Color in modern architecture of Olivetti's town

Abstract

Ivrea is a small city known throughout the world as the home of the Olivetti company. For many years, the innovative urban and architectural experiment inspired and supported by Adriano Olivetti, financed by his company for a large part of the twentieth century, was less well known internationally. His patronage and his far-sighted vision for urban society  have produced results of great relevance in the history of Italian industrialization and Modern Architecture. Since 2018, the architectural assets, the archives, cultural heritage and social experiments, have become part of the UNESCO Catalogue of World Heritage Sites (Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century). Today, many of these heritage buildings, characterized by external surfaces decorated with colored tiles of different types, have several conservation problems, due in many cases to the lack of ordinary maintenance. At the same time, the unavailability of original materials makes the planning of appropriate intervention solutions for maintenance and restoration difficult. This report intends to give an account of this event through two convergent approaches: (i) on the level of method, continually seeking a precise analysis of the materials, trying to refrain from the image of an ‘Olivetti's architecture’ flattened only on rationalist models—chromatically limited—to do justice to a less minimalist vision that has characterized the architectural heritage on matter since its inception; (ii) on the operative level, giving an account of the attempts to recover and restore that “world of colours” that is the Olivetti's city, also with a correct lexical reading of the architectural elements and the finding of materials (an operation declined toward “what can be done today”, given that many original products are unavailable and manufacturers are no longer in activity).