Leuman Village - Collegno-Torino

Built between 1875 and 1907 under the direc­tion of Pietro Fenoglio, lead­ing expo­nent of art nou­veau archi­tec­ture in Turin, the Vil­lag­gio Leu­mann is Italy’s prime his­toric exam­ple of a planned, self-contained work­ers’ community.
Around 1000 peo­ple lived there for much of the 20th cen­tury, in around 120 fam­ily apart­ments with flush­ing loos and shared gar­dens, and in a board­ing house for sin­gle work­ers. The vision­ary indus­trial vil­lage had its own school, gym, church, pub­lic bath­house, coop­er­a­tive food store, post office, hotel and rail­way sta­tion, but also refec­tory, med­ical, day­care and sports facil­i­ties, all con­ve­niently arranged beside the cot­ton mill, the workplace.
The vision was that of Napoleone Leu­mann, after he and his father Isaac trans­ferred the fam­ily busi­ness to the site in 1875, then on the out­skirts of Turin, lured by incen­tives to attract indus­try to the city and by the vicin­ity of irri­ga­tion canals and the new rail­way link­ing Col­legno to Turin and on under the Alps to France.
Leu­mann imag­ined hous­ing his work­force close to the Cotonifi­cio, but also believed that their well-being was good for pro­duc­tion. So he com­mis­sioned the ground-breaking self-contained model, a dis­trict which included all those ser­vices required for fam­ily and social life, free time and wel­fare; one in which the archi­tec­ture itself fur­thered the con­cept of a func­tional and socially-advanced community.
When the mill closed in the early 1970s, a con­certed effort saved the vil­lage prac­ti­cally intact. Today, the social hous­ing is owned and assigned by the local author­ity, and an ad hoc Ass­so­ci­a­tion over­sees the ren­o­va­tion of com­mu­nity build­ings. The whole area is an Eco­mu­seum, pre­serv­ing and show­cas­ing a sin­gu­lar exam­ple of mate­r­ial culture. TAKEN FROM THE SITE www.urbanitaly.com/architecture/collegno-village-life.html

Photographer:
kage
Uploaded:
2013-02-20
Tags:
agfaoptima b&w ilford l torino
Camera:
Agfa Optima I
Film:
Ilford Delta 100 (35mm)
City:
Torino
Country/region:
Italy
Year:
2013
Time:
morning
Albums:
Turin - Italy, Agfa Optima I - Ilford Delta 100, and Village Leumann
More photos by kage