PRESS RELEASE

INTESA SANPAOLO INAUGURATES TURIN SKYSCRAPER

FIRST VISITORS ENTER TOWER BLOCK
DESIGNED BY RENZO PIANO STUDIO

• Skyscraper commissioned and wholly financed by Intesa Sanpaolo will house the group’s headquarters and top management in a single building
• The tower, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and built by internationally famous Italian companies, is studied as part of a master’s degree at the Politecnico University of Turin
• It combines contemporary work areas with spaces and services open to the public: an auditorium and glass panelled conservatory with restaurant, exhibition hall and panoramic cafeteria
• The state-of-the-art building boasts a low environmental impact and innovative architectural features: a double-skin façade, geothermal heating and cooling, LED illumination, a bioclimatic conservatory at its apex, and a variable configuration auditorium
• Convenient for public transport and services, the tower faces west over a green public area completely redeveloped by Intesa Sanpaolo

Turin, 10 April 2015 – Intesa Sanpaolo opens its Turin skyscraper today five years after construction began. The first visitors can now enter the tower and see the city from a new viewpoint.

The bank commissioned the building to accommodate its central offices in a single location. It has emphasised its historic ties with Turin by providing spacious areas for public use. The Renzo Piano RPBW studio designed a building that is “almost as luminescent as ice” thanks to glass sheets which, in harmony with the snow-capped mountains in the background, make the surfaces iridescent depending on natural light. The tower has 44 floors of which 38 are above ground. It occupies a surface area of 7,000 square metres and is 166 metres high, slightly less than the height of the Mole Antonelliana building in Turin.

Two spaces of equal size are open to the public. At the base of the tower is a transparent hall and a variable configuration auditorium which can become a venue for conferences, concerts or exhibitions as required. At the top is the bioclimatic conservatory, a space of 15,000 m3 over three floors. Of those, the 35th floor houses the roof garden with panoramic restaurant, the 36th floor has an exhibition hall and the 37th floor has a cafeteria with a balcony that allows visitors to see the conservatory with its perimeter walkway on three levels. The top of the tower affords visitors views of the city, the collina di Torino green area and the Alpine range to the east, south and west. The garden contains shrubs and plants suited to a temperate and naturally ventilated climate of the conservatory such as eucalyptus, shimbillo, acacia, lavender and myrtle.

The 27 floors intended for office use by 2,000 employees house the President’s office and rooms for the administrative bodies of Intesa Sanpaolo, the central units of the Banca dei Territori, Risk Management, Loans, Personnel and training halls, Intesa Sanpaolo Group Services, Internal Auditing, Intesa Sanpaolo Assicura and some other services of the bank. The 31st floor is assigned entirely to the Innovation Centre, with technological installations for research and the interdisciplinary work of this organisation.

The underground garden of the first basement floor is overlooked by the company canteen and the nursery school. The three basement levels are allocated to parking spaces for more than 300 vehicles and for plant rooms.

The skyscraper is located close to the high speed railway station and the Torino Porta Susa underground station in an area with a high concentration of public services. The Nicola Grosa public garden, overlooked westward by the skyscraper and which also joins Corso Inghilterra through the entrance lobby, has been completely redeveloped by Intesa Sanpaolo and transformed into a recreational area with trees of varying height, lawn and areas for games and relaxation.

The tower adheres to the principles of environmental sustainability, adopting energy-efficiency methods and ensuring compliance with the best building practices. The façades to the east and west are covered with a double-skin system, whose louvres can be opened and closed to provide ventilation in the summer and thermal insulation in the winter. The southern façade is entirely covered with photovoltaic panels of about 1,600 square metres. On the same side, there is a winter garden with climbing plants which filter and modulate sunlight. The air conditioning and heating plant makes use of energy from thermal exchange with the groundwater without producing harmful atmospheric emissions.

The attention paid to the recovery, control and containment of overall energy consumption will earn the tower the environmental sustainability «LEED» certification with one of the highest scores in the world for tall buildings. Special attention has been paid to the space, light and comfort quality of staff working environments. The building required an investment – design and final outfitting included – of about €500 million. The construction contract was awarded through international tender to the group of companies, Rizzani de Eccher-Implenia, one of the major operators in the sector. Construction involved an average of 500 workers and technicians of various nationalities working around the clock in three shifts.

Lastly, the skyscraper has become a subject of study for 35 architects and engineers from all over Italy as part of the second level Master’s degree programme on “Design and Construction of Tall Buildings” organised by Politecnico University of Turin in cooperation with Intesa Sanpaolo and the Chamber of Commerce of Turin.

 

 

 

For information
Intesa Sanpaolo
Banca dei Territori and Local Media Relations
Tel +39 0115556652
stampa@intesasanpaolo.com