Meridien Lingotto Art + Tech Atrium
If you are staying in Bella Torino and want some real swank try the 5 * “hotel” with a racetrack on the roof as featured in the “Italian Job” – The historic FIAT works with the 1 km test track is now the Meridien Lingotto, a showpiece conversion by the architect Renzo Piano which also features a conference centre and the Agnelli Art Collection in a superb “pod” on the roof, and all surprisingly inexpensive thru the weekend deal on the Turismo Torino website.
The motor company Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, otherwise known as FIAT, was founded in 1899 by Giovanni Agnelli in the ancient capital of Piedmont, Turin, south of which still sprawls the extraordinary Lingotto factory, the empire's erstwhile headquarters and at one stage, the world’s largest car factory. The vast five-storey building, designed by Giacomo Matte Trucco, can claim to be one of the first and finest examples of reinforced concrete architecture in Europe. It moved the architect and designer Le Corbusier to proclaim it "one of the most impressive sights in industry".
Lingotto when it was the world's largest car factory
Fiat's Lingotto factory was completed in 1923. Unlike any other automobile factory to date, the factory featured a spiral assembly line that moved up through the building and a concrete banked rooftop test track. In the wake of World War I, when Fiat returned to making cars they held 80% of the automotive market share in Italy. Aside from a brief employee communist uprising in 1921, things were going well at Fiat and the company was ready to expand. The Lingotto factory in Turin is the result of that expansion.
The roof top test track at Lingotto was not a novelty or an afterthought, but an integral part of the manufacturing process. The Lingotto factory featured a unique upward spiral assembly line. As each Fiat was put together it would progress upwards through the building story by story. Each floor was sequentially designated to specialise in a major part of assembly. What would start on the ground floor as raw materials and individual parts became a running driving Fiat by the time it spiralled its way to the top of the building.
Lingotto Frontage
The factory was designed so that production began on the ground floor and went up / down on two spiral ramps at either end of the factory to the roof, where cars were tested on a 1km track. This had a brief moment of fame in the 1969 classic The Italian Job and it has been cleverly recycled by FIAT for its current Punto T.V. campaign. The roof these days also contains a Heli - Pad and glass domed meeting room which often appears in photo shoots, so chances are you have seen it without realising it!
The car plant closed in 1982 and after much debate, the Genoese architect Renzo Piano was briefed to breathe new life into its steel, glass and concrete by adapting it to house a conference centre, auditorium, shopping arcades, restaurants, cinemas, an exhibition space and two hotels. It was reborn in 1994.
Lingotto Ramp to rooftop test track
The last part of the renovation in 2007 was the installation for Giovanni and Marella Agnelli of an Art Gallery "Pod" which hovers atop the historic and enormous former Fiat factory at Lingotto in Turin, overlooking the city of Torino. The building constitutes the third phase of Piano’s 14-year renovation of the factory, into a mixed-use center with a hotel, shops, and conference space. Built in the 1920 by Matte Trucco, the building was the largest and most modern plant in Europe, both architecturally and in terms of mass production capacity. The Lingotto Factory Conversion was the first example of modular construction in reinforced concrete, based on the repetition of three elements: pillars, beams, and floors.
The minis on the rooftop track of Lingotto in "The Italian Job."
When it was closed down in 1982, the building had such a great symbolic importance that it was essential to give it a new lease on life. The project consisted of radically transforming Lingotto without betraying the spirit and intended use of its premises, while preserving the overall architectural character and monumentality. By creating public facilities such as an auditorium, an exhibition center, a branch of the educational activities, meeting rooms, a shopping center, a hotel, a 2,600-seat cinema complex, as well as Fiat’s headquarters, Lingotto Factory Conversion has turned into a piece of city.
Pinacoteca di Giovanni e Marella Agnelli
Heliport & Meeting Dome
The new gallery, a 400-ton structure, dubbed “Scrigno” or “Treasure Chest”, appears to levitate over building’s rooftop track for testing cars. It is a technological marvel, a partly cantilevered, wedge-shaped box, both solid and light with no apparent openings through its steel skin, an oversized flat roof flying above it. Located in the North tower, this section houses the Agnelli’s art collection. Since Fiat mogul Gianni Agnelli and his wife, Marella, were donating the permanent collection to the museum, which is run by the Palazzo Grassi of Venice (supported with Fiat money), they were very much influenced the design. “Gianni wanted to know the diameter of every bolt,” says Renzo Piano. “A good client-architect relationship is not really about money. It’s about understanding.”
The building’s roof, nicknamed the “flying carpet”, is a light filter made of 16,000 glass fins above the gallery’s own translucent roof, creating a cool, even, impalpable light in which the 25 artworks of the gallery can be contemplated, devoid of any distractions within this peaceful and minimalist interior. This canopy is attached by steel struts to the walls of the gallery and sits about 4 feet above the gallery’s own translucent roof. In the lower roof, glass sits atop layers of movable aluminum slats, 3 m white neon tubes, and, finally, a vellum sunscreen made of “Trevira”, a synthetic fiber tissue.
Additional spotlighting reinforces the mix of artificial light and daylight, so that the paintings and statues are bathed in a luminous glow. The 6-m-high gallery, divided by 3-m-high freestanding partitions, is sparely designed with off-white gypsum-board walls and oak floors, and stainless-steel details. Below, in the reinforced-concrete structure of the factory, a suspended stair of painted steel, wood, and glass links the temporary galleries and other spaces. There is no natural top lighting inside the galleries building, daylight is admitted through existing windows and supplemented by spotlighting.
Rooftop Car Track
In the factory building The Art + Tech is Meriden’s 5 star offering on the site and has a central 4 storey atrium with cherry wood panels on either side. In the centre is the restaurant and at either end the lifts, stairs and lounge area as well as a gym. Being Italy it is child friendly with a kid’s play area. The excellent restaurant often has themed events from its sister hotels and when we were there was doing an excellent African evening featuring cuisine and live music from the Ivory Coast. Breakfast was excellent from a self service buffet which included a fresh orange press but the scrambled eggs were an alarming yellow colour.
Bathrooms
Bedrooms are on corridors on either side of the atrium and are reassuringly quiet and restful. They have a roomy atmosphere with double height ceilings fitted into the structural framework of the factory, clean modern lines with high quality fittings and automatically adjusting external sun blinds. Bathrooms are a cappuccino marble with excellent wet room showers.
The area
There's the Baroque splendour of Turin www.turismotorino.com. Or, closer by, you will find the Pinacoteca di Giovanni e Marella Agnelli (00 39 011 006 2713; pinacoteca-agnelli.it), or the "treasure box". Designed by Piano, this is a showcase of 25 works from the Agnelli family collection, including pieces by Canaletto, Picasso and Dali. What it lacks in quantity it more than makes up in the quality of the exquisite artworks.
Eataly
http://www.eataly.it/index.php
Opposite the Lingotto is Eataly a wonderful emporium of Italian food and wine in a converted vermouth distillery. Here you will find a more than 10 dining options but also excellent atmospherics with many of the items (pasta, bread, ice cream, etc) made on the premises and a basement containing wine and beer cellars and a wonderfully odorous cellar full of maturing hams, salamis and chesses. Across from the Lingotto is the Olympic Village built for the 2006 Winter and Para Olympics with its distinctive “Gateway” bridge by Santiago Caltravo.
Lingotto Shopping Centre
Downtown Turin is 2 km away by bus, the tram route is disconnected whilst they extend Turins new state of the art Metro system to Lingotto for 2009.
Best night was surprisingly, having got back late, when we went into the adjoining extensive shopping centre (using the private lift & entrance from our hotel, don't ya know) had a really wonderful meal in a chain restaurant and there was an organised and free salsa dancing evening with a couple of hundred folk - compared well to a UK shopping centre on a Sunday night!!
Quanta Costa?
A double room starts at €150 (£107) per night at weekends and rises to €250 (£178) during the week, including breakfast. Best deal is the “Torino Weekend” deal on the Turismo Torino website which offers 3 nights B & B and a 48 hour Torino Card (Which gives admission to all the attractions and transport for 2 days) for a storming 150 euro a person. Combine it with a cheap air fare from Ryanair or Easyjet and you have a upmarket 4 day / 3 night 5 star break in one of Europe’s finest cities for not too serious money. Nothing wong wit dat, as Michael Caine never said in the “Italian Job.”
The address
Via Nizza, 230, 10126 Turin. Tel: 00 39 011 664 2000;
www.lingottoartandtech.lemeridien.com
See also:
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bella-torino.html
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