|
|
 |
 The Piedmont Region project
At the beginning of the 1980s, after half a century of neglect, the original dream of the Biella financier and collector Riccardo Gualino of realising an architectural complex housing together, with its habitation, an art and cultural laboratory was finally achieved by means of the restoration project and transformation of the huge building into a vigorous emblem of Piedmont as a Region with a high scientific and technological vocation.
Notable intervention is owed to the Piedmont Region that became the structure's owner following the abandonment of the University Works that had acquired the property in 1974, with the aim of making it into a university college. In order to promote appreciation and development of research and advanced training and to offer to the Turin and Piedmont scientific community a space for interchange initiatives, a busy restoration and refunctioning programme was undertaken, also financially supported by the City of Turin, the San Paolo Company, the CRT Foundation, the Turin Chamber of Commerce and in 1994 by the European Union which chose the structure for the headquarters of the European Foundation for Training, its first agency in Italy.
 In 1985, the Palazzina, the high part of the building, with modern catering, reception and congress facilities, was restored, and then the regular functioning of congresses, seminars and initiatives on behalf of Fondazione ISI started, (The ISI Foundation), constituted by the Piedmont Region, the Province of Turin, the City of Turin and the CRT Foundation, currently co-ordinator of the European Network of excellence on complex systems and of the LaGrange Project of the CRT Foundation. Today there are about forty permanent researchers who deal with statistical physics, quantitative calculations, Virtual Imaging, Epidemiology and Neuroheuristics who are active.
In the years immediately following the completion of the project, ASP, ICER, the Fondazione per le Biotecnologie, CIFS and CSP were constituted, to work in other scientific areas considered strategically important by the Region and the other founding bodies such as the study of innovative materials, biotechnologies, astrophysics and space sciences, experimentation in the field of innovative computer network technologies with particular attention to the sectors of education, culture and the modernisation of public administration, and the basic dynamics of the mechanisms of wealth production.
In October 1993, the heads of the Government of the European Union praised Turin as a city in which to establish the European Foundation for Professional Training and they chose Villa Gualino as its working headquarters.
 The Foundation, whose mission consists of support for reform processes in the field of education and professional training in the partner countries of western-central Europe, new independent states and Mongolia, has become an important centre for the collection and diffusion of data. In the partner countries a network of national Observers has been established with the task of identifying and circulating useful information for the development of national policies in the field of training and the promotion of international co-operation.
Scientists, researchers and workers of the European Union work and live at the structure, giving life to an internationally competitive campus. In the newly constructed building, called Pavilion E, the offices, activities and laboratories of scientific institutes, with a permanent base at the Villa have been housed since 2003. The construction of a second building is planned, called Pavilion F, for the definitive accommodation of CSP and a part of the space is destined for research and training activity. In order to remember the original dream of Gualino and, in an ideal art-science link, are organisational solutions which temporarily or permanently house at the Villa the works of artists who are interested in displaying their signs of communication inside a piece of architecture and laboratory of ideas, which lends itself to the interdisciplinary nature of languages. The great park, almost completely restructured, offers to those who work at the Villa and to all the guests of the institute and conference centre, ideal conditions for study activity, work and short periods of residence.
|
|
 |
|
