Environment Park
To restore the original greenfield state to what was a brownfield site and to effect a reversal of the image and functions for the city and of the city. The Parco Scientifico Tecnologico dell’Ambiente, better known as the Environment Park, is a project steeped in symbolic values for Turin, having transformed the site of the former Fiat Ferriere, for years the location of the car-marker’s heavy industrial production, into a park for the “intangible” production of research. The project constitutes the first step in the conversion of an immense derelict site, the so-called Spina 3, envisaged under the 1995 Master Plan, as well as the first technology park in Europe wholly devoted to studying pollution and the environment. The regeneration program entails the rediscovery of the banks of the Dora and environmental reclamation of the area, initially intended wholly to be a public park. The winning idea of the project, the fruit of the collaboration between Benedetto Camerana and Emilio Ambasz, embodied a green architecture which merges with nature using the same land twice: first for the 30,000 m2 of offices and laboratories necessary to the development of the city; secondly for the roofs
transformed into public gardens which compose, together with the remainder of the grounds laid out as parkland, a green surface covering some 7 hectares, for the enjoyment of the residents of the planned new housing complex. A “street balcony” divides the built-up area into two belts: the block of the laboratories on the south side and the blocks assigned to offices and a service centre on the north side, smaller and facing onto the riverside park. The “green valley” which constitutes the natural axis of the park, spreads widely into the built-up area also through vertical gardens, organized by placing potted shrubs in front of the fenestration of the offices towards the river and creepers on the facades of the laboratories, where the project initially planned the innovative use of refined green mesh netting from the urban golf courses in Japan. The natural scenery is matched by the real ecological efficiency of the construction system. The development is built out of eco-compatible materials and using technologies attentive to energy saving, including the “blue building” system for the south fenestration of the offices, based on the interactive facade and ceilings with radiator panels, which produce an enhancement of the comfort inside and a restriction of energy consumption.
Eighty-five percent of the thermal power for the heating and cooling of the complex is produced by chip boilers (a renewable energy source and available in large quantities in the Turin zone) combined with a heat pump. In the intermediate seasons, the water derived from the underground channel of the Dora is used to cool the fluid circulating in the radiator panels in the ceilings of the offices using a heat exchanger; in summer this system cools the capacitor of the absorber of the chip boiler, so avoiding recourse to evaporation towers that would consume a lot of water.
The “ecological” roofing permits lower costs for construction of the plant and management of the complex by means of the good summer and winter insulation. The green roof also filters dust pollutants and reduces urban acoustic pollution. The waterworks in the park retrieve the water used to cool the heat exchanger and
also serve two phyto-treatment plants for the purification by sunlight of rainwater and grey waters. At the end of the cycle they are also used to water the roof. The project was the second finalist of the 1999 Architectural Record BusinessWeek Award.