96 The Olivetti method, beauty in circulation like vivifying blood, flourished from the design of the most beautiful factories in the world. It developed both in the territory, through the construction of avantgarde housing centers and attentive services to the person, as in the market, via products conceived by the best designers, exhibited in stores designed as art galleries, as if they were works of art, alongside some works of art. The Olivetti method spoke the language of an advertisement designed to reflect, like a mirror, the beauty that feeds it, and strengthened itself by means of the powerful weapon of culture, involving the greatest intellectuals of the time in order to combine, on the basis of the industry, technical knowledge and humanistic culture. For society to become humanity, growth to turn into progress. «We have brought our secret weapons to all the villages: books, courses, works of the human genius and works of art. We believe in the revolutionary virtue of culture that gives man his true power» Adriano Olivetti, Il cammino della Comunità12, 1956 From his father, a socialist Jew, he inherited the idea of community justice. From his mother, a Waldensian Protestant, the rooting in the territory and the idea of work as an ethical practice. From the in-depth study of classics such as Aristotle, the idea of the golden mean for communities of appropriate size, and such as St. Augustine, the willingness to dialogue with modernity. On these granite foundations, and on a rationalist and brutalist aesthetic dear to Le Corbusier, the urbanistic vision of Adriano Olivetti was based, he who was also founder and president of INU – National Institute of Urban planning – and creator of the very first planning regulations in the history of Italy – for Matera in 1951, for Ivrea in 1952. The factory belonging to the Olivettian community model disobeyed the previous, alienating idea of industrial architecture, having instead obeyed the logic of beauty as harmony governing everything, mind and ground, starting from the skin. An idea of fruitful architecture and, still today, instructive: Luca Zevi's curatorial project for the Italian Pavilion at the thirteenth Venice Architecture Biennale, in 2012, was entitled Architectures of Made in Italy: from Adriano Olivetti to the Green Economy, useful to understand that Olivetti's architecture was the paradigm of a development model in which industrial policy, social policies and cultural promotion can still offer an innovative way in planning territorial transformations. A paradigm of which two, in particular, are the emblems. In Ivrea, farming community, the expansion of the red brick factory is a majestic glazing surrounded by greenery, to foster transparency, brightness and continuity with the landscape; residential areas, tree-lined avenues, houses on the hills, common spaces and libraries, cultural centers, study centers and the nursery school are all designed by the greatest architects of the time, starting with the initial nucleus projected by Figini and Pollini, on that Jervis street defined by Le Corbusier, in 1958, the most beautiful street in the world - and which sixty years later, in 2018, was elected a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. In Pozzuoli, maritime community, the industrial district designed by Luigi Cosenza – whose green spaces were entrusted to the landscape architect Pietro Porcinai and the colors to Marcello Nizzoli, who chose the Pompeian red, the warm yellow of Naples and the sea blue, to accentuate the autonomy of the various buildings – is a composition divided into four volumes. The cross-shaped workshop, heart of the area and developed on two floors; the group of houses along the Domiziana; the buildings conceived for recreational services, social assistance, canteen-restaurant and kitchens; the volume containing the thermal power station. In front of it, clearly visible from the glass, the Gulf of Pozzuoli. On the marble stele, at the entrance, in the middle of the green oasis designed by Porcinai, the indelible words spoken by Adriano Olivetti at the inauguration of the factory: «Can industry set itself goals? Must these goals be the simple realization of profit? Or is there something, beyond the obvious rhythm, more fascinating: a destination, a vocation for the life of a factory? […] And so, this factory rose up in sight of the most characteristic bay in the world. The architect’s idea was to respect the beauty of this land, so that each day beauty would be of comfort to labor. The factory was therefore conceived on a human scale, so that each ordered work station would become a space of redemption, not suffering» Adriano Olivetti, To the workers of Pozzuoli, 1955 To those who, in 1953, pointed out to him that it was crazy to invest in the South, in contrast to migratory flows, by building a factory with such a refined design and in such an enchanting position, Olivetti replied smiling that, in case of economic loss, he would not have struggled to sell it as a wellness center for the elderly; actually, the Olivetti district in Pozzuoli, an oasis in the desert, recorded even higher profits than Ivrea. 12 tr. The path of Community (Ed.’s Note).
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