Quaderni FULL - FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab

#14 – Living the University city

Lucio Beltrami — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:05:00 +0000

Cities that are strengthening their role as centres of higher education are experiencing transformation processes that are challenging their societies, environments and economies. In this context, the complex interplay between urban strategies and the university agenda, housing supply and demand, and the struggle to find affordable housing remain an area little explored by research and public policy, despite the fact that it profoundly influences the lives of students and, in general, the social sustainability of the city.

The research project LINUS – Living the university city: student housing as a driver of changes, addresses these issues by focusing on the dynamics of student housing as a driver of urban change, where university and city attraction policies and the related growth of the student population put pressure on local housing systems.

This volume collects the proceedings of the public conference Vivere la città universitaria, L’abitare studentesco come generatore di trasformazioni, held in Padua on 31 May 2024. The conference was organised as part of the Project of Significant National Interest (PRIN PNRR 2022) entitled LINUS – Living the University City, financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU through the Ministry for Universities and Research (MUR) with PNRR funds.

Each chapter opens with speeches by the session coordinators, with analysis and positioning in national and international academic and policy literature and debates. The second part of each chapter is completed by contributions from conference guests. In line with the investigative framework of the project, in fact, the seminar fostered the confrontation between a multidisciplinary group of academics, with experts in the field of student housing and public decision-makers, articulating the discussion around three main axes: university systems, the city – understood as a public and local decision-making system, and the student body as a whole.

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Energy poverty in the private building stock in Turin

Lucio Beltrami — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 08:56:30 +0000

The complex European challenge linked to the energy transition requires a profound change in the conception of current energy systems, which still preserve a strong dependence
on fossil fuels, with both economic and social implications. The new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive EPBD 2018/844/EU aims to improve the quality and energy performance of existing buildings not only through technological upgrading but also by addressing the issue
of energy poverty, i.e., helping people to cope with energy costs and access new technologies.
In this context, the research project “Poor us: the energy poverty of Italian households” considers energy poverty from the perspective of the built environment, exploring the relationships between the behavior of inhabitants and the characteristics of their homes. The aim is to measure energy poverty in a private building case study using an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines perspectives from architecture, energy engineering, and geography in order to suggest integrated and adaptable transformation prospects. The experiment was carried out through a real case study (a multi-story residential building located in Turin), which made it possible to analyze the complex system of relationships between habits, consumption, and the environment through the collection of energy and building data.
The results of the study show that energy poverty is a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a single factor, but rather involves a series of interrelated variables.

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#12 – Turin is not just a city for rich people.

Lucio Beltrami — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 12:52:00 +0000

If the 2008 economic-financial crisis had a profound impact in terms of access to housing (especially for low- and middle-income households), the pandemic crisis has not only aggravated this picture but has also partially changed households’ perception of the desirable characteristics of a home (with a new focus, for example, on the importance of balconies and gardens). Against this backdrop, it appears indispensable – not only in terms of academic research, but also and above all in terms of public policy – to have a clear and precise picture of the current characteristics of housing demand and supply in our country.

The paper aims to contribute to shedding light on the state of the (post-)pandemic housing market, focusing in particular on the supply available to the so-called ‘off-market generation’ and asking to what extent the combination of the economic-financial crisis and the pandemic crisis has increased the barriers to access to housing for this group. In order to do so, the case study of Turin and the municipalities in its metropolitan area is analyzed, with respect to which the availability of private housing for sale and rent is investigated, read in connection with some relevant characteristics of this stock (e.g. location, price, and square footage). The reference year is 2021, ‘suspended between past and future’.

After having presented the analysis of data on the availability of homes for rent and for sale – which are presented mainly in the form of maps – this report concludes with two fictitious but absolutely plausible examples of ‘typical households’ belonging to a lower-middle income bracket, looking for a home in the city of Turin and its hinterland. By investigating the private supply available in relation to the needs of these two families, it is possible to understand, in concrete terms, the problems and prospects of housing accessibility in the (post-)pandemic period in and around Turin.

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#11 – Turin from the outside.

Lucio Beltrami — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 13:39:00 +0000

The report is the result of a survey conducted between June and September 2021, aimed at gathering information on the living conditions and housing choices of non-resident and international students in Turin. The analyses contained in the report are part of a broader study conducted by a research group from the Interuniversity Department of Science, Design and Policies of the Territory (DIST) within the European research project Horizon 2020 SMARTDEST – Cities as mobility hubs. Tackling social exclusion through smart citizen engagement. The decision to study the specific component of students living away from home, thus excluding local students and commuters, is linked to the focus of the project, which aims to investigate the student population as a mobile and temporary population.

The anonymous questionnaire (in the appendix), distributed through the collaboration of universities, was completed by a total of 1,538 people, mainly enrolled at universities or polytechnic institutes. Although the sample represents a minimal percentage of the total number of students from outside the region (around 40,000), the analyses contained in the report represent the first attempt to investigate this issue in Turin. In a context in which the city is affected each year by an increase in the number of young people choosing to study in Turin, understanding their desires, expectations, paths, and any difficulties encountered could provide further tools for mapping out future lines of action in terms of the city’s attractiveness, hospitality, inclusion, services, and housing options.

The analysis of the questionnaire responses is accompanied by a substantial cartographic contribution, consisting of maps showing the location of the homes of the non-resident and international university and polytechnic population for the academic years 2017/18 and 2020/21. The sample consists of 11,763 individuals (6,247 from the University and 5,516 from the Polytechnic) for the 2017/18 academic year and 9,030 individuals (5,276 from the University and 3,754 from the Polytechnic) for the 2020/21 academic year. Both samples are the result of data extraction from two databases containing data on the residence and domicile of all persons enrolled at the city’s two main universities for the last ten academic years (2010/11 – 2020/21).

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#10 – Designing the future of the past

Lucio Beltrami — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 13:53:00 +0000

How to preserve (or not) what we have inherited is a critical contemporary issue that significantly influences the shaping of a sustainable and desirable future. In a world grappling with the challenge of conserving our cultural heritage for the years to come, the boundaries defining what constitutes heritage have grown increasingly nuanced.

This booklet delves into the ongoing international discourse surrounding the preservation (or not) of the built legacy. By examining how even unacknowledged aspects of our inheritance play an integral role in the broader conversation, this publication offers insights into the evolving perspectives shaping the potential futures of our built legacy.

The contributions, spanning critical heritage, architecture of reuse, future literature studies, post-preservation, and counter-preservation, outline the dual nature of the built legacy of the past—both a positive and negative commons influenced by social, cultural, economic, and environmental contexts.

By providing a comprehensive overview of leading international theories, the book aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the adaptation of urban legacy, heritage, and landscape.

The volume collects the outcomes of the International Seminar “Designing the Future of the Past,” held on 17-18th February 2022 in Turin. The event was conducted in collaboration with the Doctoral programs in “Architecture: History and Project” and featured the participation of the PhD program in “Architectural and Landscape Heritage” at Politecnico di Torino. This intensive seminar served as an integral component of the DASP PhD Course titled “Designing the Future of the Past” for the academic year 2022-2023.

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#9 – New generation urban parks

Lucio Beltrami — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 11:58:00 +0000

Valentino park is one of Turin’s best-loved parks and where the city’s collective memory is condensed. This is where Christine of France built her royal residence in the 17th century, enlarging and transforming a river villa overlooking the Po. It is also where the International Exhibitions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were held, as well as the Valentino Grand Prix motor races.
As part of the Next Generation EU funding, the Italian Ministry of Culture has identified the enhancement of Valentino park as one of the 14 cultural attractions located in Italy to be rehabilitated through ad hoc funding and planning.
The master plan aims to enable the City of Turin to identify the most effective spending strategy to maximize the effect of investments related to the expected structural funds to produce positive socio-economic impacts and lasting domino effects. The investigation answers four main questions: 1) How are contemporary urban parks, and why do people visit them? 2) Is Valentino urban park a contemporary park? 3) What is its unexpressed potential? 4) Which strategy can activate its unexpressed potential?

NB – the file available for download from this page is an extract. To obtain a free copy of the complete file (160MB), please write to full@polito.it.

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#8 – Coding Tur(i)n

Lucio Beltrami — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 14:25:00 +0000

The second “Quaderno FULL” linked to the Re-Coding project brings together operational proposals for the representation and narration of the urban regulatory system of the city of Turin.

The development of a digital infrastructure within which to integrate access to the regulatory system, the clear representation of its contents, and the construction of a narrative of the plan’s forecasts that recomposes the projects currently underway are the hypotheses from which this work departs in order to strengthen the role of the regulatory system as an enabling tool for the design of the city of the future. The resulting collection of actions, although not systematic, is constructed in an attempt to touch on key points of the regulatory system, the modification of which can lead to substantial innovations in the uses and forms of the city.

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#7 – Inside, outside, beyond

Lucio Beltrami — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:07:00 +0000

This “quaderno FULL” presents the results of the research project developed by the Future Urban Legacy Lab on the indoor and outdoor spaces of the “C. Alvaro – P. Gobetti” Comprehensive School in Turin. The research, conducted in collaboration with the school’s teaching staff, follows on from a reflection on school infrastructure initiated by FULL over a year ago, of which it represents an experimental application.

The work, which aims to share experiences and information of technical and scientific interest related to the school building sector, is designed as a tool to be used as a starting point for projects within an extended school community and as a stimulus for educational innovation implemented by teaching staff, even in changing and uncertain planning conditions.

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#6 – Re-school

Lucio Beltrami — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 14:18:00 +0000

The Re-school project was born from the collaboration between Fondazione Agnelli and the Future Urban Legacy Lab of the Politecnico di Torino, with a clear objective: to provide tools for the regeneration of Italy’s school building stock by addressing issues of safety, environment, and educational innovation. The approximately 40,000 buildings that make up the Italian school infrastructure represent a layered heritage, widely distributed across the national territory, which requires rethinking in light of the social, demographic, and pedagogical changes of recent decades.

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#5 – Citadel of Alessandria

Lucio Beltrami — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 18:09:00 +0000

The Citadel of Alessandria is a fortified building complex, whose layout dates back to the second half of the 18th century, located close to the Tanaro River and overlooking the city of Alessandria. The only fortress on the plain built by the Savoy family, it is also the only one of its kind à la Vauban to have been preserved intact in its complete layout and perceptible in its unity, geometry, and material.
Due to its sheer size—115,000 m² of buildings, corresponding to 600,000 m² of fortifications—the Citadel requires an innovative approach that combines conservation needs, possible reuses, and economic and managerial sustainability. It is not conceivable here to retrace recent experiences—albeit successful ones—such as the restoration of the Venaria Reale and its conversion into a museum. In this respect, the Citadel represents a recurring condition in the protection of large-scale, ‘low-density’ heritage sites. Military, but also industrial, complexes in locations and contexts where it is unthinkable to ‘heritageize’ them with the sole aim of preserving them as historical evidence, but where it is also not legitimate to use the buildings indiscriminately as ‘containers’ for a wide variety of uses or, worse still, to select certain elements to be handed down to the future, eliminating others. A new approach is needed here, which we call adaptive reuse.
We propose this based on our reading of the last quarter century of events at the Citadel, even before its final decommissioning. Rather than large top-down projects—almost all of which ran aground on the rock of the disproportion between available funds and necessary costs—it was a myriad of small and large bottom-up initiatives, and the Administration’s decision to allow and support them, that contributed to making the Citadel continuously used and therefore also known, loved, and protected. These initiatives have made the Citadel—thanks also to the new bridge over the Tanaro River, which has brought it closer to the city—a lively and popular public place.
This experience is the seed of our incremental, phased approach to the project and the lightweight management model we propose.
The definition of the phases and their sequence is based on the recognition of the specific characteristics of the various buildings and open spaces, so that the phases of intervention progressively restore spaces and complexes that are consistent with their use, through a minimal set of interventions ranging from simple preservation to the inclusion of the minimum devices necessary for safe use and, where necessary, comfort. The first tranche of funding thus becomes the trigger—with immediate repercussions—for an extensive and open program of adaptive reuse which, governed by a sustainable management model—a mixed-ownership exhibition center—will be able to attract public and private operators.
In light of the funding currently available (€34 million in total), the reuse strategy developed involves a program of specific and light interventions aimed at both halting the deterioration of the works—buildings and structures—and restoring their functionality.
In light of the funding currently available (€34 million in total), the reuse strategy developed envisages a program of targeted and light interventions aimed both at halting the deterioration of the works—buildings and fortifications—and at activating a peaceful reconquest of the Citadel, strengthening what is already in place through the construction of a support platform capable of attracting international flows.
The start of the Citadel construction site will also mark the start of a major knowledge project which, based on what initial historical, archaeological, archival, technical, and design investigations have already revealed, will make the Citadel of Alessandria one of the central locations in the international debate on heritage, conservation, and the reuse of what our past has left us as a living legacy.

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