Winter olympic site reuse

INTRODUCTION

The Polito-Tsinghua Joint-study program is a collaboration between the University of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Turin and the school of Architecture Tsinghua of Beijing.

This year's theme is the XX Olympics Games in Turin 2006, in particular the reuse and the redevelopment of two plants currently in disuse: the bobsleigh track in Pariol, near Sansicario Alto, in the municipality of Cesana Torinese and the area former "Moi Olympic Village" in Turin.

The XX Winter Olympic Games were assigned to Turin on 19 June 1999 during the 109th Congress of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) held in Seoul.

The competitions took place both in Turin, in Susa and in Sangone Valley, the two most Western valleys of the province of Turin. The events were divided into different locations: Turin, Pinerolo, Bardonecchia, Sauze d'Oulx, Sestriere, Pragelato and Cesana Torinese. To ensure the performance of the scheduled races, temporary structures and some permanent structures were built.

The Joint-Study 2016 program takes care of the legacy of this international event. A large part of the permanent structures - built before the Olympics - is now in disuse and abandonment.

The structures themselves had a very short useful life if compared to the huge sums of money used for their construction. They were inaugurated in 2005 to host the Sport Events, an outstanding event organised to test and manage the facilities, the public and the security. The facilities located in Upper Susa Valley and Pinerolo, hosted the competitions at national and international level, such as World events and stages of the World Cup until 2010-2012 for some of them.

After this period, almost the whole of the works has fallen into disuse for several reasons. Firstly, because within the Valley there isn't a strong culture in respect of those disciplines, such as ski jumping, bobsled and skeleton, for this reason the FISI (Federazione Italiana Sport Invernali) has preferred, for economic reasons, given the abundance of athletes of North-East of Italy, to use the training and race facilities outside the Italian territory. This situation combined with the closed-stop mentality of local authorities toward any kind of initiative intended to provide to renew of the tourism in the Valley, characterized by the overabundance of holiday homes. Here, the owners are demonstrating an attitude reluctant to novelties, which has made the initiatives proposed by local schools such as the "school project"1, in order to involve the local populations in these disciplines, to ensure a greater involvement and therefore the desire to preserve those sports within the Valley. Another main reason was the construction of some structures, such as the Bardonecchia halfpipe, which has been used for numerous events after the Winter Olympics, but due to changes of measurement at the international level, it has no longer been used for any type of event.

Within my personal investigation, I have carried out a research study into on the Modern Architecture in the Upper Valley, in parallel with the development of Alpine tourism, from its origins up to the present day. The main purpose was to understand the conditions that led to the crisis in tourism in Susa Valley, and to find some potential solutions to revitalize winter and summer seasons.

I based the research of on the architectures in relation to their role during the Olympics and in the period after 2006:

the Medail Colony in Bardonecchia, which later became the Olympic Village for the athletes engaged in snowboard competitions and the follow-up of journalist and national teams;

the Italsider Colony in Sansicario Alto, in the municipality of Cesana Torinese, transformed in the Olympic Centre to the designated event, which hosted the athletes involved in biathlon competitions.

These are the only two buildings in the Modern Architecture scenes within the Valley that were subjected to alterations to make them accessible and functional in view of the Olympic Winter Games.. They also have a common root: both the two buildings were born as mountain colony, therefore two functionalist buildings whose the ground level was built to accommodate a large number of users, and so very flexible and closely linked to the outdoor area. All of this has been designed to accommodate several activities related to the game and the life inside the colony.