Ripensare spazi e luoghi del passato industriale. Una lettura tra identità e resilienza: il caso delle OGR a Torino

Reframing industrial places and buildings between identity and resilience: the case of OGR in Turin
For over a century the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR) used to be an important industrial site for the maintenance of the trains in Turin, Italy. The paper aims to analyse the multiple activities, meaning and practices that overlapped within and across OGR since the Fordist crisis in the 1970s to today. The area was abandoned in the early ’90 and, subsequently, the debate on its transformation has been debated between the will to forget the past and the need to preserve its cultural heritage. The Turin’s new urban development planning (1995) envisioned the demolition of the historic H shaped building but, thanks to an amendment the OGR were preserved and today it is a cultural centre. The paper discusses if OGR may be interpreted as a mirror of Turin’s resilience strategies in dealing with its economic transition. The transition of Turin from industrial to a tourist and cultural city has shaped through the rethinking of symbolic spaces and places in the city.