Prefabrication Between Tradition and Innovation: The First Nucleus of Mirafiori Sud in Turin

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In Italy, the start of prefabrication and building industrialization experiences took place slowly and late compared to other European countries. The debate between the main workers in the construction sector and the representatives of the economic and political world on post-war reconstruction was oriented towards a substantial reconfirmation of traditional construction methods. Added to the productive backwardness of the Italian construction industry was the difficulty of supplying materials and the opposition of much of the academic and professional culture to the experimentation and introduction of industrialized systems. The problems posed by the severe housing deficit of the post-war and following years laboriously paved the way for the first national experiments with prefabrication and building industrialization systems. Due to the need to act urgently to contain construction costs – a relevant problem given the size of the housing problem – the rules of the 1963 Gescal were explicitly addressed to the use of industrialized and prefabricated construction systems. The Gescal years allowed Italy to start large-scale experimentation and application of prefabrication. Among the public interventions of the early 1960s, the construction of the first nucleus of the Mirafiori Sud district in Turin stands out for its peculiar, almost experimental dimension between tradition and innovation.