Italian school takes pride in designs for sports venues

Faculty members at Politecnico di Torino are thrilled that they had participated in the design of venues for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

The Polytechnic University of Turin in the northern Italian city, which is known for its refined architecture, was involved in the design of an operation services building at the Shougang Olympic site, where the Big Air competitions are held.

A large State-owned steel plant at the Shougang site was decommissioned in 2005 to reduce pollution ahead of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

The Polytechnic University of Turin was invited by Tsinghua University to participate in the design of the facility at the site of the old steel plant.

Guido Saracco, rector of the Polytechnic University of Turin, said the school is proud to play an important role in the Beijing Winter Olympics with this project. "This proves how our Politecnico is recognized in China as a top-level university, both in its teaching activities and in those related to research and design," he said.

The school has a long history of collaboration with counterparts in China, including one with Tsinghua University dating back to 2006. It has also participated in architecture and urban design projects from Shenzhen in Guangdong province to Lishui in Zhejiang province.

Sustainability aim

Michele Bonino, vice-rector for relations with China at the Politecnico, said the Beijing Organizing Committee requested the wise use of existing resources and the reuse of buildings already on site aimed at cost containment and sustainability.

He told China Daily that for that purpose, the structural skeleton of the old factory has been maintained, and inside, a new volume of concrete and glass has been designed to remain suspended off the ground.

Edoardo Bruno and Camilla Forina, who coordinated material production in the China Room at the Politecnico, worked with their group of researchers and PhD students to ensure the continuous production of sketches, drawings, renders and models with their Chinese colleagues from Tsinghua.

Zhang Li, dean of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University who is in charge of the Shougang Big Air master design, said that he and his colleagues greatly appreciated the design by the Politecnico team. "Their design has shown great respect for the industrial legacy. The factory facade has been well preserved from the outside, but inside it's quite modern," Zhang said.

Bonino said Politecnico and many local firms have been involved in the urban industrial transformation in Turin after many factories closed or moved abroad in the 1980s. "But China is now the best experiment of industrial transformation," he said.

He described the experience as a good combination of expertise from Turin with a very challenging opportunity given by China.

Just as Beijing becomes the only city in the world to host both the summer and winter Olympics, Bonino said Politecnico was also involved in the 2008 Beijing Olympics when eight students from his school and eight students from Tsinghua worked together on a project for the reuse of 2008 Olympic venues.