Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, ICO Factory, Ivrea, 1939-41
Photograph: Ugo Mulas, 1951 / Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti

Marcello Nizzoli, Lettera 22 typewriter, 1950
Photograph: Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti

Raymond Savignac, Lettera 22 advertising poster, 1953
Photograph: Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti

Inside the Scarmagno factory
Photograph: Gianni Berengo Gardin, 1967 / Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti

Exhibition Review

Olivetti: una bella società

Curators: Enrico Morteo, Manolo De Giorgi
Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Torino

8 May to 13 July 2008

PDF version
Turin celebrates a special year in 2008, bearing the title “World Design Capital” and hosting the World Congress of Architecture (UIA). Alongside the more programmatic events, several exhibitions on architectural history were mounted, focusing on local as well as international issues. The exhibition Olivetti: una bella società (Olivetti: a fine company, a better society) addressed both local and global aspects of industrial design. Founded in 1908 by Camillo Olivetti as a mechanical typewriter factory in Ivrea, a town between Turin and the Alps, the Olivetti company was inspired by the American market and the organization of industrial mass production, but Ivrea never became like Pullman, Illinois by George Pullman or any other American company town. Instead, Olivetti tried to use the idea of industry and a social and cultural community as a starting point in order to develop the entire society. The exhibition showed the many improvements in several fields supported by Olivetti: in techniques, design, architecture, urban planning, advertising and so on, interweaving disciplines and characters with the main innovations of the century. Organized topographically, the exhibition touched upon all these themes in order to characterize Olivetti’s unique and particular blend of activities. It began with the typewriters, increasingly light and portable, and with the contribution of designers, above all Marcello Nizzoli. The focus then shifted to the 1930s, with Adriano Olivetti, the founder’s son, and his contacts with the protagonists of architectural modernism (Edoardo Persico, Giuseppe Pagano, Ernesto Rogers, Luigi Figini & Gino Pollini), of graphic design and communication (Studio Boggeri), and of industrial design (Nizzoli). Finally, through electrification and electric adding machines - that later became computers - the company grew quickly, able to open factories all over the world until the 1980s, when the crisis began. Thus, the first section was dedicated to the products, while the second focused on more general topics, such as social research, visual art, architecture, photography, cinema, all strongly related to Olivetti as a client, a client with the wonderful obsession of creating ideas as well as objects. This way of explaining Olivetti’s world, chosen by the curators in order to transmit the company’s history to the “man on the street” lacking any disciplinary specialization, approached all the questions only superficially. From the point of view of architectural history, the fascinating projects such as the regional plan designed by Piero Bottoni and Ludovico Belgiojoso, the employees’ houses that were standardized to be in tune with the landscape, the factory buildings by Figini & Pollini, the contact with Le Corbusier, and - after the war - the community facilities by Mario Ridolfi & Wolfgang Frankl, and the factory buildings by Louis Kahn, James Stirling, Kenzo Tange, Marco Zanuso, Roberto Gabetti & Aimaro Isola, were presented mainly through photographs, as though they were just “objects.” The few drawings on show, without any corresponding plans, provided an incomplete representation of the complexity of the phenomenon and of the territorial scale of these buildings. Buildings, adding machines, books, and images all floated in a background of sound effects (the tip-tap of typewriters, the zzzz of adding machines, the voices of the employees) that accompanied the viewer through the visit. This careless treatment was unfortunate, because the pieces exhibited are important and their interest could be great. Happily, the two final sections of the exhibition offered truly new and original presentations. In the third section, the Olivetti foundation archives provided extraordinary material produced by the company for the non-fictional cinema, such as industrial films, documentaries, and interviews, with the direct contribution of figures like Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti for the script and Luciano Berio for the music. But the most amazing section was the fourth and last one, a sort of alphabet with freely associated ideas, where the visitor could finally comprehend the mix of social mission, humanitarianism, market values, successes and failures, protagonists and friends, that characterized the Olivetti company. In this ideal landscape, architecture found its own place. Wonderful original drawings and sketches represented the role that buildings (for production, facilities, and leisure), gardens and neighborhoods had in Olivetti’s policy, fostering innovation, a human scale, and an ethical attitude. In this context the exhibition could be read as an overview of that kind of modern architecture that takes into account its cultural and historical roots, even in the hypermodern and functionalist era. Enthusiastic visitors could continue their exploration of this architecture in Ivrea’s open air museum MaAM, with well-organized guided tours, thus completing their knowledge of this unique and virtuous chapter in architectural culture.

Publication related to exhibition:
Illustrated catalogue edited by the exhibition curators, with texts by Enrico Morteo, Manolo De Giorgi, Alberto Saibene, Patrizia Bonifazio. The catalogue is organized with the entries in alphabetical order, topic by topic, and shows all the material exhibited. Enrico Morteo, Manolo De Giorgi, ed. Olivetti: una bella società, Torino, London, Venezia, New York: Umberto Allemandi & C, 2008, 260 pp., color and b/w illus. € 38, ISBN 978-88-422-1655-1

Elena Dellapiana
Politecnico di Torino