Calcestruzzo, progetto, industria. L'Olivetti di Marco Zanuso

In the years of post-war reconstruction in Italy, the project seemed to be the only possibility of revenge on the ruins of the war and, at the same time, industry seemed to be the solution to the needs of a society that had to rebuild itself. The combination of design and industry thus extended to all sectors of artistic production, and the common thread running through it was the use of words borrowed from the world of industry - model, series, components, standardisation, reproducibility, etc. - thus generating the phenomenon of industrialisation, or 'generalised phenomenon' as Marco Zanuso affirms, "a consequence of the industrial revolution, the result of deep economic and social transformations, [...] one of the most revolutionary phenomena in the history of humanity, in which we are all involved both individually and collectively" [1][Zanuso, 1984]. In this scenario, the Olivetti entrepreneurial experience is set, which goes beyond the specific object of its production 'the typewriter' and turns to architectural and urban planning, cultural, publishing and political issues. Olivetti engaged the best Italian architects of the period, including Marco Zanuso. The factory is the topos of the project, which synthesises the theories of building industrialisation. Zanuso explored the potential of materials to approach issues related to the factory and found in reinforced concrete the possibility of rationalising the phases of the composition process. Thus, the structure embodies the perfect balance between technique and expressive language and becomes a generator of space, light, form and function. In particular, the beam-pillar node is perfectly expressed in the architectures built for Olivetti in Argentina and Brazil and reflects the ability to conceive the space of the factory as a single object, in which the recognition of the construction system becomes the identifying key of the factory itself.