This competition made a lot of noise among the Italian architectural community - firstly, in its scope: it was about one million square meters of commercial and residential space in the immediate vicinity of the historic center. Secondly, by its very appearance: in Italy, for the first time, an urban planning project that will determine the direction of the city's development in the next decade was submitted to an open international competition. And, thirdly, by its own conditions that set a minimum of restrictions for the participants: all urban planning parameters of the future general layout of the district will be determined based on the analysis of the projects of the finalists of the competition and will be further developed in detail with their participation.
A bit of background: a railway line, built in the 19th century, cut Turin from north to south for a century - until in the mid-1990s, in preparation for the 2006 Winter Olympics, the authorities decided to postpone underground of these railway tracks and turning the space above them into a boulevard. The master plan for six kilometers of green space, housing, shops and offices was developed by the Milan office of Gregotti Associati International (in Russia it is known for participating in the competition for the design of a new city hall building in Moscow City). Currently, work on the transformation of this site is being completed, and the city is eyeing new territories for its further development.
The organizers of the Metamorphoses competition invited the architects to take part in the fate of the northern section of this railway line and its now abandoned side branch, which leads to the industrial zone in the north-east of the city. This area was divided into three sections: the main railway line Spina4 (the winner was not selected for this section), the former industrial zone of Scalo Vanquilla (here the 1st place was taken by Marco Petrolucci, Marco Pietrolucci) and the Sempione-Gottardo side branch (the winner is Juan Nunes, Joao Nunez, Honorable Mention - G + Sh Bureau!).
The new area will be connected to the rest of Turin by a metro line, which is planned to be “buried” in an empty trench on a side railway line, transforming it into a linear park. To create their own vision of this narrow strip of land 2.5 km long and 40 m wide was the competitive task for the Sempione-Gottardo site. This green zone is intended to become a "corridor" between the territories of new construction, connecting both the parks at both ends of the former branch, and the northern and central districts of the city, now divided by this trench.
Architects G + Sh! with their project "Sotto Sopra" (Upside Down) revised this task and took the project beyond landscape design. Timur Shabaev and Marco Galasso's proposal is not just a park, but an urban space filled with life, where nature, infrastructure elements and public functions are intertwined in a single "organism", complementing and enriching each other.
Here are excerpts from the explanatory note for the project:
The ideology of the project is based on two strategies:
1. Activate the border
For us, the metro line is a dynamic public space, a condenser of public functions. We see the metro line as an opportunity to "enhance" the qualities of the existing urban environment. We concentrate social functions by "catching" them along the line. We want to make the metro line an integrated part of the city, breathing life into it! All of this should turn the metro line into an "active border" connecting parts of the city that were long separated by a railroad trench.
2. More than infrastructure!
We propose to go beyond the traditional approach to the metro as a "hidden infrastructure" and see the line as an added quality to the project. The metro is no longer an isolated layer in the structure of the city - we integrate it into the urban landscape and use it to enrich the palette of the city experience, opening up new spaces and adding new points of perception.
We see the combination of infrastructure, nature and program as a tool to create a dynamic and vibrant city park.
G + Sh! proposed to abandon the idea of a linear park as a purely landscape object. 2.5 km of paths and greenery seemed unbearably boring to them, and there are hardly many people who will walk such a boulevard from start to finish. Instead, the park becomes now a skateboarding ramp, now a market, now a city square, in the middle of which, paradoxically, a pool with a jumping tower appears, now a shopping center, now a park again. The architects did not position the passage exclusively on the surface of the earth, as required by the task, but they also used the underground space: they intertwined it with the metro line, turning the train ride into an exciting journey through the "section" of the city. Instead of dark tunnel walls in the window, there are young girls trying to improve their figure in the gym, elderly fashionistas buying cufflinks from a high fashion store, jumping "bemixers" or sweet couples in the thicket.
