscape.
Care was taken to avoid macro-types or mega-structures that, during the 60s and 70s, attempted to modify the town’s skyline, later demonstrating that they had no relation not only to the town and environmental layout, but especially to the community’s demand for comfortable housing and socio-cultural activity.
What is the importance? A town configuration that is an alternative to the closed spaces of the apartment blocks in Torino. Wide prospecting of external roads towards the interior of the quadrilateral are planned and likewise towards the exterior.
Consequently, the area of the Media Village will have a dynamic relationship with the rest of the town.
It will not be an exclusive enclave with divisions and barriers, but a new district of the town and will strive to revive traditional concepts of urban living quality.
The same architectural variety in the assembling of materials and designs hopes to create an identity, different from the closed spaces and standardization of architectural language that may sometimes be necessary to reorder landmarks and orientation, or for characteristic styles as Torino developed architectural themes during its development from the middle of the 17th to the 19th century.
It is in relation to this architectural variety that the unifying image of a support or foundation was born, which continues on Corso Mortara the recurring form of the ex Savigliano area transforming it into micro centres of attraction for services and businesses.
The central opening south of the foundation leads, along the flight of steps in the green area, towards the internal green areas, where the relation between the towers assumes a basic importance in the relation with the surrounding space and traffic and external dynamic relations.
The Media Village includes three tall buildings arranged in a line almost parallel to Corso Mortara (TOWER 1 – TOWER 2 – TOWER 3) with different entry and planning solutions; surrounded by six lower buildings, two parallel to Corso Mortara (UMI A and B), two to Orvieto (UMI C and D) and two to via Tesso (UMI E and F).
Apart from the more or less marked architectural characteristics, the common foundation will contain, above and below ground, the connections and functional infrastructures of the complex.

The foundation extended to the entire area of the quadrilateral and therefore to the internal connections between the open areas of the different buildings, will be provided with a green area equipped with garden furniture and water expanses for common private use.
The continuity of the equipped green area will blend with the pedestrian entries to the different buildings and a ring-shaped internal route for the Fire Department that may enter from via Tesso.
The two lower levels are mostly earmarked for parking lots, with two entries from the new road to the east and to from via Tesso.
The clear area above ground between buildings A, B and C, lower than the other due to the above mentioned differences in the height of the ground, is earmarked for commercial businesses, as is the ground floor of Building D.

TOWER 1 (Via Orvieto)
BUILDINGS B, C, D and F (Corso Mortara, Via Orvieto, Via Tesso)
The space of the tower is divided into three structures with different heights and a vivid geometric design. The lower block, facing via Orvieto, has a height of around half of that of the rear building structures and is angled 45° with respect to them.
This difference is emphasized by the material used with the choice of adopting the same greenstone covering of the foundation. So the tower is visually connected to the entire media village and constitutes the vertical contrasting element with the horizontal commercial structure.
If the stone connects the tower to the ground, the brick raises the construction up towards the sky. A brick façade was adopted for the volumes that reach the maximum height.
However, the masses of the towers are softened by the pleasant disorder determined by the invention of an innovative façade system, composed of a square grid of dark green coloured metal section. The areas determined in this way are partly covered with various kinds of panelling in many different materials. they go from Corten steel to glass, from perforated sheeting to metallic grids.
The same planning philosophy was also extended to several of the surrounding buildings; lower but made with similar brick façades alternated with grid and panel façades. In fact, the internal fronts were designed to be closed, full and massive as far as possible –and so in brick – while the front on the road is permeable and “open” thanks to the presence of a metal structure.
On the other hand, the buildings rise in an area that for over a century was occupied by heavy industry. A fitting tribute to steel appeared to be due, and is provided by the red line that connects the past of the factories to the future of the media.

BUILDING A (Corso Mortara, east side)
It is the same and a satellite of Tower 3, even if, within the Media Village quadrilateral, it has a connecting role to the existing town structure nearby.
Its characteristic architecture, which assumes a design similar to Tower 3 and communicates with Building B, makes the above-mentioned effect possible by giving prominence to the foundation module.
Built 7-storeys high with a flat roof, it alternates the texture of rough brick with a sleek metallic grid in the loggias, with a composition similar to the other unilateral buildings of the complex.
The structures in metal section of the grid will match the panelling in perforated sheeting.
The upper coping is made with a lightweight metal structure that characterised the four faces of the volume.

TOWER 2 (central tower)
The Tower 2 building has a volumetric configuration 21-storey high but is subdivided into lower structures, created by a U-shaped plan.
The three structures have variable heights with differences in number and size of housing units, on the east (18-21 floors), south (20 floors) and west (13-15) floors; created by a structural matrix and unique vertical distribution.
This matrix creates, in the central part of the floors, a maximum number of five residential units per floor, served by a stairwell, two lifts and a goods lift.
Other floors have alternatively either structures that do not rise as high or empty spaces set for different relations with the adjoining housing units, housing units that may always be reciprocally integrated. These empty spaces assume a strategic relevance in attenuating the volumetric impact.
The central position of the quadrilateral of Tower 2 is perceptively exalted by two passageways near Corso Mortara and Via Tesso, where the latter corresponds to the axis of the perpendicular Via Ciamarella; a strategic position that allows the architectural character to be appreciated in relation to the spaces and volumes of the buildings nearby.
Seen from the south, the architecture of Tower 2 is composed of three principal elements:
- The continuous corner window from the ninth to the eighteenth floor
- The corner duplex loggia from the foundation to the eighth floor
- The continuous window – loggia up to the eleventh
In a different colour and material compared to the main structure that determines the layout and height of the flats.
This volume is reduced as it rises with ample removals or empty spaces covered by airy overhangs.
The eye is directed to rotate clockwise taking us to the smaller volume with fifteen floors with which it communicates, by contraction, with Tower 1 along Via Orvieto.
The different colour accentuates its role and adds vigour to the visual communication that results from the axis with Via Ciamarella, from where the plan of the housing units can clearly be seen, served by the central structure of stairs/lifts.
On the east side, the relationship of the fronts with Tower 3 has similarities with that of the lower structure on the west side. This relationship is developed by the set-back loggias that, however, here assume the vigour of volumetric transparency that, created by setting back the last three levels, extends all the way to the ground.
The dark blue, blue, grey and white are the colours of the architecture.
On the ground level the height is doubled with large glass windows towards the south and north.
The walls are covered with dark plaster in the lower part of the volumes; above the 7°-8° floor it is in fibrocement sheeting, with horizontal joints opened by sheets assembled on a metal structure that give it a "ventilated rough façade" appearance.
The see-through areas give a feeling of introspection to levels 8° and 9° where common exterior areas continuing the passageways leading to the four flats enhance security of internal mobility and relations between residents.
The flat roof has an upper crowning made in metal section and horizontal blades to protect the loggias and technical volumes.

BUILDING E (Via Tesso)
The characteristics of Building E show its use for small housing units mostly facing south with a view of the internal garden of the quadrilateral.
Six storeys high (with an extra floor for the stairway to the east) with three groups of stairs in only 48 m, the architecture, with its horizontally framed loggias and windows has a surprising unity that also links and brings together the variety of nearby colour styles and volumes.
A distensive break is created by the long loggias protected by shades that users (most likely elderly people) will embellish with plants.
The distensive appearance will be enhanced by exterior colours and public areas, purposely left neutral, white and light grey, blended with wood and garden furniture.
The increased protection of the exterior loggias is a pretext to extend the long white front wings with oblique cuts that project the building into the void of the descending via Tesso.
The loggias to the south have a shade system with external wooden sliding panels.
The module of the windows alternates with load bearing parting walls in a regular way. The facing in grey stone (flamed and polished Diorite) accentuates the structure, both uniformly and indifferently with respect to the volumes above.
The horizontal joints of the plates are larger than the vertical. The grey of the stone contrasts with the white of the doors and windows.
Flooring and central area systems: Porphyry, green trees iron pots and stone.

TOWER 3
Its volumetric configuration, in different heights, is created by the dynamics of virtual rotation given by its layout.
One structure on the east, side with more floors (20-21), and one on the west side with 16/17 rise from the foundation around the central stairway–lifts.
The switch, expressed by the non-uniform conclusion of the two structures and by the depth of the shade of the large platform roofs contributes with its own original components to attenuate the volumetric impact, already described for the other two Towers.
The architecture here has more traditional references for skills and materials, the light-coloured covering if the foundation with plaster, which supports the succession of stringcourses, communicates with the brick facing of the ex-Savigliano and adopts its style.
In their turn; the stringcourses, achieved by alternating loggias and windows, stimulate the interpretation as for the other low buildings.
The town layout, which the vertical development appears to alter substantially, reverts here back to normal modules.
The see-through effect of the loggias, projected and deep-set, contributes to re-establish a variety of references to the landscape and town relations.
The configuration and location of Tower 3 in the quadrilateral of the Media Village hopes to contribute, with the opposite Building A on Corso Mortara, to a continuity of cultural cross-sections and link with pre-existing buildings.