The recent completion of the high speed railway in the north west of Italy is producing significant changes in the entire territorial system, establishing a difference between the nodes of Milan and Turin, positively connected to the “long” (and fast) networks of mobility, and the intermediate places that suffer from disadvantages due to their location on the pre existing “short” (and slow) networks.
Innovative uses of communication technologies and of personal mobile devices can contribute to re-balancing the territory, providing new services especially addressed to permanent and temporary users of the in-between territories, which could in this way regain advantage from the fact of being characterized by high spatial quality and positively slow life style. The cities and the territories related to the rice fields along the Canale Cavour, particularly in the area around the city of Novara, have therefore been chosen as a physical and symbolic case in order to study the problems of a unique agricultural landscape, perfect context to experiment the role of innovative services to enhance the relationship between people and places, according to the theme of the Expo 2015 event “feeding the planet, energy for life”. Within this framework, the E-scape project studied possible solutions to verify how interfaces (such as NFC devices and other sensors) located in significant places in the territory can provide useful information and promote a better relationship between people and places, provide new opportunities for work and leisure, in particular in medium-size cities (Ivrea, Vercelli, Biella, Novara and others) and therefore produce an effective complementary integration with the main centers (Milan and Turin).
The project therefore aims to understand and manage two main issues:
– Define a number of significant sites located along the Canale Cavour, with a view to enhancing the relationship between people and landscape, also developing slow mobility paths and nodes that can play a role as services of general interest. The general aim is to work on the “slow” territories related to the Canale, in order to connect them to the sites and networks that are the subject of Expo 2015, following the idea of a diffused event based on the direct experience of places.
– Explore how the use of innovative technologies could produce new behaviors, support and (possibly) even drive physical territorial change, in a vision where the sites (and the people) located along and somehow attached to the geographic “backbone” of the Canal can play an active role.
Principal Academic Tutor
Andrea Rolando
Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano
External Tutors
Claudia Baratti,
Coutenza Canale Cavour
Andrea Bragagnini
Telecom Italia
Albano Marcarini
CoMoDo
Ippolito Ostellino
Ente Parco fluviale del Po Torinese
Academic Tutors
Flavio Boscacci
Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano
Alberto Colorni
Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion, Politecnico di Milano
Alberto De Marco
Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino
Fabrizio Leoni
Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano
Corinna Morandi
Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano
Chiara Occelli
Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino
Riccardo Palma
Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino
Mario Sassone
Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino
External institution
Telecom Italia
CoMoDo – Confederazione per la
Mobilità Dolce
Coutenza Canale Cavour
Ente Parco fluviale del Po tratto
torinese
Team members
TEAM A
Benedetta Giudice [Team controller], Territorial, Urban and Environmental Planning
Davide Mezzino, Architecture for Sustainability
Cristiana Oggero, Territorial, Urban and Environmental Planning
Giovanni Castaldo, Architecture
Tijana Djordjevic, Urban Planning and Policy Design
Michele Giusto, Computer Engineering
TEAM B
Federica Bonavero [Team controller], Territorial, Urban and Environmental Planning
Simona Valenti, Architecture for Sustainability
Lucia D’Amato [Project Communication Coordinator], Architecture
Doaa Ismail, Architecture
Federica Remondi, Environmental and Land Planning Engineering
Bogdan Stojanovic, Architecture