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Intesa Sanpaolo Skyscraper

A 166-metre tower designed by Renzo Piano next to Porta Susa, home to Intesa Sanpaolo since 2015, with a suspended auditorium and a bioclimatic greenhouse on top.

Image from the Prima Torino publication
From Prima Torino, 2026-09-17

The Intesa Sanpaolo skyscraper is the office tower that houses the headquarters of the Intesa Sanpaolo banking group in Turin. Designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, it is 166.26 metres tall with 38 floors above ground and six underground levels.[1] It stands on corso Inghilterra, behind Porta Susa station, in the area redesigned along corso Castelfidardo, corso Inghilterra and corso Principe Oddone,[2] and was inaugurated on 10 April 2015, only slightly shorter than the Mole Antonelliana.[3] Contested during construction, within a few years it became one of the recognisable symbols of contemporary Turin.

The project and the building site

According to the city administration's account, the design process began in 2005 and the building site opened on 12 December 2008; 140 workers were employed there, 90 of them foreign nationals.[4] The Renzo Piano Foundation's profile instead places the design in 2006-2009 and construction between 2009 and 2015, on a plot of 6,800 square metres with 110,000 square metres built.[1] The project had been presented publicly in 2006, the year of the Winter Olympics.[5] It was not Piano's first work in Turin: between 1991 and 1994 he had overseen the conversion of the Lingotto plant to public use.[6]

Besides the tower, the architect also signed off on the redesign of the Grosa garden below and the new underground car park on via Bixio. The total investment exceeded 300 million euros, and the building was designed to house around 2,500 bank employees.[4] Mayor Piero Fassino spoke at the ceremony on 10 April 2015, reading the tower as a sign of a city that had changed identity, and of the importance for Turin of the merger between Intesa and Sanpaolo; that evening and over the following two days, until 12 April, the building was opened to the public.[3] At the inauguration Piano recalled: "Architecture lives on long timescales, it took us 10 years to build the skyscraper."[7]

The protests

During the years of construction the project met the opposition of the No Grat movement, which accused it of bypassing participatory planning models. Spokesman Paolo Hutter argued that the tower would alter the city's skyline:

"a skyscraper of nearly 200 metres would certainly compromise the city's image, the view of the Alps and of the Mole Antonelliana, with the attendant traffic-congestion problems and a significant alteration of the urban design set out in the approved master plan"

Paolo Hutter, spokesman for the No Grat movement

The objectors proposed dropping the auditorium and the public spaces at the top, calculating that this would have lowered the building by forty to fifty metres, and in the criticism reported by the press the construction and fit-out costs were put at 450-500 million euros.[5] The project went ahead; some years later the local press noted that the tower, criticised at first, had been accepted by the city.[2]

The architecture

The guiding idea stated by the studio was "to create a building with a strong public value": a third of the tower is open to the public, with the first three floors occupied by an auditorium also suited to civic activities and the top three floors given over to a bioclimatic greenhouse, described as "a large suspended urban space" with a restaurant, cultural spaces and a panoramic terrace.[1] The auditorium is suspended with no intermediate columns, held up by six perimeter mega-columns, and has 364 retractable ash-wood seats;[3] thanks to its mechanisation the hall can switch from a conference auditorium to an exhibition space.[2] The structure required 2,350 tonnes of steel and the building is served by 25 lifts.[8] Consultants included Inarco as consulting architect, Expedition Engineering, Studio Ossola and Massimo Majowiecki for the structures, Manens-Tifs for the building systems and RFR for the façades.[1]

Presenting the building, Piano stressed its relationship with the climate and with the public: "It is a work that breathes, is active, lives with the climate."[7]

"Buildings are loved only if they are accessible and are not selfish, do not close in on themselves and engage with the public"

Renzo Piano, inauguration of the skyscraper, 10 April 2015

Energy and certifications

The façades have a double skin, with openable glass louvres that regulate thermal behaviour; the climate control draws on a geothermal plant and the interior lighting adjusts itself to natural light.[8] The building generates energy with photovoltaic panels and recovers rainwater.[2] According to Piano's studio it uses far less energy than a comparable building and has achieved the highest level of LEED certification:[1] in 2019 the Green Building Council awarded it LEED Platinum in two categories, new construction and sustainable building management,[8] a recognition achieved by few very tall buildings worldwide.[2]

Spaces open to the city

On the 35th floor, 150 metres above ground, is the Piano 35 restaurant, presented as the highest in Italy and set within the bioclimatic greenhouse. Closed on 31 December 2018, its reopening was announced for 3 September 2019, with the kitchen entrusted to Marco Sacco, chef of the Piccolo Lago restaurant in Verbania.[9] The auditorium hosts concerts, conferences and exhibitions,[3] and the building takes part in special open days such as «Invito a Palazzo», with free guided tours.[8]

At the foot of the tower, in the Grosa garden facing corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a place was found for «La Totalità», a sculpture by the Greek artist Costas Varotsos standing more than nine metres tall: installed in 1999 in the Martini gardens in Cit Turin and removed in 2017 because it had deteriorated due to weather and pigeons, it was restored thanks to cooperation between the City of Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo and the Centre for Conservation and Restoration at La Venaria Reale; its return was announced in September 2019.[10]

The skyscraper today

For its tenth anniversary, from 20 to 22 June 2025, the bank organised three days of free events including performances, concerts, guided tours and yoga sessions on the terrace. In its first ten years the building had hosted more than 700 days of events and over 150,000 participants, with guests such as Daniel Pennac, Alessandro Barbero and Timothy Garton Ash; around 2,000 employees work there, with a gym, a nursery and an underground garden.[11] In October 2022 the Grattacielo Piemonte was handed over to the Region, 205 metres tall over 44 floors, which overtook Piano's tower in height.[12]

Pages linking here

Related articles: Alberto Cirio, Grattacielo Piemonte, Intesa Sanpaolo, Piemonte

Sources

  1. Fondazione Renzo Piano
  2. Mole24 — 10 April 2021
  3. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 10 April 2015
  4. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 9 April 2015
  5. TorinoToday
  6. Treccani
  7. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 10 April 2015
  8. Mole24 — 24 September 2019
  9. Gambero Rosso — 18 June 2019
  10. Mentelocale — 27 September 2019
  11. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 16 June 2025
  12. Cuneo24 — 15 October 2022

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