Patrimonio industriale e arte contemporanea: sinergie per una nuova immagine della città

In urban centers the phenomenon of industrial decommissioning has had as tangible side effect the slow and inexorable abandonment of a consistent and varied patrimony of buildings and industrial sites, which, losing their identity, have turned into ‘empty boxes’. On an urban scale, the reconversion of abandoned industrial buildings has shown great potential to implement a new outline of the city, capable of preserving, mending and creating urban, economic and social relations; on a building scale, a careful analysis of their characteristics and a refined interpretation of their use vocations have allowed, in some cases, to identify new destinations, which have restored life to the building and have made it a pole of revitalization of the surrounding urban fabric. In this context, the synergy between industrial heritage and contemporary art is significant: the paper intends to focus the attention just on this topic. The composition, dimensional and constructive features of some factories have suggested the installation of temporary and permanent museums of contemporary art, just for the immersive and interactive character, that this kind of work of art presents. The study intends to contribute to the critical reflection on these examples of ‘urban acupuncture’, through the analysis of some European cases, with particular attention to the new urban image of Turin, once an industrial city par excellence, today a European pole for contemporary art.