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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Agnelli Foundation Hq in Turin, Italy by Carlo Ratti AssociatiJuly 14th, 2017 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Carlo Ratti Associati International design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati has completed the transformation of the Agnelli Foundation’s landmark 20th-century building in Turin, Italy into an advanced Office 3.0 – an Appcontrolled structure which offers a glimpse of the workplace of the future. The renovated Agnelli Foundation headquarters, organized around a 3,000-square-meter (32,000-square foot) co-working space, will open today at the presence of John Elkann, vice-chairman of the Agnelli Foundation and chairman of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), Italian President Sergio Mattarella, FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino
 Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino
 Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino By leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, the new Agnelli Foundation headquarters have become a digitally-augmented building that can adapt in real time to its users’ needs. Carlo Ratti Associati has collaborated with technology company Siemens Italy to equip the century-old edifice with hundreds of sensors that monitor different sets of data, including the location of the building’s occupants, temperature, CO2 concentration, and the availability of meeting rooms. By interacting with the Building Management System (BMS), each person can customize his or her workspace experience in a streamlined fashion. A smartphone App (currently available in a beta version) makes it possible for occupants to check in, interact with coworkers, book meeting rooms, and regulate environmental settings with an unprecedented degree of personalization.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino “As work has become increasingly digital, why should we bother to go into the office?”, asks Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and founder of Carlo Ratti Associati: “The key answer to that question lies in human interaction. The central idea behind the Agnelli Foundation project is that by seamlessly integrating digital technologies within the physical space, we can forge better relationships between people and with the building they inhabit, ultimately fostering interaction and creativity. This is what we call Office 3.0. It’s a vision that overcomes the limitations of the pre-Internet spaces as well as the alienating isolation of tele-working”.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino Among its multiple features, the Agnelli Foundation’s BMS App might put an end to the so-called “thermostat wars” on the workplace. Once a building occupant sets his preferred temperature and illumination settings, the BMS responds accordingly, adjusting the levels of lighting, heating, and airconditioning. As the fan coil units situated in the false ceilings are activated by human presence, the system can potentially follow occupants as they move around the building, creating a personalized “environmental bubble”. When an occupant leaves, the room returns naturally to ‘standby mode” and saves energy, much as a computer would do.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino Another feature of the App is that it allows users to book spaces and facilities – from meeting rooms to shared desks. Because users can make their location within the building known, the project will not only ensure more functional interactions between co-workers, but will also serve as a test bed for researches on the relationship between office design and productivity. In the near future, by analyzing statistics on the building’s use, it will be possible to better understand how people behave in particular space and how this in turn can affect creativity.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino “People spend about 90 % of their time indoors, so buildings are a place where we pass most of our lives”, says Fabio Del Prete, Building Technologies Country Division Lead at Siemens Italy: “Our goal is to implement innovative solutions that make buildings better places to live, not just a place for working. For this reason, Carlo Ratti Associati’s concept is ideal for us and we are really glad to give life to this project, leveraging our strong competences and our local know-how”.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino The redesign by Carlo Ratti Associati shows that the IoT paradigm can be successfully applied not only to new constructions, but to the existing built stock as well. The Agnelli Foundation venue, listed by the Italian Historic Commission, was the villa house of FIAT’s founder Giovanni Agnelli in the early 20th century, and later became a hub for design experimentation following its refurbishment by some of Italy’s leading 20th-century architects, from Amedeo Albertini to Gabetti & Isola.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino Carlo Ratti Associati has intervened by opening the building to the city and to the garden. A protruding glass body has been added which hosts a café and acts as an inviting element to passerby in the San Salvario neighborhood: “With this body, standing out from a mass of shrubs as if floating over them, we aim to lend to the renovated complex a symbol of its inclusive character”, says Antonio Atripaldi, project leader at Carlo Ratti Associati: “This theme also continues inside the building, with new connection between spaces. The villa’s historical staircase is infused with new life, as it is illuminated by a newlyopened skylight and by Olafur Eliasson’s ‘La congiuntura del tempo (Tempo junction)’ kaleidoscopic installation”. All around the building, an orchard and green areas designed by Louis Benech – the French landscape architect who reshaped the Tuileries gardens in Paris and the Water Theatre Grove at the Palace of Versailles – will offer its occupants the chance to work outdoors, in close contact with nature.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino The Agnelli Foundation 6500-square meter (70,000-square foot) building will become a cultural center for the city of Turin, hosting the headquarters of the Foundation and connected services for education and training. At the core of the building there will be a vast co-working space for 350 digital professionals run by Talent Garden, one of Europe’s leading operators in this field. Talent Garden’s venue will feature a leisure area where giant tensile structures are suspended in a nine-meter-high hall, for people to jump through, walk or rest on.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino “We’ve been in Turin for four years now and have found the city to be an ideal ecosystem to boost innovation”, says Davide Dattoli, founder and CEO of Talent Garden: “It’s for this reason that we are now opening our new campus, Talent Garden Foundation Agnelli. This digitally-augmented, co-working space is the ideal basecamp for our community of innovators, and it will serve as a natural accelerator for a variety of programs and events related to technology and innovation. We are very happy to collaborate again with Carlo Ratti Associati, after it designed Talent Garden Calabiana in Milan.”  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino As diversity and a multi-disciplinarity approach are central to the idea of Office 3.0, the new Agnelli Foundation building will host under the same roof both creative professionals working at shared desks, Venture Capital investors, researchers for a philanthropic institution, and teachers involved in experimental programs. “Such a progressive mix of professionals of all ages, backgrounds and responsibilities – from students to C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies – would have never happened just a few years ago”, adds Ratti.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino The project embodies the vision of an architecture “that senses and responds”, potentially representing a breakthrough in the way in which IoT technologies can be incorporated into the built environment. Carlo Ratti Associati’s concept of the Office 3.0, with its digitally-controlled BMS, was hailed respectively by Dezeen magazine and by the Wall Street Journal as “one of the top ten visions for the future” and as “straight out of science fiction”.  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino ABOUT CARLO RATTI ASSOCIATI Carlo Ratti Associati is a design and innovation office, based in Turin, Italy, with branches in Boston, Massachusetts, and London, England. Drawing on Carlo Ratti’s research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the office is currently involved in many projects across the globe. Embracing every scale of intervention – from furniture to urban planning – the work of the practice focuses on innovation in the built environment. Among recent projects there are the Future Food District thematic area at Milan World Expo 2015, the master plan for the requalification of the Patrick Henry military village for IBA Heidelberg, the Pankhasari retreat in India’s Darjeeling, and the concept for a human-powered ‘Navigating Gym’ in Paris. Carlo Ratti Associati is the only design firm whose works have been featured twice in TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year list – respectively with the Digital Water Pavilion in 2007, and the Copenhagen Wheel in 2014. In the last years, the office has also been involved in the launch of start-ups, including Makr Shak, a company producing the world’s first robotic bar system, and Superpedestrian, the producer of the Copenhaghen Wheel. carloratti.com ABOUT THE AGNELLI FOUNDATION  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino The Fondazione Agnelli is an independent, non-profit research institution focusing on education. It was established in 1966 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of FIAT’s founder, Senator Giovanni Agnelli. Today, the Fondazione Agnelli runs wide ranging research programs on the Italian education system, innovation in didactics and inclusion of disadvantaged students. It also operates workshops for students and teachers on science and technology, promoting the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Besides education, the Fondazione Agnelli supports social assistance and solidarity activities. fga.it  Image Courtesy © Beppe Giardino ABOUT SIEMENS Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for more than 165 years. The company is active in more than 200 countries, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. In fiscal year 2016, Siemens generated revenue of €79.6 billion and net income of €5.6 billion. Active in Italy since 1899, Siemens is one of the largest companies in the Country with two factories, global competence centers on industrial software and electric mobility and one technological center application focused on Industry 4.0. With more than 3,000 employees, Siemens Italy generated revenue of €1.9 billion in fiscal year 2016. siemens.com ABOUT TALENT GARDEN Talent Garden provides a physical platform for digital, tech and creative professionals to work, learn and connect across Europe. Talent Garden offers co-working spaces, TAG Innovation School training programs and a variety of different events. talentgarden.org
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