Ivrea, a town located in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, is the Italian city where, during the 20th century, the ideas of the modern movement found the most fertile ground for experimentation, thanks to the presence of the Olivetti company and the personal action of the founder’s son, Adriano Olivetti.
Ivrea became a “company town” closely associated with Olivetti. The company’s presence had a profound impact on the town’s development and culture. Olivetti’s influence extended beyond the workplace, with the company supporting cultural and social initiatives in Ivrea.
The architecture of the city, linked to this particular industrial experience, was in fact designed by the most famous Italian architects and town planners (Figini and Pollini, Gardella, Ridolfi, Quaroni, Valle, Vittoria Gabetti and Isola), who had the opportunity to create new models and architectural languages, translating the best international experiences into an original and typically Italian interpretation.
The architecture of Ivrea bears witnesses to a period of great importance for Italian culture: from the 1930s to the 1960s, Adriano Olivetti enabled concrete experimentation in the fields of architecture and urban planning and, at the same time, promoted – through his personal idea of “community” – an original discussion in the field of social, political and economic analysis that would mark the Italian cultural debate of the post-war reconstruction years.
The industrial city of Ivrea was declared a UNESCO Site in 2018 with the designation as “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century.”
The CONCRETO MASTERPIECE will take place at the UNESCO Site of the Industrial City of Ivrea. This site is a collection of significant modern architecture buildings designed and built during the 1930s and the 1960s and representing a unique example in Europe of a modern company town. The CONCRETO APPRENTICE will be engaged to study and work directly on selected buildings and at a laboratory that will be installed in one of the iconic structures of the campus.
Ph by https://www.ivreacittaindustriale.it/
Learn more about Olivetti, and the Unesco Site: