◄ WORKS / Thermal Corridors
Client: Corporate Client
Location: Multiple
Type: Small Architectural Form
Commission: Design Project
Phase: Completed
Year: 2021
After the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, most of the industrial complexes in the Turin area introduced new SAF (Small Architectural Form) typology to their entrance ensembles – that of a thermal corridor. Its function is to provide a space for automatic body temperature scanning of all the people who enter or exit the area. Therefore, a thermal corridor is an enclosed passage space that contains a thermal scanner, a black body, and the turnstiles.
The brief called for a simple yet recognizable structure, that would be flexible enough to adapt to different settings, and possibly to different sites. All the sites, however, would be the industrial ones or, at very least, strongly connected to industrial heritage. Dating back about 50 to 70 years, the sites in question are characterized by vast warehouses. Unassuming from the outside, as the long walls horizontally layered in brick, glass and aluminum strips, it’s from the inside where they shine. The whole of the internal superstructure is built in metal and painted white. Slender ‘H’-section columns, set 10 meters apart, support the roof some 10 meters above the ground. Covering the area of several dozen thousand square meters, the roof of a typical warehouse is a grid of beams and girders, on which the long lines of ‘saw tooth’ sheds or strip lanterns rest, providing natural light to this ample metallic forest.
New SAFs pay homage to the heritage of metallic structures by bringing some qualities from the inside of the warehouses to the outside of the thermal corridors. Their main element is a portal, made of large I-beams cut in half along the longitudinal axis and welded together at 45° angle, so that the flanges remain on the inside, while the webs – on the outside. The portals are bolted together through the intermediary L-beams, positioned laterally on the welded webs. Each one is bolted to the foundations. Everything is painted glossy white. After the insulated panels are mounted on the flanges, the webs remain visible, manifesting expressly the bearing structure.
The portals can assume different dimensions, and therefore adapt to different places, maintaining their recognizable character at the same time. The resulting form stands in complementary contrast to the site constructions, while being directly inspired by them.
