Falchera is a social housing estate in the periphery of Turin designed by Giovanni Astengo and a group of architects in the fifties, in the context of the INA-Casa program. Imagined as an ideal organic neighbourhood, it was representative of an aspiration to a community life in peri-urban areas developed within the Comunità movement lead by Adriano Olivetti. Architecture was one of the media used to communicate an ideal of life. The design process followed by Astengo and the architects of Falchera thus had to adapt to communication strategies. The concept of organic neighbourhood was developed down to the scale of architectural detail through the use of an hexagonal pattern which created many difficulties on the building site as attested by archive documents conserved in Venice and in Turin. The civic centre concentrates the complexity of the whole project in one element, a mushroom-form column used to characterized the main square. In spite of problems with realisation and maintenance, this place still contributes to the identification of the inhabitants of Falchera with their neighbourhood.
Construction and communication of Falchera: an INA-Casa neighbourhood in Turin by Giovanni Astengo
Giorgia Sala
2017
Abstract
Falchera is a social housing estate in the periphery of Turin designed by Giovanni Astengo and a group of architects in the fifties, in the context of the INA-Casa program. Imagined as an ideal organic neighbourhood, it was representative of an aspiration to a community life in peri-urban areas developed within the Comunità movement lead by Adriano Olivetti. Architecture was one of the media used to communicate an ideal of life. The design process followed by Astengo and the architects of Falchera thus had to adapt to communication strategies. The concept of organic neighbourhood was developed down to the scale of architectural detail through the use of an hexagonal pattern which created many difficulties on the building site as attested by archive documents conserved in Venice and in Turin. The civic centre concentrates the complexity of the whole project in one element, a mushroom-form column used to characterized the main square. In spite of problems with realisation and maintenance, this place still contributes to the identification of the inhabitants of Falchera with their neighbourhood.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
