It is against this backdrop that the research report Valentino Masterplan was presented to the City, offering a strategic analysis of the role of the river park and, more generally, of the relationship between the network of green spaces and the urban river infrastructure. The research outlined a vision for the renewal of Turin’s city centres, suggesting – in line with the transformations of the 1990s linked to the Spina Centrale – a new phase of regeneration based on the enhancement of the River Po, its parks and the cultural heritage associated with it.

The study formed part of the policies promoted by the Department for Urban Care, Public Green Spaces, Parks and Rivers, building on initiatives relating to the regeneration of the riverbanks and the restoration of navigability on the River Po. This gave rise to the opportunity to extend the study to the entire Turin river system, with the aim of constructing an integrated and complementary narrative of urban centres, capable of bringing together urban and extra-urban green spaces and enhancing the ‘comb-like’ structure of the watercourses and adjacent areas.

The project was formalised in a memorandum of understanding between the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Compagnia di San Paolo, which supported its implementation. This gave rise to a two-year work programme, based on close collaboration between the municipal administration and the research group, under the supervision of the Foundation. This report sets out its outcomes, content and prospects.

NB – LOW-RESOLUTION DOWNLOAD – PLEASE CONTACT US TO RECEIVE THE HIGH-RESOLUTION FILE

The post Turin and its rivers appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

Seminar
Drawing on the research accounts of three DIST PhD students, the seminar will explore water-sensitive design at
various scales. From the Water Sensitive City to the individual resident’s psychological perception of risk,
via infrastructure failures at neighbourhood level. Drawing on experiences from Europe and Latin
America, the seminar will discuss the spread of water-sensitive practices, resilience in river areas and the
design of spaces for rainwater in areas prone to flooding.

Book launch
The book Drought: Thresholds and Escape Routes in the Fight Against Climate Change in China by Andrea E. Pia explores the
growing water supply crisis through an ethnographic study of a rural
minority community in China threatened by climate change.

The post Designing with Water appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

The post From riverbank to river resource: young international architects reinvent the Bormida appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

Beini Ma’s research explores the environmental, physiological and behavioural mechanisms at play in complex urban waterfronts. The case studies are Shichahai in Beijing and Parco del Valentino in Turin.

The post Access to water bodies in urban areas appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

Developed between September 2025 and February 2026 by more than 50 international students of the Master of Science in Architecture for Sustainability (MASt), the design studio approached the Bormida as an environmental and social infrastructure capable of connecting landscapes, communities and productive practices. The river was observed not only in its physical and biological dimensions, but also as an archive of memories and as a possible structural framework for new forms of inhabiting, production and (not only human) use of the territory.

Through maps, drawings, models and installations, the exhibition presents the outcomes of research and design proposals that explore the relationships between water and communities, landscape and territorial infrastructures, highlighting often latent potentials and offering a reading of the river as a shared space of design.

The inaugural event will be held on Saturday, 21 February 2026, at 11:00 a.m. at the Silk Museum of the former Monesiglio Spinning Mill and represents the final stage of a research and project that lasted almost five months, involving over 50 students from 21 countries.

The post Interfaces in Valle Bormida vol.1 appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

The project was developed in collaboration with the City Council’s Department for Urban Care, Public Green Areas and Riverbanks of the City of Turin and the collaboration between Palazzo Madama and key national partners, who have always been committed to environmental conservation and protection, primarily the Po River Basin Authority (ABDPO) and the Interregional Agency for the Po River (A.I.Po) together with the Po Biosphere Reserves, now united in the UNESCO MaB Po Grande Reserve. Alongside them are Turin-based interpreters, from the Polytechnic University of Turin to the University of Turin and the European Research Institute, who carry out daily research and study of the Po and water in general from different disciplinary perspectives, with the media partnership of Rai Radio3.

Addressing the essential issues of climate change in an exhibition that weaves together a visual narrative developed entirely through the interaction between large-scale painting and photography, illustration, and infographics capable of narrating the Italian landscape in all its complexity and articulation, from the Alps to the sea, the exhibition project focuses on the theme of water and in particular on our Great River, which for millennia has determined the landscape and the life of the population, is a means of communication but also an essential support for agricultural and industrial activities, and explores the consequences and analyzes the potential solutions implemented in the area by the various research and protection agencies of the Po.

652 kilometers long, 141 tributaries, almost 87,000 square kilometers of river basin, 19,850,000 inhabitants, 37% of Italian agricultural production, 55% of the national livestock industry: the Po and the Po Valley, where 40% of the national GDP is produced, constitute one of the areas with the highest concentration of population, industry, and commercial activity in Europe.

This incredible development has been made possible thanks to the historic stability and abundance of Italy’s largest river, which is fed by countless sources and diverse natural processes—mountain springs, snowmelt, glaciers, large lakes, and plains springs—but which have undergone significant change in recent decades, leading to a crisis that is occurring everywhere on a global scale.

Precisely because of its unique characteristics and its wealth of history, historical stratification, and landscapes, the Po—Roman and pagan, Byzantine and Lombard, feudal and ruled by lords, countryside and cities, romantic, agricultural, industrial, touristic, and cinematic—is capable of symbolically and clearly conveying the climate crisis and its effects: the face of the planet is changing more rapidly than it has done in the last millennia, and the role that humans have played in this process has now been proven.

The Change! exhibition aims to describe these changes, offering opportunities to reflect on the crisis and possible scenarios for adapting to it, but also to urge action and awareness: it is time to act.

Change!, curated by Tiziana Caserta, Anna La Ferla, and Giovanni C.F. Villa, is accompanied by a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, with contributions from scholars at the University of Turin, the University of Bergamo, the Polytechnic University of Turin, the Polytechnic University of Milan, ENEA, Slow Food, Adaptation.it, and Mondoserie.it, among others.

Change! Ieri, oggi, domani. Il Po. (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2024), ISBN 978-88-3665-882-4: 170-179, catalog of the exhibition Change! held at Palazzo Madama, Turin.

The post Strategic river planning. Possible approaches and transformative opportunities for the Turin context appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

The first phase of work, developed by FULL, consists of the activities of territorial diagnosis and analysis, preparatory to the elaboration of a design vision and aimed at highlighting criticalities, distinctive elements and design opportunities offered by the context.

The Parco dell’Arrivore is a site that eludes univocal judgement and needs to be read at different scales, in its dual role as a green lung in the northern Turin suburbs but also as a node in a wider network of river parks. The overlapping of agricultural, then industrial and mining activities, up to more recent occasional uses, often improper or illicit, has left a palimpsest of signs and legacies that contribute to characterise its complexity. Despite its criticalities, the Arrivore shows great ecological and landscape potential, due to its strategic position and the variety of atmospheres it offers. The main project directions identified include enhancing the park’s identity, improving accessibility, and environmental redevelopment through the experimental application of Nature-Based Solutions, with the aim of promoting sustainable regeneration and the gradual transformation of the site.

The post Lab Park. A new scenario for the Arrivore Park. appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

Starting from the development of an analytical framework for Turin’s river system, the project Turin and its rivers aims to identify transformation scenarios for the city’s river contexts. These scenarios are intended as a tool capable of revealing planning opportunities, translating them into an overview capable of guiding coherent and coordinated development actions.

The research has three macro-goals:

(1) To bring attention back to the city’s natural heritage, also understood as a powerful device to respond to the effects of climate change;

(2) To structure and promote a new narrative for the city, through the systemic description and valorisation of the components that characterise each river;

(3) To provide an interpretative framework useful for the renewal of planning and development practices in the City of Turin.

The research deals with a complex topic, addressing the relationship between built areas and river context, the ecosystem dimension and the definition of transformative scenarios.

The research assumes that Turin’s four rivers, understood as ecological corridors connecting the city to the metropolitan area, can play a crucial role in combating climate change and improving the quality of urban life. The study investigates the potential of the ‘Blue Comb’ with the aim of defining a strategy to strengthen its ecological, social and economic role. Through three interpretative lenses — ecological city, inherited city and city of leisure — the research identifies a sequence of actions to reactivate the untapped potential of the river corridors and renew the relationship between the urban core and the metropolitan area.

The proposed framework of interventions enhances and renews existing areas that have so far played a marginal role in urban policies, assigning each one a function consistent with its characteristics and capable of generating positive effects on the entire city. The research ultimately translates into nine strategic projections, which redefine the narrative of Turin’s four rivers and identify new urban centres, reaffirming the link between natural resources, the built landscape and the development of the city in its relationship with the surrounding area.

Throughout Turin’s urban history, rivers have played multiple and changing roles: a strategic resource for productive and industrial development, a structuring element of the urban form, but also an urban margin progressively marginalised by infrastructure, urbanisation processes and economic transformations. The research therefore proposes to reinterpret these river basins as an integrated system — defined as the ‘Blue Comb’ — which could become one of the main interpretative and design keys for contemporary Turin. The aim is to identify strategies and actions capable of renewing their ecological, social and economic role, enhancing their potential as environmental corridors and spaces for interaction between the city and the surrounding area.

The analysis is developed through the three interpretative perspectives mentioned above — ecological city, inherited city and leisure city — which allow the river system to be observed from different and complementary points of view. The lens of the ecological city highlights the role of rivers as natural infrastructures capable of strengthening urban environmental resilience, improving biodiversity and contributing to climate adaptation processes. The perspective of the inherited city, on the other hand, analyses the relationship between rivers, built heritage and historical processes of urban transformation, highlighting how the river landscape is the result of a stratification of urban practices, infrastructures and morphologies. Finally, the lens of the city of leisure explores the potential of rivers as spaces for public enjoyment, leisure and socialising, highlighting the role that these places can play in the construction of new forms of urban habitability.

Starting from these three perspectives, the research identifies a series of strategic areas along watercourses and proposes a sequence of actions aimed at reactivating the currently untapped potential of the river system. The overall programme of interventions focuses in particular on existing urban contexts which, despite possessing significant environmental, landscape or social characteristics, have so far played a marginal role in urban policies and public investment. The proposed meta-project suggests that each of these areas could take on a specific function consistent with its territorial character and, at the same time, generate positive effects on the entire urban system.

The research ultimately leads to the definition of nine strategic projections, understood as possible trajectories for the transformation of Turin’s river system. These projections derive from a comprehensive rethinking of the urban narrative linked to waterways and the discovery of new potential focal points along their course. The meta-project thus focuses on some of the structural characteristics of the city crossed by rivers, recognising the value of the relationship between natural and ecological resources and the built landscape, which has been established over time through historical processes and urban transformations. From this perspective, the research proposes to reaffirm the historical link between Turin and the surrounding area, reinterpreting in a contemporary light the idea — already present in the Baroque vision of the city — of an urban system in which the form of the city and the natural landscape are deeply interconnected.

The post Turin and its rivers appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

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.

The post #9 – New generation urban parks appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

This is the place where Christine of France chose to build 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. Today, the park, which is the centre of gravity of the Po river system, is an important place for the people of Turin, both because it is enjoyed by many on a daily basis and because it contains tangible evidence of its history that is still visible to this day. Some examples include the Castello del Valentino and the Borgo Medievale, but also architectural structures with a more recent history, such as Torino Esposizioni.

As part of the Next Generation EU funding, the Italian Ministry of Culture has identified the enhancement of Parco del Valentino as one of the 14 cultural attractions located in Italy to be rehabilitated through ad hoc funding and planning. Of the €1,460 billion programmed for the 14 strategic sites, the funding set aside for enhancing Parco del Valentino is €103 million.

The aim of the master plan is to enable the City of Turin to identify the most effective spending strategy aimed at maximising the effect of investments related to the expected structural funds in order to produce positive socio-economic impacts and lasting domino effects.

The post Next Generation Urban River Park appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.