Turin | Mollino & Nervi

A Turin architecture tour dedicated to two iconic figures of the 20th century: Carlo Mollino and Pier Luigi Nervi. Our professional architect-guide will lead you on an exclusive itinerary, tailor-made to suit your schedule and interests, taking in their finest surviving works in the city and giving you the lowdown.

Architect, designer, photographer and accomplished sportsman, Carlo Mollino (1905 – 1973) rarely strayed from his native Turin. He was eccentric and passionate, chose only commissions which granted free rein to his highly personal style, was dismissed by most of his creative contemporaries and revered by subsequent generations.

Mollino Highlights:

  • Chamber of Commerce (Palazzo degli Affari della Camera di Commercio)
  • Reconstruction of the Teatro Regio
  • Former HQ of the Turin Equestrian Association (demolished)
  • RAI Auditorium (profoundly altered)
  • Interiors of several private residences – including the former Dancing Lutrario now Le Roi, Caso Mollino (now a private museum)
  • Comprehensive archive of Mollino’s work that is kept in the library of the School of Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino, where Mollino taught architectural composition

Pier Luigi Nervi‘s was a talent of a different, more pragmatic ilk. Born in Rome in 1891, he trained as a civil engineer rather than in architecture and set up his own construction company. He was commissioned to work on all five continents, mainly for his singularly plastic use of reinforced concrete, and collaborated with architects as brilliant as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn.

Nervi Highlights:

  • Parts of Torino Esposizioni – an exhibition complex of the riverside south of the city centre (host to the grand Turin Motor Show)
  • Old tram maintenance depot on Corso Tortona, known as the Capannone Nervi
  • Extensions to the Fiat Mirafiori factory in the southern suburbs
  • Palazzo del Lavoro – a single square structure of 156-metre sides, its roof is supported by steel beams fanning out from the top of 16 huge, tapering, concrete columns, the whole wrapped in a glass curtain wall reinforced by vertical mullions. It is now unoccupied, in a sad state of disrepair and facing an uncertain future.