Adriano Olivetti Research Articles

"Modernism with a Soul": Designing and Building Communities for Corporate and Civic Life.

This essay explores how film, feature and documentary, can offer a new perspective on modernist architecture, industrial design, and urban planning. Through the lens of two young directors, Kogonada and Davide Maffei, it traces the histories of two twentieth-century company towns: Ivrea, Italy, headquarters of Italian business machine giant Olivetti, and Columbus, Indiana, U.S.A., home to Cummins Inc., a global leader in diesel engine design and manufacturing. Adriano Olivetti and J. Irwin Miller shared the conviction that modernist architecture and design had a decisive role to play not just in the economic health of their respective firms but in the civic health of their surrounding communities. These companies have long abandoned the corporate idealism of their founding patrons. In film, Ivrea and Columbus have become architectural time capsules that raise important questions about the transformative power of architecture and design in the face of an increasingly competitive global economy.

Color in modern architecture of Olivetti's town

AbstractIvrea is a small city known throughout the world as the home of the Olivetti company. For many years, the innovative urban and architectural experiment inspired and supported by Adriano Olivetti, financed by his company for a large part of the twentieth century, was less well known internationally. His patronage and his far‐sighted vision for urban society have produced results of great relevance in the history of Italian industrialization and Modern Architecture. Since 2018, the architectural assets, the archives, cultural heritage and social experiments, have become part of the UNESCO Catalogue of World Heritage Sites (Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century). Today, many of these heritage buildings, characterized by external surfaces decorated with colored tiles of different types, have several conservation problems, due in many cases to the lack of ordinary maintenance. At the same time, the unavailability of original materials makes the planning of appropriate intervention solutions for maintenance and restoration difficult. This report intends to give an account of this event through two convergent approaches: (i) on the level of method, continually seeking a precise analysis of the materials, trying to refrain from the image of an ‘Olivetti's architecture’ flattened only on rationalist models—chromatically limited—to do justice to a less minimalist vision that has characterized the architectural heritage on matter since its inception; (ii) on the operative level, giving an account of the attempts to recover and restore that “world of colours” that is the Olivetti's city, also with a correct lexical reading of the architectural elements and the finding of materials (an operation declined toward “what can be done today”, given that many original products are unavailable and manufacturers are no longer in activity).

A UNESCO Site as a Tool to Promote Local Attractiveness: Investigating Stakeholders’ Opinions

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are a useful tool to protect and promote the legacy human beings leave over the centuries. Ivrea, a 20th century industrial city, is the second Italian industrial site recorded in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is a city in the North-West of Italy, historically known for the Olivetti factory, which made it world-famous by combining visionary ideals and a careful entrepreneurial policy. Our study focuses on the tourism value of the Ivrea UNESCO site and, in particular, aims at analyzing the level of integration of local stakeholders and their ability to identify guidelines for the promotion of the UNESCO site in terms of tourism. The research process was conducted with an in-depth analysis of the perception and consideration of public and private stakeholders concerning this topic. A questionnaire was prepared by a group of experts and individual interviews were conducted using the Delphi method; then, the results of the interviews were presented and the identification of priorities was carried out using the nominal group technique. Results show that the new UNESCO site in Ivrea has great potential, both in cultural terms, continuing the dissemination of Adriano Olivetti’s ideals, and in terms of tourism, because it may turn into a tourist attraction capable of generating new tourist flows and promoting the Olivetti approach.

From the Good Factory towards a New Sustainable Post-war Social Order in Italy. The Remarkable “Utopian” Welfare Work Policies of Adriano Olivetti and His Typewriter Company in the 1950s

In this paper, welfare work at Olivetti, a former well-known Italian typewriter and office machines company, will be analysed. Welfare work at Olivetti had reached its peak in the 1950s. This was relatively late in comparison to other noteworthy enlightened welfare work initiatives in the industrialized West. The heyday of welfare work in Europe and the United States occurred during the period from 1880 until 1930. From World War II onwards, the extensive Olivetti welfare work programs were embedded in a deliberate and encompassing communitarian social philosophy. Adriano Olivetti’s main objectives were twofold: to prevent worker alienation at the shopfloor level in his factories and to resolve political and social conflict in post-war Italy. This plan was to be carried out in a sustainable way by means of strengthening regional development. Within quite a short time span, the country underwent a rapid and intensive transformation from being a traditional agrarian society into one of the leading industrialized nations of Europe. A response will be provided to the question concerning to what extent Olivetti’s experiment can be considered unique in comparison to other significant enlightened welfare work experiments that took place between 1880 and 1930. Finally, the topicality of the Olivetti experiment will be considered.

Lentius, profundius, suavius, tre coordinate dell'abitare contemporaneo

The aphorism lentius, profundius, suavius of Alexander Langer overturns the most famous citius, altius, fortius. It is both a program and a vision to face the most urgent challenges of our time. Outdoor is the priority action context to design possible ways of reconciliation with the environment, the only way to rediscover the balanced integration with nature that Adriano Olivetti indicated as an antidote to the harmfulness of the urban environment. Nature plays a decisive role in our society. According to the German philosopher Gernot Böhme, this general reference to nature on the one hand is indicative of a desire to compensate for a lifestyle that is increasingly distant from its rhythms and its essence, on the other it represents a profound and radical removal. The pandemic has definitively undermined some of the dominant paradigms, leading to the establishment of a new phenomenology of nature based on perception. The health issue has quickly, and perhaps irreversibly, changed our lifestyles and our relationships with nature. In high-altitude contexts, the archetypes of architecture become the concepts through which architecture redefines its dialogue with the landscape by innovating its grammar and semantic relationships. A complex dialogue that triggers new genealogies and belonging in which design solutions become an opportunity for experimenting and innovating processes, forms and technologies. The following projects address these issues with respect to two founding themes of architecture: the refuge and the threshold.

Discorsi pubblici sul lavoro: fonti narrative dall’alto valore pedagogico-sociale

Is there a work and organizations’ethnography and anthropology that has passed and passes through words and discourses? Is it possible to extract from the analysis of public discourse about work the narration to outline an idea of work not only set up and carried out but also told, imagined, desired and above all educating? Printed paper, educational, scientific and political production can be considered very important sources to build a discourse about work and “popular pedagogy” and common sense connected to it in the sense of narration as historical and metabletic tool that contributes to individual and collective development. Words and speeches are epistemological frames and glances at the world have a connection with things. The word is not only a sign, it is also an image. The word brings, somewhat enigmatic, a connection with what it represents. Words therefore also have the power to produce transformations, to change the world, the way they see it and to represent it. Foucault had also written that words are fundamental codes behind a culture and influence experience and thought. Words and speeches about work, spoken and written, then, are a meta-narrative and can help to draw and dissect an unprecedented, alternative, parallel story. Also, a history of pedagogy of work is full of theories, models, methods but also of stories, of speeches of intellectuals, trade unionists, scholars, prominent figures, entrepreneurs who have dedicated their lives to the cause of a dignified and good work. For example, the speeches of Vittorio, Adriano Olivetti, the encyclicals of the different popes that have succeeded each other in history, the many aphorisms and speeches made by great entrepreneurs such as Cucinelli, Steve Jobs etc. that, in different ways, have helped to build an idea of work that - over the centuries - has profoundly changed. Starting from these reflections, the contribution aims to highlight the baggage of intangible assets and the implicit educational deposited in some exemplary narrative passages on the work that have helped to build collective stories and produce a shared sense, to give a specific identity to work and to propose its widespread representation with a high pedagogical-social value.

Endogeneity and place-based identifications in the age of precarity and surveillance capitalism

ABSTRACT This paper develops two analogies in order to conceptualise endogeneity as a category of analysis. The first analogy compares Indigenous understandings of place and place-making and territorio as defined in Italian territorialist traditions. They are both locales endowed with a specific personality and agency: one is the home of Indigenous peoples facing settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination, the other is the home of endogenous collectives facing increasing modalities of exogenous control. The second analogy links the current appropriation of metadata under ‘surveillance capitalism’ with past appropriations and their justification: terra nullius. This paper’s first and third section deal each with one of these analogies, while its second section bridges between the two by focusing on an early expression of territorialist aspirations and on an early experience of electronic networks development: Adriano Olivetti’s activity as political theorist and early developer of electronic machines. Both analogies sustain the analysis of a global settler-colonial present.

From the Thirties to post-war reconstruction. The Land Reclamation Consortia and rural architecture in Italy.

This investigation highlights a new conception of design space in architecture, in the relationship between settlement and land, rooted in architectural historical studies and research on rural and agrarian economy and unlocks a potential regeneration and restoration of the rural villages of Italy’s cultural heritage. In Italy, the theme of rural architecture has gained momentum ever since the spread of the Modern Movement, reviving settlement and spatial principles as a moral lesson for the general development of new aesthetics and a new society. Innovative concepts inspired by Arrigo Serpieri such as “Integral Land Reclamation”, and long-standing institutions such as the Land Reclamation Consortia, became official law in 1933, and played a crucialrole in this process, particularly in consolidating new architectural thinking that was to endure up to post-war reconstruction and beyond, until our own times. Paradoxically, ideologically opposing phenomena, settlements related to the extensive land reclamation of the Fascist period and the rural redevelopment of the Fifties, were somehow based on comparable theoretical and operational aspects. We can recognize these ideas by looking at the most interesting experiments developed in these two periods: the city of Sabaudia designed by Piccinato, and the village of La Martella at Matera designed by Quaroni (and sponsored by Adriano Olivetti). The quest for a new “moral aesthetic” of architecture undertaken by leading representatives of Italian Rationalism was to re-emerge in the neorealism of post-war reconstruction.

Zodiac, from Adriano Olivetti to Guido Canella

Zodiac, from Adriano Olivetti to Guido Canella

Sustainability and stakeholder approach in Olivetti from 1943 to 1960: a lesson from the past

Purpose of the paper : The sustainable enterprise focuses on its stakeholders’ interests. Today this perspective is a central one in the dialogue on enterprise goals and on the nature of the firm but it was already clear in the past history of some enlightened entrepreneurs like Adriano Olivetti. This important entrepreneur was able to balance economic responsibility and social ones in his managerial model and he showed that the pillars of sustainability, as we call them today, were internally coherent. Methodology : We apply an interpretative framework (Carroll’s pyramid) to analyze the entrepreneurial choices by Adriano Olivetti according to the various perspectives of Corporate Social Responsibility. Our analysis is based upon Adriano Olivetti’s texts and the transcriptions of his speeches, his biographies, and on interviews to managers that were active during the years of Adriano Olivetti’s administration of the Olivetti Group or later experienced the values left in the company after his untimely death. Findings : This article highlights how their extraordinary experience has demonstrated the full compatibility between social and economic responsibilities. Moreover, the article proves that the various dimensions of corporate social responsibility are tightly connected. Finally, it shows how good stakeholder management practices are a successful strategy. Research Limits : The article’s main limitation is that it is mostly based on anecdotal evidence and secondary sources. Practical implications : The analytical framework we employ can be useful in driving responsible management processes for modern managers and entrepreneurs. Originality of the paper : This article proposes two modified versions of a classic model on corporate social responsibility.

Wellbeing and firms: the Adriano Olivetti's model

The paper focuses on the Italian most prominent example of corporate social responsibility and socio-economic wellbeing - the Adriano Olivetti's experience - as the result of a synergic and virtuous exchange among firm, culture and community. Defining wellbeing as the overall health of an organisation - including organisational climate, social climate, employee productivity, performance, turnover - we aim to underline the key role Adriano played in the Italian industry and the anticipatory breadth of his governance. In fact, even if a lot has been said regarding Olivetti and his approach to work organisation, little has been said about Adriano's idea of organisational wellbeing. Adopting the case history methodology and rooting our analysis in Adriano's well-being model (built around ethics and community, culture of innovation and beauty of design), we would like to evidence the new and unrepeated humanity Olivetti gave to his firm.

Wellbeing and firms: the Adriano Olivetti's model

The paper focuses on the Italian most prominent example of corporate social responsibility and socio-economic wellbeing - the Adriano Olivetti's experience - as the result of a synergic and virtuous exchange among firm, culture and community. Defining wellbeing as the overall health of an organisation - including organisational climate, social climate, employee productivity, performance, turnover - we aim to underline the key role Adriano played in the Italian industry and the anticipatory breadth of his governance. In fact, even if a lot has been said regarding Olivetti and his approach to work organisation, little has been said about Adriano's idea of organisational wellbeing. Adopting the case history methodology and rooting our analysis in Adriano's well-being model (built around ethics and community, culture of innovation and beauty of design), we would like to evidence the new and unrepeated humanity Olivetti gave to his firm.

Tradition and Modernity: Working Culture in the Western Model and Japanese Model, as an Expression of a Cultural Models. A First Reading

In this short article, I'll leave the application of cultural models (in the West and in Japan), which define and construct a new reality (linguistic, cultural, social, work). Through this first reading will redefine better the cultural aspect of both worlds and you will better understand the similarities and differences between the Western model (even for the synthesis made by Adriano Olivetti) and the Japanese model (which is not only a way of producing, but also is a cultural expression).

Books on Utopia Published in Italy in 2016 and During the First Semester of 2017

Books on Utopia Published in Italy in 2016 and During the First Semester of 2017

Izgradnja i pouke u Falkeri - INA-Casa stambeno naselje u Torinu arhitekte Đovanija Astenga

Falchera is a social housing estate in the periphery of Turin designed by Giovanni Astengo and a group of architects in the fifties, in the context of the INA-Casa program. Imagined as an ideal organic neighbourhood, it was representative of an aspiration to a community life in peri-urban areas developed within the Comunità movement lead by Adriano Olivetti. Architecture was one of the media used to communicate an ideal of life. The design process followed by Astengo and the architects of Falchera thus had to adapt to communication strategies. The concept of organic neighbourhood was developed down to the scale of architectural detail through the use of an hexagonal pattern which created many difficulties on the building site as attested by archive documents conserved in Venice and in Turin. The civic centre concentrates the complexity of the whole project in one element, a mushroom-form column used to characterized the main square. In spite of problems with realisation and maintenance, this place still contributes to the identification of the inhabitants of Falchera with their neighbourhood.

Il magistero letterario di Pasolini su Volponi tra 'Officina' e Olivetti e la polemica intorno a Corporale

Pasolini’s literary teachings on Volponi between « Officina » and Olivetti and the diatribe about Corporale · This article reconstructs and examines the debate between Paolo Volponi and Pier Paolo Pasolini around the elaboration and publication of Corporale (1965-1974), and it does so by reconsidering Pasolini’s literary teachings (“magistero letterario”) and Adriano Olivetti’s industrial teachings (“magistero industriale”). On the one hand, the article suggests a more restrictive and specific understanding of the durable influence of Pasolini on Volponi’s work – by highlighting the relevance of the role of the journal « Officina » (1955-1959), and by highlighting the importance of the two authors’ positions in the literary field of the Fifties and the Sixties. On the other hand, the article aims at demonstrating that Volponi purports Olivetti’s democratic model of industry, while that model had already started proving more and more problematic (if not unachievable, unrealistic) and that Corporale is the novel in which the crisis of Olivetti’s utopistic industrial paradigm is more explicit and relevant. Furthermore and conclusively, the article reconsiders Pasolini’s review on Corporale in the light of an unpublished note written by Pasolini, in which he reconsiders Corporale, proposes a brief theory of the novel, and admits his closeness to Volponi’s point of view on the power and on the transformations of the Italian society during the Sixties

The Formation of a Heterotopia: An Inquiry into the Intermingling of Utopic Thoughts and Concrete Activities in Olivetti’s Ivrea

This essay explores the process by which the Olivetti factory and its related structures in Ivrea developed, especially under Adriano Olivetti from the 1930s through the 50s, into what could be regarded as a heterotopic space in keeping with the fundamental significance of the term as it was presented by Michel Foucault. Looking at four significant sources (or causes) of influence—Italian rationalism, Le Corbusier, the corporativist policies of Italian fascism, and Frank Lloyd Wright—the essay traces their respective roles in shaping the built environment of this relatively small subalpine Italian city. Specific projects discussed include the principal factory building and its numerous extension projects, Figini and Pollini’s workers’ housing units of 1935, the rationalist duo’s design of the social services building, and Piccinato’s Quartiere Bellavista.

Italian Design and Democracy

This article focuses on Italian design, a field which is particularly apt for study from the critical perspectives of cultural studies, both because of its hybrid, interdisciplinary nature, and because of its implicit imperative to change society, potentially even in more democratic ways. The fact that the Italian language uses the English word ‘design’ to refer to one of the most popular Italian production areas is significant. In Italy, in fact, there is no specific word describing a field that has a number of different connotations at the same time. Sometimes design seems to be a form of art, at times a science, sometimes an aesthetic discourse, or a philosophy of living. By way of reference to bel design, the Italian design of the 1950s, and particularly to the experience of Adriano Olivetti and his company, this article investigates a specific historical and intellectual conception of design as a complex and uneven movement, in terms of its political and ethical propensities. The article asks whether this conception of design is still possible nowadays.

La lezione di Steve Jobs: una riflessione italiana

In this paper we discuss the lesson that the legacy of Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur leaves to us, with a particular attention to what we, in Italy, can learn from it. Three are the issues we take into consideration: innovation, organization and sustainability. With respect to the first of them, we compare the way Apple has created its innovative products with the innovation done by other companies like Google and Facebook, to argue that Jobs was practicing at a very high quality level interaction design. With respect to organization, we stress that Jobs has paid great attention to the creation of durable company and we suggest a parallel between him and Adriano Olivetti. Finally, we show that sustainability has been considered as important, but after the quality of products. We conclude the paper with two provoking claims: first, we claim that Apple can be considered as a representative of the Italian Way of Doing Industry; second, we suggest a new perspective to create innovative applications of ICT, beyond Apple, called situated computing.

The Great Executive Dream: George Maciunas, Adriano Olivetti, and Fluxus Incorporated

Previous articleNext article No AccessLectures, Documents, and DiscussionsThe Great Executive Dream: George Maciunas, Adriano Olivetti, and Fluxus IncorporatedMari DumettMari Dumett Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Res Volume 53-54Spring-Autumn 2008 Published in association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/RESvn1ms25608824 Views: 40Total views on this site Copyright The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegePDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.