New Access to the Castello di Rivoli

The aim of the new circulation system at the Castello di Rivoli and the sustainable redesign of the southeast flank of the adjoining hillside is to create a closer link between the city and the castle. Rivoli, a small town on the western edge of Turin, is dominated by this monumental 18th-century building by Filippo Juvarra, which was never completed and currently houses an internationally renowned museum of contemporary art. The prominent southeast slope, due to its location between the city’s ‘back side’ and the incomplete garden wing of the castle, remained undefined, an ‘inner periphery’.

The divergent scales of the city and the castle come together unmitigated in this interstitial space. This tension creates the setting for sustainable uses that are articulated on three different levels: as urban landscape with a new planting concept; as recreational space within walking distance; and – by means of the escalators and ramps forming a circuit of caverns, rifts and terraces incised in the hillside – as a direct connection.