TRIA: A new concept for street electrical cabinets in historic city centers
A street electrical cabinet designed as an urban object: for highly sensitive historic contexts, where function and presence must coexist.
We are proud to announce that Indra Italia S.p.A. has acquired the intellectual property of our design for TRIA—an urban, modular, and customizable street electrical cabinet conceived for the sensitive environments of Italian historic city centers and, more broadly, for urban spaces with high architectural complexity. In its first iteration, TRIA was developed for Rome’s historic city center following a specific request from Indra Italia: to translate a technical concept into an object capable of respecting cultural identity and the built landscape, with no compromise on safety, maintenance, and performance.
The design objective was clear: to surpass the quality of the devices currently in widespread use, often resolved as a purely “technical box” meant to serve an infrastructure function but lacking attention to visual impact and to the relationship with fragile contexts—where every added element inevitably becomes part of the urban narrative.
From concept to reality: a design that listens to the city, beyond pure utility
TRIA originates from observing the layered, quiet geometry of the historic city and the architectural signs that shape everyday life: arches, lines, curves. This formal vocabulary intersects with the graphic identity of the public-services operator: a logo that evolved from the repetition of three “C”s—water, energy, and environment—into the PIN symbol, the “droplet” universally recognized as a marker of place and territorial presence.
These are forms citizens recognize instinctively—in urban routes, signage, and the maps used to navigate every day. Within this urban grammar, one icon stands out for turning a technical necessity into a civic gesture: the Nasoni, the historic drinking fountains of Rome’s city center. Born with Rome as the capital to bring public water into daily life, they are more than street furniture: they are a distributed, reliable system designed for health and hygiene, and to relieve the water network by reducing pressure. A minimal object—yet one that became an urban ritual.
It is this lesson that TRIA carries into the present, not mimetically, but operationally. The Nasoni’s cylindrical body, marked by a sequence of moldings, produces a crisp and measured chiaroscuro: a generative code that becomes TRIA’s stratified skin. Here light is not an effect—it is the perceptual driver that activates the volume and makes its presence legible in public space. The depth of stratification is deliberately contained, yet it appears more pronounced thanks to the controlled rhythm between slats and voids, reflections, and shadow.
This is not decoration. It is a micro-architecture that defines the product’s identity, improves its urban perception, and integrates a decisive function: an anti-intrusion ventilation system designed to protect the electronic devices housed within the cabinet.
Light as material and urban language
In TRIA, light—natural by day and artificial by night—becomes the primary material shaping the volume. The stratified skin, with its curves and facets, captures light, generates shadows and reflections, and returns an object with a variable presence, coherent with changing environmental conditions. At night, an integrated LED system activates a second reading of the volume, strengthening visibility and recognizability and turning TRIA into an urban outpost capable of drawing attention when necessary.
Modularity and customization: a scalable platform for diverse contexts
Although conceived as a specific response to Rome’s historic city center, TRIA was designed as a modular and customizable platform. The cabinet integrates a lower base that isolates it from the ground and incorporates an anti-tip frame, and an upper module prepared for multiple technological configurations. A primary shell in recycled polycarbonate protects internal components from impacts and weathering, while the external slatted skin is available in different heights and proportions, built from a limited set of standard elements. This approach optimizes production and inventory management while ensuring a consistent language that can adapt to many urban scenarios.
From cabinet to connected urban interface
TRIA is not limited to housing electrical equipment: it is conceived as a multifunctional urban device. Alongside the infrastructure-focused configuration, the design includes a Digital Signage version integrating a large-format display in the upper module. In this configuration, TRIA becomes a connected urban interface capable of delivering service information, institutional communications, and dedicated content, aligned with smart city strategies. The cabinet thus becomes a physical point of contact between services and public space.
A design built for operators and for the city
TRIA was designed to facilitate field operations: integrated fold-down internal shelves and an anchoring system for a protective umbrella—against sun or rain—improve ergonomics and comfort during maintenance activities. The internal technical shell, containing terminal blocks and wiring, is suspended from an anti-tip frame to better withstand accidental impacts typical of parking maneuvers. In this way, the internal components are “decoupled” from the ground and can better absorb lateral forces, reducing the risk of damage.
In-house rapid prototyping and field validation
Thanks to the integrated services offered by ALO, the project’s rapid development was strongly supported by our ability to produce, in our in-house digital fabrication lab, all the parts needed for two prototypes at scales 1:4 and 1:1. The 1:4 prototype, produced through high-resolution SLA resin 3D printing, was crucial for identifying critical issues and defining production and assembly strategies. From the earliest stages, the objective was to embed in the design parameters compatible with serial manufacturing.
The 1:1 prototype, produced via FDM 3D printing in ABS, validated the choices made and proved especially effective for verifying, in real conditions, the interaction between the cabinet body and both natural and artificial light.
The future of the project: from prototyping to production
With the acquisition of intellectual property by Indra Italia S.p.A., TRIA now enters the large-scale production phase. The design—born as a concept and prototype—moves into manufacturing and deployment.
Will digital fabrication and 3D printing support modern serial production by enhancing quality and customization and enabling the high value-added use of secondary raw materials?
