Adriano Olivetti's architectural utopia
Ivrea, a small city on the Dora Baltea river north of Turin, at the entrance to the Aosta Valley, has a unique place in the history of the twentieth century. Here in 1908 Camillo Olivetti founded the first Italian factory of typewriters, and his son Adriano Olivetti (1901 to 1960) turned it into one of the most innovative companies in the world, producing iconic typewriters such as the Lettera 22 and calculators, and in 1959 one of the first transistor computers, the Elea 9003. In 2018 Ivrea was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as "Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century".
Adriano Olivetti was an industrialist with a social vision: he believed that a factory should not only produce profit but also improve the lives of its workers and the community. He called the best architects and designers of the time, such as Figini and Pollini, Gardella, Zanuso and Vittoria, to build a complete city around the factory: glass-walled factories flooded with light, offices, houses for workers and managers, schools, nurseries, a hospital, libraries, canteens and social services, all of exceptional architectural quality. Today you can follow the MAAM, the open-air museum of modern architecture, along Corso Jervis, with the Red Brick Factory, the glass workshops, the residential district of Canton Vesco and the curious Talponia, a semicircular residential building half buried in the hill.
Tip: guided tours of the Olivetti city are organised on set days; Ivrea also has a medieval centre with a cathedral and the castle with four red towers.
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