ITER - Palazzo Borsalino - Complesso Agorà

The Palazzo Borsalino was designed by Arnaldo Gardella and built between 1925 and 1926. About sixty years later, between 1984 and 1991, the engineer and architect Ignazio Gardella, Arnaldo’s son, designed and carried out radical restoration work on the building.
Situated on the corner of via Cavour and via Cento Cannoni, the Palazzo Borsalino is the most monumental structure of the Borsalino hat factory still surviving today.

The building, which has a reinforced concrete framework, is renowned for its use of the Hennebique system, the rights being held exclusively by the Porcheddu firm of Turin ever since the early 1900’s. According to the original layout, the archives and boiler rooms and industrial power generators occupied the basement floor, the company’s general offices were on the first two floors aboveground, and the processing departments on the top floor.
In the 80’s , with the closure of the old factory and the company’s move to new, more modern premises in Spinetta Marengo, a process of radical redevelopment of the entire urban district commenced, involving the almost total demolition of the industrial buildings. On one part of the abandoned factory site (the area between corso 100 Cannoni, via Cavour, corso Teresio Borsalino and via Montebello), the Agorà complex was built.
It was the last important project carried out by Ignazio Gardella at Alessandria, in collaboration with J. Gardella, F. Nonis and F. Cuttica. Maintaining only the Borsalino office building, the old warehouses were demolished to make room for large-scale retailers and the residence.
Palazzo Borsalino is today home to East Piedmont University’s Law and Political Science faculties. To make it functional following the change in its intended purpose, the building underwent extensive renovation between 1994 and 2002, designed by I.C.I.S., an engineering and architectural firm based in Turin (owner Luciano Lucani).

The Palazzo Borsalino is composed of two long perpendicular wings spread over three floors aboveground. The formal configuration of the façades and interiors are redolent of the “art-deco” style, but at the same time are not devoid of neoclassic overtones in the choice of certain formal details. The two main fronts are characterised by the regular spacing of the wide windows, the thin cornices and pilasters and by the chromatic interplay of surfaces.

Entering from via Cavour one steps into a vast rectangular atrium with the main staircase, while on the first floor a pillared balcony runs round three sides and looks down onto the central open space. Leading off from both ends of the lobby are the corridors with various rooms on each side. On the short façade, at the crossroads, there is a vehicle entrance and a large arched window bearing an inscription to commemorate the foundation of the hat factory in 1857.
The Agorà complex is joined to the Borsalino offices and interrelates with it by evoking the shapes and forms of the demolished factory.
“The volume and design of the old factory facade become the organising elements of the new residences and commercial centre. In the shape of the roofing, in the white window cornices, in the low-arched, three-part openings which echo those on the office building, traces of the originality and sensitivity to pre-existing structures, typical of the maestro’s approach to architectural design, can be found. The bare, essential “box” of the Esselunga supermarket is clad in the same dark clinker brick as the nearby “company workers’ home” and the eighteenth-century brick barracks typical of the area. The project is emblematic of a process which has reached full maturity, but also of the end of an era of great industries that contributed to development and were protagonists in the city’s urban and social transformation”.
(cited from: M. Casamonti, 2006, pp.117 - 118)

By car: A21 Turin–Piacenza–Brescia motorway , exit Alessandria Ovest; A26 Genoa Voltri–Gravellona Toce motorway, exit Alessandria Sud
By train: Alessandria FFS railway station, Acqui Terme–Savona, Asti–Torino, Genova, Voghera, Casale Monferrato–Chiasso, Mortara–Novara lines
By public transport: from the station 5' on foot or bus nos. 4 and 3, minibus line B

Standing opposite, between corso Teresio Borsalino, via Pacinotti, via Wagner and corso XX Settembre, is the second lot of Borsalino factory warehouses which, until 1987, featured a tall chimney stack. All that remains of the old factory is the Taglieria del Pelo (fur cutting workshop), a detached building built between 1949 and 1956 to a design by Ignazio Gardella.
The remainder of the lot is occupied by the gardens and buildings of the Borsalino Residence (1987 - 1991) built to a design by Paolo Portoghesi.
On the corner of corso Teresio Borsalino and corso XX Settembre is the Borsalino “workers’ home” (1949 - 1952), one of Ignazio Gardella’s most well-known works.

The complex may be accessed to reach shops, a supermarket and the university. Noteworthy is the Borsalino hat Museum, housed in the “Champions’ Room” in the Palazzo Borsalino (now home to the university), entrance in via Cavour 84. This is an exhibition of more than 2000 hats with information points on the factory’s history, production processes and on the present-day developments of the firm and its products. The original décor designed in the 1920’s by Arnaldo Gardella has been maintained.
The museum is open on Saturday and Sunday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

G. Montanari, M. Mantelli, Ritratti di architetture. Sessant’anni di attività di Ignazio Gardella ad Alessandria, catalogo della mostra, 23 gennaio-21 febbraio, -, Alessandria 1993
G. Bona, G. Cantino Wataghin (a cura di), Passato futuro. I luoghi dell’Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”, Gallo Arti Grafiche, Vercelli 2002
M. Casamonti (a cura di), Ignazio Gardella architetto 1905-1999. Costruire le modernità, Electa, Milano 2006