OGR Torino: how Italy’s industrial landmark became a new hub of culture and innovation

OGR Torino is now an essential destination for anyone seeking an experience of art, architecture, and innovation in the heart of Turin. In these historic workshops—revived through the vision and commitment of the CRT Foundation—you can feel an atmosphere suspended between industrial heritage and contemporary creativity: every inch hints at the future, every hall echoes with possibility.

Here, exhibitions, installations, innovation, and technology blend together, transforming the visit into an unexpected and captivating journey. OGR Torino is a true hub where history, design, and experimentation are in constant conversation.

Get ready to uncover its powerful spirit and feel its authentic, vibrant energy.

 OGR Torino holds two complementary souls that shape its distinctive identity: OGR Cult, dedicated to contemporary culture and artistic production, and OGR Tech, an innovation ecosystem that hosts startups, research centers, and international projects. In this renewed space, the city finds a cultural laboratory where creativity, technology, and forward-looking ideas interact without boundaries.

Its identity is built around a spirit of continuous experimentation: OGR Torino is a place where artists, curators, entrepreneurs, and travelers meet, generating new narratives and new expressive forms.

It’s no surprise that, in recent years, it has become one of the most dynamic institutions on the Italian scene, frequently cited by cultural commentators and major media as a virtuous model of urban regeneration and creative production. A true point of reference now recognized well beyond national borders.

The 2025–2026 exhibitions at OGR Torino open a new season that expands the lens on contemporary culture, bringing together the roots of the digital age and the visionary poetics of Europe’s most radical art. The monumental halls of the former railway complex host two major exhibitions drawing strong critical attention: “Electric Dreams. Art & Technology Before the Internet,” organized with Tate Modern in London, and “We Felt A Star Dying,” dedicated to French-Belgian artist Laure Prouvost—created in collaboration with LAS Art Foundation.

The first exhibition retraces forty years of artistic experimentation with cutting-edge technologies, from the postwar period to the widespread arrival of the Internet. Visual art and technological modernity intersect in the work of artists who appropriated tools born in military and corporate contexts to forge new imaginaries: from electronic media to mathematical principles and algorithms, all the way to emerging fields like cybernetics.

Laure Prouvost’s exhibition—she won the Turner Prize in 2013—brings to OGR a poetic and disorienting universe: a multisensory installation featuring layered video works, enigmatic sculptures, and narrative fragments that transform the space into an experience both intimate and theatrical.

The strength of this season lies in OGR’s ability to present projects at the intersection of art and technology, with monumental installations that heighten the emotional resonance of the works within the vast industrial spaces. A synergy that positions OGR Torino as one of the most dynamic exhibition centers in Europe, attracting travelers seeking innovative artistic languages and immersive experiences.

Alongside the exhibition program unfolds a vibrant calendar of sound, performance, and cultural encounters. In 2026, OGR will host concerts by Mika (March 4), Yann Tiersen (March 7), and Subsonica, who will celebrate their 30-year career with four special dates (March 31 and April 1, 3, 4). The lineup expands with original formats like Voices, created in collaboration with Il Post, and with OGR Talks, a series where science, politics, literature, and society intertwine in open, contemporary conversations.

Stepping into OGR Torino means entering a world where industrial architecture transforms into an emotional landscape.

The monumental halls—framed by steel beams and brick surfaces—create visual and acoustic reverberations that turn every step into a sensory exploration.

In this setting, the artworks seem to breathe with the space itself: large-scale video pieces, luminous sculptures, multimedia elements, and interactive environments engage with the vastness around them, offering an experience meant not just to be observed, but truly lived.

Completing the journey are spaces that invite pause and sociability: Snodo’s dining area, the two expansive courtyards, and the curated bookshop all help transform the visit into a slower, more reflective moment. It is here that OGR Torino reveals its most authentic nature—a place where art, community, and everyday life intertwine with effortless harmony.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Officine Grandi Riparazioni emerged as one of the most advanced railway complexes in the Kingdom of Italy: a vast facility dedicated to the maintenance of long-distance trains. For decades, this industrial powerhouse embodied Turin’s engineering spirit and work ethic, preserving the memory of a city deeply connected to its industrial vocation.

After its closure in the 1990s, the entire complex was at risk of abandonment. It was the CRT Foundation that acquired the site and launched an ambitious restoration project, breathing new life into 35,000 square meters of industrial archaeology. Completed in 2017, the redevelopment quickly became a landmark example of urban regeneration—an intervention that honors the site’s architectural heritage while transforming it into a contemporary cultural infrastructure.

The impact on the city was immediate. OGR Torino established itself as a catalyst for social and economic transformation, attracting artists, entrepreneurs, researchers, and an international audience. Its renewed halls became a generator of ideas, a place where the community gathers and recognizes itself, giving rise to new forms of cultural participation.

Today, the OGR embody post-industrial Turin—a city reinventing its past to propel itself into the future. They stand as a symbol of its contemporary identity: a meeting point between memory and innovation, industry and creativity, the local and the global. A compelling example of how a space can be reborn without ever losing its soul.

The OGR Torino complex is now one of Italy’s finest examples of restored industrial archaeology. Its nineteenth-century halls, revived through a careful and respectful intervention, demonstrate how historic architecture can be transformed without losing authenticity: brick walls, steel trusses, and monumental volumes coexist with cutting-edge technological systems in a rare and striking balance.

This dialogue between memory and innovation lies at the heart of the project. Original surfaces, intentionally left visible to reveal the passage of time, are animated by lighting systems, sensors, and digital infrastructures that make the spaces adaptable to exhibitions, performances, research, and experimentation. At OGR, technology does not replace the past—it amplifies it.

Within this ecosystem, OGR Tech has taken shape as one of the country’s most dynamic innovation hubs, offering growth programs for startups and scaleups, as well as interdisciplinary and applied research initiatives. Here, entrepreneurs and creatives share a fertile environment made of laboratories, mentorship, international programs, and connections with Europe’s leading innovation networks.

It is this interplay between visual arts, creativity, and technology that makes OGR Torino a truly unique hub—not simply an exhibition venue, but a constantly evolving platform capable of generating cultural and social value. For travelers, it is an essential stop to understand contemporary Turin, a city reinventing itself by building on its own roots.