The Luigi Einaudi Campus of the University of Torino is home to the Faculties of Law and Political Sciences.  From a distance and from vantage points that look down on it, it would be reasonable to regard it as a single building but it is in fact a collection of seven buildings with a unifying white roof structure.  The university launched an international design competition in 2003 and the winning bid was from the group composed of Tecnimont, Foster & Partners, ICIS, Benedetto Camerana, Mellano Associati and Giugiaro Architettura.

The Architecture Daily website explains that, " ... the new buildings are functionally divided into two sections: one dedicated to teaching, with classrooms and departments that face the residences and gasometers, and one for the library ... along the river. All five blocks are distributed into five-storey buildings (with parking and technical rooms in the basement and a covered flat roof) distributed around a circular plaza."

The "livegreenblog.com" website adds that, " The iconic design of the roofs meets the needs for passive control of solar gain from the glass facades, based on the criteria of “solar design”, which in turn reduces the need for air conditioning in summer. ....


.... Natural light flows inside, ensuring an energy saving of about 20%, and it is controlled by a latest generation Building Automation system."

Environmental sustainability, energy saving, as well as visual, acoustic and environmental comfort were important factors in the design.  The Archilovers website goes into great detail about this.  They point out that among the measures taken to achieve these goals the designers incorporated, " Over 7,200 square meters of outdoor photocatalytic flooring have been used that, thanks to the combined action of sunlight, neutralize the hydrocarbon molecules, or dust pollutants that settle on them. ...  Great care has been taken in the use of materials with low environmental impact  ... for example, wood products that meet the rigorous standards of the Forest Stewardship Council ... The walls, designed and built to acoustically insulate the building, provide noise abatement which reaches values exceeding 48 dB: even in the presence of high external noise (due to traffic for instance) the educational or consulting activities take place in a quiet and comfortable environment."