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Ferriere FIAT, Torino
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In 1917 FIAT took over some metallurgical companies to ensure its needs of iron, cast iron and steel. These industries were located along the Dora Riparia, around which several neighborhoods grew up, forming the heart of Turin's heavy industry. The ironworks were equipped with blast furnaces, replaced by electric arc units after the WW2, rolling and stripping mills: thanks to this integrated vertical system, FIAT was able to cutting costs in its productions of cars, engines, industrial vehicles and airplanes. During the 1970s world steel crisis, FIAT decided to spin off its metallurgical operations and created Teksid in 1978: four years later, the iron and steel operations were sold to Italian state-owned steel holding Finsider, while Teksid continued only the production of aluminium and cast iron for body panels and engine blocks in its foundries. Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the next decade, steel production in the north of Turin ceased for good. The ironworks along the Dora remained abandoned for several years until the city of Turin decided to recover it: today the neighborhood has a completely different character, melting new residential buildings, industrial archaeology and a green area that gives new life to the river. The church of the Holy Face, designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta, emerges among the new constructions, also because it uses the chimney of the old ironworks as the bell tower. The facilities which hosted the electric furnaces and the rolling mills are now disappeared, except only for structural poles built by the nearby Officine Savigliano which "hold up" the elevated boardwalk. The area of the stripping mills shows some more "industrial heritage": the huge shed with its steel skeleton hosts several playgrounds for basketball, volley, tennis, football and skateboarding; next to this, there's a leisure park where the high red steel poles arose among the children playgrounds and the artificial channels. Also the cleaner is preserved and used for a light installation.
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