The San Giuseppe Campus, home to D.I.S.S.T.E. – Historic background

The San Giuseppe complex was completed in 1865 to house the Collegio degli Artigianelli run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Giovan Battista de la Salle,  who had been in Vercelli since 1841 when they were called there by Archbishop Alessandro d'Angennes. The design of the building, in neo-Romanesque style according to the eclectic revival prevailing in those years, is thanks to the surveyor Giuseppe Locarni (Prarolo 1826 – Vercelli 1902), designer of various buildings in Vercelli including the neo-Renaissance chapel of Sant' Eusebio in the facing Cathedral, the Moorish-style Synagogue, the neo-Gothic facade of the former church of San Marco, used as a market and today the seat of ARCA, and the presbytery, also neo-Romanesque, of the church of San Bernardo (also known as the Madonna degli Infermi Church) . These works earned Locarni an honorary degree in Architecture in 1893 and, in 1899, election as mayor of the city.

The original brick construction, with three floors, is composed of a central body flanked according to the project by two wings projected forward so as to form a closed courtyard on three sides. Only one wing was built along the entire planned length, with the main entrance located on the first floor of the short front facing the square, while the other remained barely visible. On the facades facing the courtyard, on the first floor corresponding to street level and on the lower ground floor, there is a double closed loggia with round arches supported respectively by white stone columns and squat pillars, while the two upper floors have (both divided by decreasing columns) a third windowed loggia of half width and at the top a series of lower mullioned windows. More sober arched windows without frames, on the top floor likewise coupled as mullioned windows, characterise the external facades. The sloping roof creates two gabled facades on the fronts of the wings decorated at the top with a rose window and blind Lombard-style arches. Around the third decade of the twentieth century, a new wing was added behind the original building in an offset continuity with the entrance wing, to which it was connected via a low diagonal building block.

Having been renamed as Collegio Convitto San Giuseppe or more briefly Istituto San Giuseppe, the religious institution survived until 1993 as an elementary and lower secondary school with canteen service, and at the same time as a boarding school for students attending the city's high schools. In 1994 the La Salle order, after having had to close the boarding school due to the drop in enrolments and transfer the school, agreed with the mediation of the then-archbishop Tarcisio Bertone to sell the building to the Province of Vercelli. The Province bought it with the intention, immediately implemented, of transferring it on loan for use to the Turin Polytechnic so that, starting from the 1994/95 academic year, the II Faculty of Engineering could be established there. The Polytechnic entrusted construction of the adjacent triangular-plan building to the Isola & Boasso Engineering Studio; this was completed in 2005 and destined for teaching laboratories and heavy tests, as is still the case today.

After fifteen years, in 2010 the Polytechnic withdrew from use of the San Giuseppe premises; at the same time, the University of Eastern Piedmont was welcomed there, specifically the degree course in Materials Science - Chemistry from Novara. Thus began in 2011 negotiations between the Province, the Municipality and Uniupo, which in November 2012 - after the last courses at the Polytechnic - led to the programmr agreement and finally, on 5 August 2013, to the signing of the new thirty-year loan for use between the Province that owns the property and the University of Eastern Piedmont. As of the 2013/14 academic year, the San Giuseppe complex thus found itself hosting the degree courses split into Biological Sciences and Computer Science and those of Literature, Languages and Philosophy with their master's degrees, while in 2015 the sports field behind it was licensed for use by CUSPO (Eastern Piedmont University Sports Centre).

The rest of the story is recent: the Department of Science and Technological Innovation and that of Humanities - responsible for degree courses provided at San Giuseppe until the 2021/22 academic year – have left the teachers' offices, and soon they will also leave the classrooms to colleagues from the new Department for Sustainable Development and Ecological Transition.

Antonio Vannugli