Urban Playground and Sports Complex | Turin, Italy | Unit 21 | 2018

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The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace. It was originated from the Slow Food Movement, which Turin is the home of that. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas. Slow Living is also what came out from the movement, it means focusing on the quality of life. It addresses the desire to lead a more balanced life and to pursue a more holistic sense of well-being.
Sport represents the fundamental premise for maintaining a good level of health and physical and mental well-being. This concept takes on a greater importance in today’s world, where life, culture and work habits, also conditioned by technological progress that has gradually substituted muscular activity, have resulted in a sedentary lifestyle becoming such an extremely widespread phenomenon at all ages that it often causes physiological changes.
The project is a pleasure garden, an urban playground with a sport complex attached. The project aims to reactivate the city, promotes physical exercise as enjoyment, as well as sensitising inhabitants about a correct lifestyle based on a combination of a balanced and healthy diet and regular physical exercise.
The building is not static, it consists moving architectural elements that is constantly adjusting itself, as if the building breathes, to achieve the thermal comfort for the occupants. The elements manipulates the building’s internal microclimate, such as the light, the wind and air, creates a different experiential quailty within.

 

A series of interactive devices were produced for the first project. The idea originated from the arches of Turin. The King Savoy ordered to build 2km of arches for himself just to walk down to the river so he doesn’t get wet even when it rains. I inverted the idea, imagine having rain that follows you, everywhere you go. I then made a rain device that tracks your motion and rains accordingly. This lead to the devleopment of 5 other devices that are also interactive and experiential. Devices that manipulate light, create dancing mist and beautiful reflections of water ripples.

 

 

The site is located in the centre of the city, was once an open-air gymnasium a century ago but now a carpark. The project retrieves the dead space by bringing back the idea of open-air gym and sports, dedicates it back for public leisure.

 

 

Movements & Mechanisms

The idea of moving elements originated from the analogue interactive experiential devices of the first project. It is then taken to the digital level in the building project. The architectural elements for the building are developed and programmed with the algorithmic software Grasshopper. By using the accurate weather data, the building is able to adapt and transform itself for the ideal sporting environment.

 

Manipulating Internal Microclimate
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