‘Imma summis mutare’: landscape of light and shadow in the heart of the city – Porta Susa’ Railway Station, Turin

Abstract

The construction of the ‘New Passengers Building of Porta Susa’ in Turin, is the last act of a complex infrastructural, territorial, and urban plan that started in Turin in the second half of the 20th century. The succession of urban plans – technological, scientific implementation, and reorganization – is the scenery over which the will and innovative capacity of the city are projected. The dialogue between urban needs and functional reasons for the infrastructure are the basis and the objective of a many-decades-long project. The construction of an extraordinary ‘technological velarium’ is a simple and efficient idea: inundating the depth of a technological underground with light to make the route surface and the enclosed space an integral part of the public space. In its relational complexity, the station reestablishes and restores the break caused by the railway tracks and reconciles parts of the city divided by insurmountable barriers. Natural light, energy, collective, sustainable, and smart mobility are the keywords of a new urbanity that births and regenerates in the arriving and departing places.