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After attending the Stratosferica Utopia Time conference in Turin, Italy last fall, architect’s newspaper As a media partner for Monocle and Bloomberg, I have the opportunity to cross a website off my list of architectural destinations. On a gloomy Monday, I visited Ivrea, where the Olivetti campus is spread out over the hills south of the town center. The company’s factory buildings and social projects are impressive but not widely known, although the complex did become a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018. The citation makes clear the reason for the recognition: “Ivrea expressed a modern vision of the relationship between industrial production and architecture.”
Olivetti was founded by Camillo Olivetti in 1908 and started by producing typewriters. The company began as a brick factory but eventually commissioned a series of extensions from rationalist architects Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, including a curtain wall section that would have been the envy of Le Corbusier. The Olivetti brand flourished under the leadership of Adriano, son of Camilo. Olivetti has built architect-designed factories and showrooms around the world – from New York’s Fifth Avenue store by Milanese architect BBPR, which features sculptures by Costantino Nivola, to Carlo Scarpa’s Scarpa) Venice showroom in Piazza San Marco.
Olivetti cares about the well-being of its employees. In Ivrea it built housing for workers, a school and a canteen with a library. Factory employees were not laid off, just reassigned. Adriano was a socialist who distanced himself from both the fascist and communist parties. As Meryle Secrest explores in The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti, during World War II Adriano was a CIA officer Bureau informant and plotting against Mussolini. After the war, he founded his own political party, the Communist Party, but it soon failed.
Adriano was on a mission to expand before he died suddenly on a train in 1960, followed by the death of Mario Tchou, the company’s chief computer engineer, in a car accident the following year. Some, including members of the Secrest and Olivetti families, suspect foul play in both cases. The deal to acquire Underwood left Olivetti in financial jeopardy. Nonetheless, after a series of acquisitions and partial sales, Olivetti soldiered on: it wasn’t until 1968 that Ettore Sottsass’ Valentine typewriter became a hit. Nonetheless, it lost steam in the 1990s and was eventually absorbed by an Italian telecommunications company.
Today, many businesses are housed in the buildings on campus, but some remain vacant. I visited the nursery, which was part of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1952 exhibition “Polywood Industrial Design,” and whose restoration was nearly complete. In another building, there is a cafe next to the gym that serves lunch. Old machinery and archival materials are mixed with paper cups and placemats, as shown in the accompanying image, and the still lifes speak of a past collaboration that held the promise of a dream.
in this problem, one Explore a similar collective spirit, which is needed now more than ever. We feature coverage of the latest housing projects from Nashville to London as well as organizational developments in architectural practices and long-running New York nonprofits. Our Spotlight section showcases four new homes—from a single-family home in Nova Scotia’s Scenic Area to affordable housing in Los Angeles—as well as an in-depth suite of residential offerings. First, we visit ARO’s new studio (page 14) and explore new projects in Bologna and Hangzhou (pages 16-19). Finally, we preview this year’s exciting Facades+ events (page 11).
The back of this issue contains three articles closer to home in New York: an article describing the new additions and contemporary real estate pressures in Levittown (page 47); a portfolio of work by photographer Zara Pfeifer, and an accompanying author’s article oneAssociate Editor Dan Jonas Roche celebrates the 50th anniversary of Herman Jessor’s Co-op City (page 48); Roche interviews Daniel Libeskind about his upbringing and work in affordable housing (page 50). Studio Libeskind’s latest project is an affordable senior housing project set to open soon in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
Our families shape us profoundly. Last year, I spoke with architects Nina Cooke, brother and sister John and Sekou Cooke, about their upbringing and work (page 12). We were lucky enough to be joined by their parents, Leroy and Cynthia, who added their perspective to the conversation. If there are any other architects brave enough to be interviewed along with their parents, my inbox is open.
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