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MARCH 2: THE REDEVELOPMENT OF A FORMER ABANDONED INDUSTRIAL CITY

THE OLIVETTI’S VILLAGE IVREA | ITALY

INTRODUCTION

This project deals with the urban context of the city of Ivrea, Piedmont, Italy. Ivrea was an important point for Italy during the industrial development in the 20th century and it accommodated the main headquarters of the Olivetti company, an IT/ICT company that developed from the 1930’s until the 1960’s. The owner of the company, Adriano Olivetti, a man with exceptional managerial skills and of multidisciplinary interests, during the years of company growth, offered to finance urban development for the city several times.

The company had a major impact on the city since a big part of the South-West area was transformed into an industrial area with a village specifically dedicated to Olivetti’s workers: housing, offices, schools, nursery, canteen, etc. Olivetti, during these years developed a deep interest in urban design. He orchestrated many different studies for the development of the city, collaborating with Italian architects, for the proposal of a new Master Plan. Today, unfortunately, after the decline of the IT company, Ivrea stands in a retrograde condition. A good part of the buildings created for and by Adriano Olivetti are abandoned, but in good condition and full of potential as it is showed in the section of this project dedicated to the study of the site .

Due to its potential, and its successful industrial architecture, in the summer 2018, the city was selected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and was named “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20th century”.This nomination of the city was the initial idea for the development of my final university project.

This city is ready to receive new developments and needs implementation and organization of Olivetti’s original Strategic Plan integrated with the needs of today’s society. This thesis project will focus mainly on the study of the renovation of the Olivetti village, through new uses connected with IT and all subject recalling the past use of the buildings. The purpose of the project is to create a strategy on a masterplan scale level for the reconnection of the abandoned Olivetti’s village to the existing city and its community, moving to a more smaller project scale that will include the study of missing activities in the city that can develop a strategy for an interaction between the new community of Ivrea and the existing one.