The 15th Corporate Culture Week is now over, this year organised by Museimpresa under the title “The Beautiful Factory: Culture, Creativity and Sustainability” has come to an end. It gave an opportunity to get to know our business culture, with the Pirelli Foundation involved in several events which had a highly positive impact.

More than 650 people took part in the various activities, which included “animated” tours with professional actors, who reinterpreted stories of sustainability and innovation, a creative laboratory for children, “Music of the Factory!”, a bike tour from the Pirelli Tower to the Bicocca Headquarters through the places that have helped shape the history of Pirelli, and a theatrical play in collaboration with the Teatro Franco Parenti, “Le parole della fabbrica”, with readings of articles from the “Pirelli” magazine and the Annual Report of Pirelli & C. SpA, as well as a discussion with the actors Giusepe Cederna and Sarà Bertelà in the enchanting surroundings of the Auditorium in the cooling tower.

Excavations, foundation columns shooting up, panoramas, overviews, men at work, internal spaces, furniture and fittings: just a few of the subjects that make up more than 1,500 photographic images published in various forms (positives, photocolour and plate negatives) conserved in the Historic Archive of the Pirelli Foundation. The photos tell the story of the birth and construction of the Pirelli Skyscraper, or Pirelli Tower, known by all Italians as the “Pirellone“, one of the best-known and most widely recognised buildings in the country, a symbol of rebirth and regained momentum towards the future, from a country busy with building its very own “economic miracle”.

In 1955 Alberto and Piero Pirelli commissioned the architect Gio Ponti to build the new company centre, requesting that it be built on the area once occupied by the Casina Brusada, destroyed during bombing in 1943, right in front of the site where their first factory was built in 1872. Work began in 1956, overseen by a team of experts that included Luigi Nervi, Giuseppe Vatolina, Egidio dell’Orto and Arturo Danusso.

To commemorate the 6o years since the placing of the first stone in 1956 and to promote this important source of digitased photos, two series of images have now been made available online, “Demolition of the Brusada” and “Building the New Headquarters”, documenting the excavations, and stages in the construction and completion of the building, taken by important photographers such as Aldo Baldo and photojournalism agencies like Publifoto. Some of these photographs have been published in Pirelli magazine, including those by Harno Hammacher, under the title Man and Skyscraper, Other series of interiors and exteriors will also be available soon.

This important body of work has assisted studies, research and exhibitions, including Pier Luigi Nervi: Architecture as a Challenge, curated by Carlo Olmo and held in Turin in 2011; the exhibition put on by Lombardy Region, The Age of the Skyscraper, produced in collaboration with the Triennale Milano,as well as a study of the building’s construction process, presented by Professor Crippa of the Politecnico University of Milan as part of their work for the international congress on Photography of the 20th-century Architecture in Italy organised by the Lombardy Region and the Politecnico University of Milan.

The new section will be added to the catalogue of photographs related to car racing, fashion, and exhibitions, currently available in our online archive.

Fondazione Pirelli Educational’s activities for schools kicked off two months ago and more than 600 students have already enjoyed discovering the secrets of the Bicocca area, learning what raw materials are needed and how tyres are made, while also getting to know the most likeable family of cavemen in vintage Carosello television commercials.

Some of the most popular workshops organised in recent years have been refreshed and made more relevant to today’s world, like the “Factory of the Future”, in which students are invited to draw models of the ideal manufacturing plant using 3-D pens.

With the collaboration of our colleagues from Pirelli Communications, budding journalists from the Alessandrini middle school in Cesano Boscone learnt how to draw up a digital communications plan and pick the topics that are most suitable for grabbing the reader’s attention.

Classes from the Cartesio technical school in Cinisello Balsamo were the first to be accompanied on a one-day visit to the heart of the company: the Pirelli Historical Archive. Through key documents, photographs, objects, and audio-visuals in the Pirelli Foundation, the teenagers learnt about the development of the company that set off from Milan to become a global enterprise. The tour continued in the afternoon at the Industrial Centre in Settimo Torinese, where they received a warm welcome from the workers of this Italian centre of technological excellence, which was renovated by starchitect Renzo Piano.

The first lucky students will soon have the opportunity to step into a place which is usually off-limits: the Next MIRS – Modular Integrated Robotised System – plant in Milano Bicocca. High-performance tyres are made in this plant and the students will observe the painstaking yet delicate operation of the automated machinery that appear to dance to the beat.

The school year has just started and we are ready to continue our journey through the places of Pirelli and discover the world of work and the factory.

New Prospects for Dissemination and Teaching

From Monday 6 February 2017, the Pirelli Foundation will host a new series of meetings of the free Cinema & History 2016-2017 training and refresher course for teachers of primary and secondary schools of Lombardy Region.

The course, now in its fifth edition, is promoted by Fondazione ISEC and the Pirelli Foundation in collaboration with the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana. It examines the theme of Word History, which is highly topical in the world of history studies, bringing in the skills and knowledge for a global approach to history – in line with the educational content of our schools – offering a vision that goes beyond Eurocentrism. The programme for teachers consists of three lessons, an afternoon screening, and a final teaching workshop. Two film screenings, introduced by film history scholars, accompany the activities for teachers in the morning. They will also be open to the classes of students who may be interested. Registered teachers will be provided with teaching materials related to the course.

A certificate of attendance will be issued by Fondazione ISEC upon request.

Enrolment on the course is required. Please write to didattica@fondazioneisec.it by Monday 15 January 2017. Film screenings can also be booked for classes, while places last, by calling +39 0264423971 or by writing to schools@fondazionepirelli.org.

Historical documents from Fondazione Pirelli at the 74th EICMA. Fondazione Pirelli will be present at the Pirelli stand during the prestigious International Cycle and Motorcycle Exhibition (EICMA) in Milan from November 8 to 13 with a reconstruction of the history of products for motor scooters during the economic boom through advertisements, videos and materials picked from the Historical Archive.

Federico Patellani‘s photographs  and the advertising campaigns created by major artists such as Lora Lamm, Bob Noorda, Ezio Bonini and Max Huber bear witness to the new, “comfortable and fast” way of travelling on “motorettes” (as they were called in an article that appears in the Rivista Pirelli in 1950) that would become the symbol of the Italian economic development of the 1950s and 1960s capable of producing that celebrated feeling of freedom and “wind in your hair”.  Pirelli was the first Italian company to make tyres for motor scooters at end of the 1940s outfitting the first “Vespa” and “Lambretta” models. An advertisement dated 1952 announced that “the first factory to design tyres for motor scooters in Italy was Pirelli, providing a valid contribution to the success of this very modern vehicle. Pirelli has perfected production over time with the largest assortment of sizes and types, to the extent that most motor scooters leaving the factories and travelling on Italian roads are fitted with Pirelli tyres”.

The Pirelli tradition in the production of tyres for motor scooters continues today with the launch of the two new Angel and Diablo Scooter products.

The annual Corporate Culture Week is back – the event promoted by Confindustria in collaboration with Museimpresa is now in its 15th edition, taking place 10-24 November with the following theme: “The beautiful factory: culture, creativity, sustainability”.Once again, the Pirelli Foundation will open its doors to the public, with four events organised especially for the occasion. It begins on Saturday 12 November, with guided tours of the Pirelli Headquarters at the fourteenth century Bicocca degli Arcimboldi and of thePirelli Foundation’s historical archive. The visits will featureprofessional actors who will interpret stories ofcreativityandinnovation. It’s back to the Pirelli Foundation on Sunday  13 November for entertainment especially for children: “Music of the factory!”, making musical instruments with objects from the world ofmanufacturing and work.

On Friday 18 November, the Auditorium of the Pirelli Headquarters will transform itself into a theatre where the actors Giuseppe Cedernaand Sara Bertelà  will interpret written scripts from the “Pirelli” magazine by some of greatest writers of the twentieth century, includingUmberto Eco, Bruno Munari and Leonardo Sinisgalli. Then on Sunday 20 November, the Week draws to a close with a guided bicycle tour fromPirellone to the Bicocca quarter, discovering some of the places in Milan where Pirelli has left its mark.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Download the complete programme schedule of our events