A phase of development and completion in the urban structure of Torino: the Crocetta neighbourhood

The physical aspect of a city constitutes a fundamental element between the phenomena and the realities that make up its structure. The awareness and knowledge of this aspect, in its historical and typological connotations, in real and virtual connections, certainly passes through historical knowledge and the critical contribution to the reading of the urban context. This concept of “physical aspect” should not be limited, therefore, to an exclusively morphological investigation, but should be extended with all historical, ideological, anthropological, material and cultural connections, which fall within the broad definition of “urban civilization”. For the city of Torino, the results of studies and research conducted on the Crocetta neighbourhood, in the context of the Drawing and Survey Laboratory of Professor Marotta, at the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Torino, represent a sort of “radiography” of a characterizing part of the structure of the city, which is read and interpreted in a precise phase of development. One of the peculiarities of Torino is the morphological congruence, also generated by the clear relationship between building type and urban structure, within an “a block” urban plant, that stands up on a precise configuration of axes and directions. The analysis - through the survey and the representation (and not only) - of building types within the neighbourhood, manages to give back the image of the city also in the “taste” and in the “ways” of time (from an architectural and urban viewpoint of eclectic, and episodically liberty, cultural matrix). If we think of the historical city as a written and rewritten text, as a palimpsest, or a layered object over time, its drawing and its formal organization allow us to grasp signs and information that have determined its evolution and changes. The analysis of these processes, with particular attention to the culture of vision, contributes to enrich and deepen the understanding of the present, through a continuous comparison between reconstructions of the past and various imaginaries of possible future arrangements.