The dismissed factory Officine Grandi Riparazioni of Turin are a wonderful example of industrial archeology located in a strategic area of the City. Opened in 1878 as a factory for the production and maintenance of locomotives and train compartments, it has remained operative until the 1970s, providing work for thousands of workers and artisans of great ability, holders of a complex and articulate knowledge. It has been dismissed at the beginning of the 1990s, and from 2011 it has held different cultural events. In 2013 the building have been acquired by the syndicated join stock society OGR-CRT, instrumental part of CRT Foundation: in the first six months of experimental opening, in 2013, it held 112 events related with design, architecture, music, theatre, photography, receiving 122.000 visitors.
Actually the OGR are interested by some interventions of ordinary and extra ordinary maintenance, to put the entire building under a condition of security and to anticipate a new functional use for the building itself. At the end of these works, foresee in the second half of 2015, multifunctional spaces will be realised, for artistic and cultural productions, for innovation and for start up in the field of the new technologies.
The dismissed Officine Grandi Riparazioni of Turin is a big building, appearing as an H in plan, with two parallel elements that are about 200 meters long, linked together by a third element, shorter, for a total surface of about 20.000 mq. The position, in a strategical and central area in the city, and the historical and architectural importance of the building, raised, in the CRT Foundation, in 2008, the “OGR Project”, with the aim of the development of a cultural and scientific pole, that is part of the larger project of development for the urban area of Porta Susa.
The CRT Foundation intended to apply to “OGR Project” the principles of Venture Philantropy, that has the aim of ensuring sustainability and economical autonomy to the economical interventions.
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