Studio 999 takes a garden to the roof in Turin

An eco-sustainable intervention in the historical centre of Turin where the project by Elena Carmagnani from STUDIO 999 with Marta Carraro from OrtiAlti has injected wellness and vitality into an unused rooftop by turning it into a terrace garden.

We have just entered the year 2017 and we're full of good resolutions, one of which may be to create our very own green corner. Which is a lot less complicated than you might think, when you look at the project designed by architect Elena Carmagnani from STUDIO 999 with landscape architect Marta Carraro from OrtiAlti, a group committed to converting rooftops into gardens.
A multi-level house in the historical centre of Turin has a tar-coated, 150-square metre-plus rooftop directly accessible from the home. The architects used only two materials to make this space serviceable: salvaged timber from building site planks, treated with ecological coatings form the new flooring, and plants, in different sized wooden boxes for a rooftop garden.
They used these to create a real green oasis on the house's rooftop, featuring a kitchen garden where vegetables and herbs can be grown, giving residents that contact with nature that we so often lack when we live in the city, with the added advantage of zero-mile vegetables!
When you think that flat tar roofs in Turin cover more than 20% of the surface areas and end up being unused or inaccessible, you realise the huge potential to exploit them and turn this situation into a sustainable move to the advantage of the whole community.

Christiane Bürklein

Architecture project: Elena Carmagnani, Studio 999 http://www.studio999.it/
Landscaping: Marta Carraro, OrtiAlti http://www.ortialti.com/
Rooftop garden: Harpo Trieste
Location: Turin, Italy
Year: 2016
Images: Fabrizio Esposito