The Regio Politecnico di Torino (Royal Turin Polytechnic) was founded in 1906, following the model of the most famous European Polytechnic Schools, at the beginning of the 20th Century. It began to contact both the European scientific world and local and national industry.

Engineering and Architecture are the main professional courses at the Politecnico di Torino. Both have strategic planning and common interdisciplinary approach. The range of studies is broad and ever-widening : it spans space, environment and land, telecommunications, information, energy, mechanics, electronics, chemistry, automation, electrical engineering, industrial design, architecture and building, restoration...

All these very different subjects require different study methods. Both theory and technical planning are needed : method as well as inventiveness.

The Department of Housing and City (DICAS) focuses its teaching and research activities on themes related to the conservation and transformation of architectural and environmental resources.

It considers various methods of intervention on the built environments which permit the optimalization of their historical, economic, productive, morphological and technical aspects.

The interdisciplinary approach makes for an ever-widening knowledge of methodology and a broadening of research interests in various fields.

These fields range from land to the city. A wide matrix of technological knowledge and skills makes it possible for the Department to set itself goals of excellence in experimental research and to provide some answers to the many questions raised by the need to increase the value and manage a city’s architectural and environmental heritage.