When he was asked by a journalist from the Pirelli house organ Fatti e Notizie if he would have won if the circuit had all been in snow, the Dragon had not the slightest doubt: “I’d have won all the same. The Stratos is the best car and the P7 would have been perfect on the snow, too.” It was 24 January  1976 when Sandro “Dragon” Munari, together with Silvio Maiga in the Lancia Stratos no. 10 – won the Monte Carlo Rally. Forty years ago.

Although Munari had full confidence in the reliability of the tyres in dry conditions, he might have had some doubts about them on the snow… But the debut on the rally scene – at Monte Carlo in 1976 – of the brand-new Pirelli P7, which had been specially developed for the Lancia Stratos Alitalia, and which was being used for the first time as the “mono-tyre”, could not have been more successful. So successful that, on the only snow test on the entire route, the innovative ultra-low-profile created by Pirelli technicians had proved its absolute superiority. “What emerged was something quite extraordinary: a snow tyre with a racing compound”, said the Dragon. Enough to allow the Stratos to handle it well even without studded treads.

The first across the line on 24 January was Munari-Maiga’s Stratos no. 10. The second was another Stratos: the no. 6, with Waldegaard-Thorszelius, the Swedish team. And yet another Stratos came third: the all-French Bernard Darniche and Alain Mahé team, in no. 12. This hat-trick would have been enough to establish the absolute superiority of Pirelli at Monte Carlo in 1976, but the festivities also included the German team, with Walter Rohrl and Jochen Berger, who came in fourth in their Opal Kadett GT/E. With Pirelli P7s, of course.

A restyling of the paediatrics wing of Niguarda General Hospital, Milan

Amici in Viaggio (Travelling Friends) is a project born out of a collaboration between the Pirelli Foundation and Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti (NABA), a Milan art academy, for the restyling of the waiting and admissions areas dedicated to the young patients of the new paediatrics wing at Niguarda General Hospital in Milan. For the project, the Pirelli Foundation provided the company’s wealth of cultural heritage-three and a half kilometres of photos, periodicals, advertisements, sketches and other documents dating all the way back to 1872-to the students and faculty of the academy’s Communication Design programme (2014-2015).

The illustration on the cover of a Pirelli toy catalogue from the 1950, which is kept in the Foundation’s Historical Archives, served as inspiration for the stories of five characters that will be welcoming children from 23 December, including: Fred, the penguin; Barba, the elephant; Mimi, the seahorse; Tita, the giraffe; Dado, the dog; and Ginger, the seal.  This partnership with NABA is part of the Pirelli Foundation’s ongoing commitment both to keeping its historical heritage relevant by making it available to the communities in which the organisation operates and to promoting the creative talents of the young people in those communities.

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All the staff of the Pirelli Foundation wish you Happy Holidays and a wonderful start to the year, and look forward to seeing you on 7 January 2016.

2015 has been an exciting year with lots of events and great satisfaction, and we thank you for sharing many of these times together with us. One event was the presentation of the book A Muse in the Wheels. Pirelli: A Century of Art at the Service of its Products (Corraini Edizioni) at Triennale Milano: a moment to celebrate a great chapter in the history of graphics and design. Another was the exhibition of Italian know-how and iconic cars and motorcycles bearing the “Made in Italy” label at Expo 2015, where historical images illustrated 143 years of Pirelli manufacturing excellence. Then there were conferences and seminars, including the annual conference for business archivists of the Business Archives section of the International Council on Archives, (ICA/SBA), which was devoted to “Creating the Best Business Archive”, and Orientainsegnanti on “active teaching methods” in “Didattica attiva: L’alternanza cambia la didattica”, organised by Confindustria at the Auditorium of the Pirelli Headquarters.

More than 2100 students from schools of all grades took part in the workshops of Pirelli Foundation Educational and 7000 people visited the Pirelli Foundation to see the documents in the company’s Historical Archive. Also the “animated” guided tours drew big crowds, with over 500 visitors, when they were put on during the Business Culture Week.

Thank you all for your participation – come with us again in 2016!

Best wishes to you all.

On Wednesday 18 November 2015, the Autditorium in the Pirelli Headquarters was the venue for the Orientainsegnanti conference entitled “Active Teaching: Alternation Changes Teaching”, organised by Confindustria with the collaboration of Assolombarda and the Ufficio Scolastico Regionale per la Lombardia.

The decision to host the event is part of Pirelli’s commitment to supporting the training of young people for the future development of Italy, well aware of its role in promoting scientific and technical education but also of the humanities in the broadest sense of the term.

The event allowed for a joint reflection on the role that teachers play in the process of innovating teaching and promoting ways of alternating school and work.

At the end of the conference, the many participants were able to visit the former cooling tower inside the Pirelli Headquarters, the fifteenth-century Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, and the company’s Historical Archive at the Pirelli Foundation.

Milan, 16 November 2015

Saturday 14 November witnessed huge visitor numbers for the animated guided tours around the Pirelli Foundation, the Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, and the former cooling tower, which were opened specially for the 14th Corporate Culture Week, the theme of which this year is “The company goes on stage”.

At each stop, professional actors played the part of characters linked to the history of the places, bringing to life the guided tour with their incursions. With Ettore the mechanic, visitors were thus able to relive the legendary Peking-Paris of 1907, working life in the 1950s inside the former cooling tower through the tales of the stoker, a typical day in the fifteenth century out in the countryside in the company of the court musician, and they ended up taking part in the creation of advertisements in the “Propaganda Pirelli” department in the 1960s.

Thursday 8 October 2015 sees the opening of the exhibition of images of the objects that made the history of the “Made in Italy” label – and the history of Italian culture and society.

The exhibition is entitled The Great Game of Industry: 50 + 1 Objects that Made the History of Italian Enterprise and is organised by Museimpresa – the Italian Association of Museums and Business Archives – with the patronage of Assolombarda. Curated by Francesca Molteni, the show retraces the history of Italian industry in 50 objects + 1 (the fifty-first being the flying shuttle, invented in 1733, and a symbol of the Industrial Revolution), chosen from the collections of the archives and museums associated with Museimpresa.

The objects include the Pirelli Cinturato, the tyre created in 1952 after years of research and studies, the first with a radial carcass, termed “extraordinario!” by the famous Argentine driver Juan Manuel Fangio in 1965. The Cinturato helped revolutionise the automotive world and the way we travel. It was an Icon of the “Italy on the move” of the 1960s, and the focus of the most famous advertising campaigns by artists such as Bob Noorda, Riccardo Manzi, and Pino Tovaglia. It was immortalised in Ugo Mulas’s photo shoots.

The new workshops for upper and lower primary and secondary schools for the 2015-2016 school year are now available online in the special section devoted to Pirelli Foundation Educational.

The new programme includes a series of workshops on the issues of sustainability and road safety. Leafing through the lavish programme we also find Cinema & History, a series of meetings and screenings for teachers.

See the complete programme in the Related Content section or visit the page devoted to each individual workshop.

All the courses are about two-and-a-half hours long and are held at the Pirelli Foundation.

For reservations, see the updated calendar on the online pages of the individual workshops.

For further information, please write to scuola@fondazionepirelli.org or call +39 0264423971.

The Pirelli Foundation has contributed to the Pirelli Health, Safety, Environment (HSE) week for employees with an installation entitled Lunch Break: A Hundred Years of Italy at Table, at Home and at Work on the subject of nutrition and health, focusing on the history of the company’s canteens, holiday camps, and company food stores.

With documents from the Historical Archive, the exhibition tells a whole range of stories, from that of the first refectory set up in 1915 in the Pirelli factory in Milano Bicocca to the construction of the canteen for employees in the Milan factory in 1924, through to the first self-service diner designed for the Bicocca plant in 1956.

The visitors are greeted by a very special table “set” with anecdotes about the changing habits of the Italians, from food and drink to their tastes in music and cinema, television and graphics, household appliances and furnishings, which have all evolved over the years, together with Italian families.

The “menu” starts with tripe in sauce, the signature dish of the canteen in the 1940s, through to the risotto with champagne, a symbol of the culinary euphoria of the 1980s.