One step forward, for Milan as the “smart” and “steam” metropolis, a smart and innovative city. But also an attractive city, for major EU agencies and for international investments following the Brexit crisis. What step forward, exactly? The State University, with its scientific faculties, decided last week that it will be moving to the Expo area, beside Human Technopole, the large centre that specialises in life sciences and genomics, nanotechnologies and big data. And here it is, the development prospects of innovation, research and training, the new combination of “knowing” and “doing” that has always distinguished Milan throughout history and which is now in a position to keep up with ever-changing times. Indeed, the future of the “STEAM city”, to the use the acronym that is dear to Assolombarda (we have mentioned in several times in this blog), discussing science, technology, the environment and also education, arts (the entire sophisticated group of arts and creative knowledge) and manufacturing: a hot-pot of know-how, skills and abilities to develop that involve public and private institutions, companies, research centres, “social capital” that is supplemented by “scientific capital” and can have an extraordinary competitive force, within the context of a Europe that is redefining roles, powers and functions.

The decision concretely to proceed with the new university campus, which was made on 19th July by the board of directors of the State University and by the academic Senate, envisages 380 million Euros’ worth of investments (public university funding, as well as a contribution by the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti – Deposits and Loans Fund) to build a large campus with lecture theatres, laboratories and facilities for 18 thousand students and approximately 2 thousand researchers, spanning an area of 150 thousand square metres. All of which should be completed by 2020/2021. This is a major urban planning, design and scientific gamble. With a strong awareness that within the new panoramas of international competition, universities can be seen as major developmental leverage: well prepared youths, scientists, researchers, creatives. People who use intelligence and entrepreneurship as the key for growth. Milan boasts a generous ten universities, which are for the most part outstanding. With around 200 thousand students, 13 thousand of which foreign (this figure is destined to grow rapidly).

The State University will therefore be the main tenant of the Rho-Pero area, therefore embodying a project for the use of large spaces which, following the success of Expo2015, represent developmental leverage in terms of material and immaterial infrastructure, connections and transport and services along the strategic axis between Milan and Turin, the heart of the highly productive and innovative North-West of Italy. But, together with the university, there will also be Human Technopole, with all its technological platforms which pool together the various competencies of genomics (oncology, neuro-vegetative disorders, food science, cutting-edge pharmaceuticals, but also the management of all the mega-data concerning society, medicine and research). The multinational headquarters of Bayer, Roche and IBM (again, pharmaceutical, chemical and IT competencies). Centres for start-up companies, with a strong ability to attract scientific and entrepreneurial talents on an international scale. As well as cultural hotspots: La Scala could move its warehouses, production workshops and Academy activities there. An original blend. With all likelihood of becoming a European excellence.

The challenge is dear to many entities, both local, national and international. Renzi’s government, first and foremost, who was among the first supporters of having the Human Technopole in the Expo area, setting aside 150 million Euros for research for the project (albeit among much controversy in the scientific world). The State University, which gradually won the consent of the other universities across Milan. Assolombarda, ready to make the most of this opportunity for innovative manufacturing tied to training and research and to the re-launching of the “health supply chain”, industry and quality of life and of the environment. A qualified group of multinationals. As well as the Lombardy Region. Along with the Municipality of Milan, with the undoubting commitment of the new mayor Beppe Sala.

A difficult challenge, obviously. To be played out in terms of time frames (everything must be ready within a short time span of just five years), quality of constructions (Anac, the anti-corruption authority guided by Raffaele Cantone promised its commitment to oversee the accuracy and legality of tenders, as it previously did for Expo). In terms of economic prospects. But also a possible challenge, in a metropolis that has some sound trump cards to play in terms of attractiveness, production and financial investments, as well as for the location of large EU agencies, following the Brexit crisis.

Milan is “the place to be”, as the international media declared during the Expo season. The attraction remains and with the new plans, which we have already mentioned, it can continue to grow. In short, Milan could be the European capital.

The life and history of Pirelli span three centuries, something unusual even among the longest lasting companies. What are the values which have made this extraordinary outcome possible? And what are the distinguishing traits of the people who have managed the company over the years? This book tells the corporate history of Pirelli, from the birth of the company and the first factory in Milan in 1872 to its rapid international expansion up until its current dimensions as a global multinational, with 22 manufacturing plants in 13 countries throughout the world, fully integrated in the various economic and social contexts. It is a story of industries, entrepreneurs, managers, engineers, researchers and factory workers with a strong sense of identity that has endured over time. The book brings to light the elements that make up its success, among them the close focus paid by Pirelli to research, innovation and development and the constant care paid to all whose lives have been touched by its history. The book also covers and illustrates the thinking behind the investment choices made by Pirelli in the fibre optics and telecommunications sector, up until its recent ascent to the role of global premium player in the tyre industry. In reconstructing the facts of this history the book draws from a range of official sources from the archive of the Pirelli Foundation, the unpublished correspondence and direct testimonies of some of the main players and the private diaries of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

The Pirelli Foundation will take part in the 24th General Conference of ICOM, the International Council of Museums, taking place this year at Milan, 3-9 July.

The theme of the conference will be the relationship between museums and cultural landscapes, a strategic topic for museums of the third millennium.

During the week, attendees of the conference (professional people who are part of the museum-cultural panorama: archivists, historians, architects, town planners and restaurant owners) will also have the chance to visit the exhibition curated by the Pirelli Foundation; “The architecture of industry: a journey through the locations and history of Pirelli”, on 8 July at two separate times (10am and 3pm). The exhibition was put together for the 26th International Exhibition of the Triennale of Milan, titled “21st Century. Design after Design”, with the details below:

– the HQ1 building and the historical cooling tower, the starting point of the exhibition describing  the influence of Pirelli on industrial architecture and the urban fabric of Milan.

– the 14th century Villa Bicocca degli Arcimboldi

– the Pirelli Foundation, headquarters of the historical archive of the company, inside which it will also be possible to visit the exhibition “Pirelli, sustainable culture”

The last bell has rung at the Fondazione Pirelli Educational Workshops, too. The programmes organised by Fondazione Pirelli for the students of schools of all levels to learn about our rich corporate heritage and take part in our activities have finished for this year.

Some numbers: over 2500 students from more than 50 schools, 120 workshops with more than 200 hours of hands-on activities;  35 kilos of plasticine used by budding engineers to design new tread patterns and 110 kilos of plaster of Paris for blossoming fresco painters inspired by their visit to the splendid Bicocca degli Arcimboldi building.

And there were also in-depth analyses of tyre history and technology, graphics and advertising, urban transformation, photography, and corporate cinema.

And what about older students? Lower and upper secondary school students had access to state-of-the-art chemical laboratories and the Pirelli R&D facilities. They learnt about archives by studying and interpreting historical source documents and were invited to design the factory of the future under the banner of sustainability.

This school year is over but we look forward to seeing you again in September with a programme packed with new workshops and activities.

Can a small, industrial city, for many years seen as merely a suburb populated by factories and housing schemes, become Italy’s “city of culture” in 2018? Settimo Torinese, a town of 50,000 people on Turin’s commuter belt, along the motorway to Milan, has set itself this very challenge. It’s not a foolhardy one either, but a serious attempt to champion, within the public sphere, the idea that culture is not just for “art cities”. Albeit an essential breeding ground, culture can also be found in more “polytechnic” places, namely those with a tradition of manufacturing, industry and knowledge, of technological and social innovation, research, production relations, hospitality and integration.  In other word, places with are part of a broader definition of culture, and key contributors to a very Italian tradition whose roots extend deep into the country’s industrial heartlands.  A kind of culture that is laying the groundwork for a healthy future built on sustainable environmental and social development.

Proof that this bid to become “city of culture” – an idea advanced by deputy mayor Elena Piastra and immediately embraced by the whole council, led by Fabrizio Puppo (PD) – is not without foundation can be found in the list of sponsors. First and foremost, these include Renzo Piano and his Foundation (“Piano’s idea is to use the city as a thinking lab to create beauty,” deputy mayor Piastra explained). Theatrical actors the likes of Gabriele Vacis and Laura Curino (author of outstanding performances in the series of shows dedicated to Camillo and Adriano Olivetti are a prime example of “polytechnic culture” and the virtuous relationship between urban and industrial development, such as that seen in Ivrea and its current reappraisal. Sponsors also include the Cinema Museum and Turin’s Circle of Readers (one of Piedmont’s most dynamic, cultural institutions); umbrella trade organisations like Confcommercio and Coldiretti; premier training and research organisations, such as Turin Institute of Technology and the Italian Institute of Technology; and the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, chaired by Francesco Profumo, former rector of the Institute of Technology and government minister for education. It goes without saying, obviously, that the bid is also backed by Settimo’s blue-chip businesses, from Pirelli to Lavazza and L’Oreal (who has plans to bring pioneering, high-tech production lines to Settimo next year).

In a nutshell, factories are creating culture and they’re doing it with a clear commitment to social responsibility. They are also engendering sustainability, embracing renewable energies and lightening their environmental footprint, as well as generating employment, inclusion, and widespread wealth creation. What we are seeing is an authentic “machine civilisation” or   “industrial humanism”, of which Italy has many excellent examples. Settimo is testament to this.

The “backbone” of the Pirelli complex in Settimo  is a transparent, brightly-lit building designed by Renzo Piano and is home to services, R&D labs, the canteen, the library (boasting 6,000 books, run by Pirelli employees and connected to Turin and Piedmont regional libraries, making it an excellent example and national paradigm for “organisational libraries”)  and sports facilities.  It is surrounded by five hundred cherry trees (“the factory in the cherry garden” as Piano loves to call it, revelling in the literary resonance.) The two factory wings house high-tech, efficient and safe manufacturing systems.

The Pirelli complex is an example of “the beautiful factory” – a site which combines aesthetic considerations with productivity; safety with sustainability. Above all, it makes such considerations the cornerstone of a new kind of competitiveness that many Italian businesses are embracing. Likewise Confindustria’s Culture Group which received wholeheartedly Settimo’s bid to become city of culture.

Factories are therefore fostering culture. And manufacturing excellence. And representation. They are holding classical music concerts (even using the plant as a venue for “Settima a Settimo” – a performance of Beethoven’s masterpiece 7th symphony – during the MiTo 2014 festival.) Theatrical productions are being staged (starring Marco Paolini and Moni Ovadia). Projects are being run with schools. Then there’s the stage production of “Settimo” in Milan’s Piccolo Teatro first, then in Turin, telling a story of labour, industry and social transformation. Directed by Serena Sinigaglia and sustained by Fondazione Pirelli, the show proved a huge success with critics and public, alike.

We see industry and culture come together, time and time again.

The growing tendency to reappraise industrial buildings is another example of this, as they are seen as testament to Italy’s heritage of design and building intelligence from the 20th century.  The new type of “cultural tourism” currently in expansion and embracing old and new industrial sites, business museums and changing industrial cities runs parallel with this. Venice Biennale and Milan Triennale are both part of it. The cultural events promoted by umbrella organisations Assolombarda and Confindustrial are testament to it. Fondazione Pirelli has brought the group’s architecture centre stage, starting with the Bicocca building and Pirelli towers, a masterpiece designed by Gio Ponti,  then Pirelli headquarters, built by Studio Gregotti  around the company’s former cooling tower (an industrial relic that has become the symbol of post-industrial transformation and able to sit comfortably among the landmarks of a growing metropolitan city like Milan, championing the spirit of the most innovative forms of industry) and the BicoccaHangar, a contemporary art space in a disused factory which has innovated, transformed and given a new lease of life to a former suburb. Attention is also turned, obviously, to the new plant in Settimo Torinese, in drawings and executive projects by RPBW, the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop.”

Which brings us back to Settimo and it’s bid to become “city of culture”. It offers everything from cultural monuments and museums (nearby Turin provides several outstanding examples) to a culture of design, drawing, building, and doing. Its strength is innovation; and hospitality (factories were, in the 20th century, and continue, in the present day, to be the ultimate cradles of Italy’s very emblematic tradition of hospitality and integration); and storytelling: in theatres, cinema, literature, contemporary art, and in the dynamic language of the web. It is a challenge to be embraced… and achieved.

On June 17, 2016 in occasion of the XXI Triennale International Exhibition in Milan with the exhibition entitled “Industrial Architectures: from the Bicocca Project to the Settimo Torinese Industrial Site. A trip through Pirelli’s sites and history”, Fondazione Pirelli is organising a free bike tour to discover the corners of the city of Milan where Pirelli has left its mark.

The programme

3:30 p.m. Meeting at the “Pirelli” skyscraper in Piazza Duca d’Aosta.

4:00 p.m.: Visit to the “Le Età del grattacielo” (The ages of the skyscraper) exhibition on the 26th floor organised in partnership with Fondazione Pirelli.

4:45 p.m.: End of the visit and start of the bike tour heading towards the Bicocca district.

6:00 p.m.: Arrival at the Pirelli Headquarters where the bicycles will be left. Visit to the “Industrial Architectures” exhibition (maximum time: 1h 30m).
For logistic information and bookings (mandatory) call 0264423971 or write to a visite@fondazionepirelli.org

Total time: approximately 4 hours

Difficulty: easy

Bicycles and helmet will be supplied free of charge by Fondazione Pirelli (participants will be asked to sign a waiver of responsibility and leave an identification document).

The visit will be held at the Pirelli Headquarters in case of rain.

The Pirelli Foundation has devised a new exhibition layout that narrates, starting with the documents from the Historic Archive, the evolution of sustainable management as a competitive edge from 1872 to date.

This journey begins with raw materials, to see up close what makes up “the rubber soul of a tyre, how many and which components are used to make a tyre and how the hevea brasiliensis tree is grown and harvested, along with its unique characteristics, to obtain natural rubber. The exhibition continues with an in-depth investigation of the studies conducted over the years on renewable biomaterials, such as the guayule plant which has already been studied since 1936, and on the search for innovative materials including studies into synthetic rubber conducted since 1937 by the future Nobel Prize winner Giulio Natta for Pirelli, given the growing awareness of the strong social and economic impact of plantations. Visitors will be accompanied along the initial part of the exhibition by photographic reports of rubber plantations in 1922, by a report by Fulvio Roiter dating back to 1963 for “Pirelli” magazine, and also pictures taken in 2015 in Indonesia, where the partnership with Kirana Megatara, natural rubber processor and one of the group’s biggest suppliers, began, to guarantee the training of farmers and their families, and to support the productivity of plantations.

Scientific research and experiments on structures and materials are part of the next portion of the exhibition: men and women at work, machines and facilities from past and present.. Large-size photographs show the stages of the construction process of a tyre.  Photo shoots by Gabriele Basilico and by Arno Hammacher are combined with more recent pictures by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert of the New Industrial Pole in Settimo Torinese.

From factory to products: tyres designed in Pirelli laboratories to guarantee safety and performance, for efficient mobility that is increasingly environmentally-friendly. Durability and safety are core themes in the history of Pirelli product communication, as testified by the advertising campaigns by Pavel Engelmann, Alan Fletcher and Armando Testa or the famous man “with his eyes closed” by Riccardo Manzi.

The exhibition finishes with a more in-depth look into Pirelli’s role in the management of share capital. Welfare and training are just some of the tools with which Pirelli has always liaised with its employees and their families. Sports, leisure time, healthcare, focus on nutrition as told by archive documents, texts and photos. Today, like yesterday, and always, looking to the future.

60 years of “Pirelli Tower” history

Sixty years have passed since the foundation stone of the Pirelli skyscraper was laid. To celebrate this memorable event, the Regione Lombardia is holding “The Ages of the Skyscraper” exhibition on the 26th floor of the skyscraper, in collaboration with the Milan Triennale and as part of the 21st International Exhibition currently on in Milan. The anniversary is also being celebrated with unique Pirelli Foundation: photographs, drawings and posters illustrating the construction of the skyscraper and the Pirelli years.

Work began on the Pirelli Centre, known to all as the “Pirelli Tower”, in 1955 to a project by a group of professionals led by the architect Gio Ponti. It was  Alberto and Piero Pirelli in person who wanted the company’s new premises to be built on the site formerly occupied by the Cascina Brusada, destroyed by bombing in 1943 and right opposite the place where the first factory had been constructed in 1872. When it was inaugurated in 1960, the Pirelli Centre was hailed as more than an architectural masterpiece or the  modern headquarters of a great multinational corporation. It immediately came to symbolise a fresh leap into the future by a country busy constructing its “economic miracle”.

The documents selected from the Pirelli History Archives include pictures from its abundant photographic archives retracing every step of its construction: from casting the first foundations to inauguration, and illustrating the building’s interiors and exteriors. Also on show are covers of the “Pirelli” magazine (1955,1958 and 1959), an original design portraying the site of the factory in Via Ponte Seveso dated 1922 and built for the celebrations of its 5oth anniversary, and the catalogue“La moda e il grattacielo” with photos by Ugo Mulas and a layout by Bob Noorda. A 1964 poster in which a young Umberto Eco is asked to preside over a talk on “Cultural industry and mass industry” also illustrates the life of the skyscraper and cultural events held at the “Pirelli Cultural Centre”. Visitors are accompanied by quotes from an article by Dino Buzzati containing skyscraper anecdotes and published in the “Pirelli” magazine.

The exhibition opened on 25 May in the presence of representatives from the Regione Lombardia, the Triennale and the Pirelli Foundation.

The history of the skyscraper is included on the “The Architectures of Industry: from the Bicocca Project to the Industrial Centre in Settimo Torinese exhibition route. An itinerary visiting Pirelli locations and stories” curated by the Pirelli Foundation and part of the 21st Triennale di Milano International Exposition – “21st Century. Design after Design” of which Pirelli is an Official Partner.

As part of its commitment to fostering innovation, research, training, applied education and supporting young talents, this year the Pirelli Foundation is taking part in the 10th edition of the Educational Robotics Festival (the innovative educational method that uses small robots as tools for learning various types of skills, scheduled to take place on 12 and 13 May at the Milan-Bicocca University. It is organised by the Amicorobot Schools Network under the patronage of the Milano Bicocca University and of the Associazione Genitori della Scuola Primaria “G. B. Pirelli” (G.B.Pirelli. Primary School Parent’s Association)

Pirelli Foundation has been active for over four years in the field of education, with events also put on by the Pirelli Educational Foundation. The free programme consists of educational and creative courses for primary, middle and secondary schools with workshops that are also devoted to research and innovation topics.

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 May 2016 from 10:30 a.m. at the Milano Bicocca University, Building U26, Palestra Universitaria, in Via Giolli on the corner of Via T. Mann 8, Milan