Igloo Fountain, Turin
The Igloo Fountain in Turin is a relatively young construction but it stands out noticeably among its senior counterparts. It is located on a busy road junction and therefore there are not many people here. The way it looks reminds of some kind of a bizarre mixture of something earthly and cosmic, advanced technologies and natural materials.
History of the fountain
In 1995, the city authorities developed the Turin transformation program called “Artecittà”. The plan included the creation of many new sights and the restoration of the old ones. Eleven famous artists, sculptors, architects and designers who mostly worked in Piedmont were hired to realize this idea. The artist Mario Merz, a brilliant representative of the Arte Povera movement, was one of them. He began to work on a new fountain in 2000, and it was opened on November 6, 2002. It didn’t take long for the creators to come up with a name and the artwork was named after its shape – the Igloo Fountain.
Sculptural design
The thing is that the Igloo shape, the Eskimo dwelling, appears in Mario Mertz’s works very often. This time, he also continued this pattern and didn’t abandon the canons of the genre within which he worked. The artist created a design that was a synthesis of the industrial city and nature. A hemisphere was placed in the middle of a large water reservoir, analogous to the dwelling of the peoples of the north. However, if they used ice blocks and skins to build such constructions, the fountain itself was more technologically advanced. The internal frame of the structure consists of metal pipes. Outside they are covered with granite plates. Pipes stick out of the gaps between the plates as well as from the bottom of the pool and have water flowing out of them.
The igloo has 4 neon inscriptions covered with glass plates. Each of them represents the corners of the world. Vertical pillars are placed around the fountain itself providing additional illumination. In the evening, the view is simply fantastic, and if you are lucky enough to get here when the fog comes down, then what you will see will stay in your memory forever. The artwork itself symbolizes the house, the sanctuary we leave and always return to; a point around which our life revolves.
How to get
The Igloo Fountain is located far from the center of Turin, on the intersection of Corso Mediterraneo and Corso Lione. Thus, Piazza Statuto, famous among esoterics, is located half an hour away from there. The Prison Museum "Le Nuova" can be found nearby. The most convenient way to get here is by buses № 12, 58. You need to get off at the Torricelli or Rivalta stop.
