In a context in which cities are rapidly evolving, the design of urban mobility and new smart solutions can play a major role. As the roads in urban areas become more congested, it is getting harder to commute at the ground level.
The overall aim of the Metrosky project is to exploit the new class of aircraft known as eVTOL, to design a fully sustainable Urban Air Mobility system in the framework of the Metropolitan City of Turin and Milan: the creation of unseen routes, coupled with the traditional transportation system, will strongly enhance the quality of the urban mobility. Metrosky’s proposal deals both with the intangible, such as the design of the service and with the tangible aspects, such as the architectural and urbanistic development of the vertiport.
The service envisioned leverages the inherent key properties of the eVTOL technology: rapidity, flexibility in the choice of the routes, and accessibility from the urban fabric.
The architectural choices of the vertiport reflect the considerations that have been made so far: a modular approach to the design of the architecture allows the building to be flexible and adaptable to every urban fabric. For very dense areas the solution of parasite architecture has been adopted, posing the vertiport on top of pre-existing buildings. Furthermore, aeronautical requirements and technical aspects are considered to provide an architectural outcome that lets technical functionality and care towards the user experience coexist. Regarding the design of the interiors and its service inside the stations, these are thought to make the user experience not only fast but also safe and comfortable. This conceptual work is then exploited to build a realistic proposal of how the vertiport should decline in the test cases of three distinct scenarios in the city of Turin. The first scenario deals with a public-type vertiport located in the heart of the city, in Piazza San Carlo, challenging the capacity of adaptation in a very dense historical urban fabric; the second shows an example of a private hub, positioned on the top of the Intesa San Paolo skyscraper; the third is a prototype of a temporary installation for events in a non-constrained environment, such as the Valentino Park.
The results obtained by this study have produced a flexible and iconic vision that can be used as a starting point for the establishment of UAM in the cities of Turin and Milan, and as a model for other cities around the world.
Principal Academic Tutors
Matteo Robiglio, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Politecnico di Torino
Academic Tutor
Matteo Poli, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Politecnico di Milano
Marco Cappellazzo, FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab, Politecnico di Torino
Matteo Gianotti, FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab, Politecnico di Torino
Giulia Sammartano, FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab, Politecnico di Torino
External Institutions
Pininfarina
Architecture Digisky Srl
External Tutor
Giovanni de Niederhäusern, Pininfarina Architecture
Marco Becucci, Pininfarina Architecture
Paolo Pari, Digisky
Veronica Spadoni, Digisky
Team members
Benedetta Ballabio, Architecture – Built Environments – Interiors Politecnico di Milano
Dietta Casolari, Architecture – Built Environments – Interiors Politecnico di Milano
Sarah Joy Giacomelli, Systemic Design Politecnico di Torino
Matteo Mojoli, Product Design Politecnico di Milano
Edoardo Monti, Aeronautical Engineering Politecnico di Milano
Federica Mungo, Building Architecture Politecnico di Milano
Michele Nava, Aeronautical Engineering Politecnico di Milano
Valentino Stella, Product Design Politecnico di Milano