Awards
BUILD’s ninth annual Architecture Awards!
Architecturel Firm of the Year 2023 – Northern Italy Most Anticipated Commercial Architectural Design Project 2023: Idrocentro Offices, Showrooms & Park
The extension of Idrocentro S.p.A. showroom readdresses the South-East entrance to Settimo Torinese City. laa creates an iconic front door by using architectural solutions and landscaping. Positioned in a gorgeous location with a complete panorama to the Torino’s hills with Superga Basilica and Moncanino Tower, the expansion of 6,000 sqm will create a showroom totalling 12,000 sqm for all the Idrocentro’s products. A park will extend the outdoor showroom, combining a beautiful landscape with the exhibition of products, such as canopies, fountains, pools, materials for exteriors, etc. By working with the municipality, the public path for bicycle and pedestrian coming from the city center will be continued to the park, and people would be able to cross it reaching other facilities in the area. The park has been designed choosing local species with trees and shrubs enhancing different areas by colors of leaves and flowers. The park will have red, pink, blue, white and yellow areas: five chromatic zones throughout the year. The park will be highly visible by the main streets entering Settimo Torinese. It will offer different paths. Specifically, a tectonic system of ramps and walls offers a pedestrian path with large views on the hill system behind the park, while an annular path crosses all the five chromatic zones under the trees. Along the tectonic defined by walls, products for exteriors are exhibited while being available to be used by people enjoying the park. The park ends with a pedestrian bridge on Rio Freidano connecting, for the first time, the area to other commercial facilities. The extension and re-styling of Idrocentro defines an iconic image with facades composed of micro-perforated aluminum panels. The design is custom made and it is visible at different scales, offering several layers of perception. The new facades act as solar shading system and they hide a big terrace on the third showroom level. The facades have various heights and red/orange colors interrupted by large windows back-colored in yellow, blue and red. The facade system defines an interesting and harmonious front. In the interior, levels with double heights and balconies allow views to different floors and easy orientation. All the service areas are positioned in the back, allowing large and open exhibition floors.
year: 2020 – on going
location: Settimo Torinese, Torino
function: showroom
scale: 6,000 sqm and park
client: Idrocentro S.p.A.
construction cost: 10,000,000.00 Euro
design team: Lorena Alessio
Julian Chavez Rodriguez, Samuel Fiolis, Alessia Sciotto
graphics 3D: Giada Daga
Design phases: preliminary design / development design
/ construction drawings / construction supervision
