Originally built in the late 1950s to supply the nearby Fiat factory with tyres and accessories, the Settimo Torinese plant has been one of the Pirelli’s Group’s most technologically and environmentally advanced production centres since 2011. Covering an area of 250,000 square metres, with a production capacity of 3.5 million tyres a year, Settimo Torinese is a perfect example of the Industry 4.0 factory, with its digital production processes and its Next MIRS system – a fully robotic production line that is extremely flexible and capable of producing high-tech tyres suited to the individual needs of each manufacturer. The complex is a centre of excellence also in terms of sustainability, respect for the environment and care for the workers. At the Centre, light entered a tyre factory for the first time, even in places that ought to remain dark, such as the compounds hall. The building has a special roof that filters natural light, making it possible to illuminate the rooms while blocking the sun’s rays.

Light also fills the Spina, the central body designed by the architect Renzo Piano between the two sectors of the factory. This Spina is a 400-metre-long rectilinear building “consisting of twelve buildings in structural metalwork raised from the ground – like the beads of a necklace strung on a long elevated glazed walkway running through them” – as the Renzo Piano Foundation website puts it – and connected to the factory at either end by covered walkways. La Spina, which houses the offices and the senior management facilities, the library, the canteen, and the changing rooms, is in line with the most advanced sustainability criteria and it places the emphasis on people: from the natural lighting system to the thermal insulation, the communal spaces and meeting places, and the particular care taken to blend it into its surroundings. The roof of the Spina is complex and technologically advanced, for it regulates the solar radiation and contains photovoltaic and solar heat panels and has water-permeable sunscreen fixtures on the sides, in the areas above the trees. An avenue with about 450 cherry trees runs along the Spina and there are also large green spaces near the car parks, and various types of poplars have been planted on the south, east and west sides of the complex.

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“A comfortable, pleasant, welcoming, and beautiful setting”, capable of seating 800 diners at a time, and serving up to six thousand meals a day. This is what was required of the architect Giulio Minoletti and the engineer Cesare Chiodi in 1955 for the new staff canteen at the Pirelli factory in Milan Bicocca, as we read in the Pirelli magazine article entitled Una mensa di fabbrica – “A Factory Canteen”. The designers got it absolutely right and the setting they created in 1957 was a perfect combination of beauty, functionality and comfort. The building is a sort of transparent box, with the inside divided into two bays. The lower one is for the kitchens and the distribution counter – with a self-service system introduced for the first time in Italy – and the higher, broader space is that of the large dining room, flooded with light from a glass wall that takes up the entire facade: “There is nothing but air and light, and almost no noise, between the ceiling and the hundreds of people walking around on the rubber floor between the red tables and the yellow chairs”, says Giuseppe Trevisani in the article.

It was around this time that a cooling tower, standing over forty metres tall, came into operation in the neighbourhood. By cooling the water, it supplied steam to the thermoelectric power plant, which was built after the war to make the Pirelli factory autonomous in terms of its energy supply. Over thirty years later, the tower that since 1950 had soared into the sky above Bicocca was completely re-imagined by the architect Vittorio Gregotti, who won the competition for the redevelopment of the area. The tower thus became the centre of the Group’s headquarters building, which now encloses it like a precious artefact in a display case. A ten-floor, 50 x 50 metre cube completely incorporates the tower, with offices on three sides and the fourth, as in the case of the canteen by Minoletti and Chiodi, closed by an enormous wall of glass that opens the building towards Bicocca and the city, from where the tower can be admired from the outside. The facade is the most prestigious and complex feature of the building, unlike anything in Italy: a 1,700-square-metre window, hooked to a steel beam at the top. Also the north and south sides, which contain most of the offices, are entirely glazed on the side that gives onto the internal courtyard and the tower, which is left free inside its “showcase” and which is accessed via overhead gangways.

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“The total glazing bonded in aluminium will reflect the motions of the sky”. This is how, in the pages of Pirelli magazine, the architect Carlo De Carli describes what the façade of the new Pirelli headquarters was going to look like. Designed by Gio Ponti and Giuseppe Valtolina, with the contribution of Pierluigi Nervi and Arturo Danusso, the Pirelli Tower opened in 1960. At the time, it was the tallest building in Milan and in Europe, and its facade was a continuous wall of aluminium and glass covering 9,500 square metres: a curtain wall covering the building, over the empty space between the vertical structures, and completely cladding the 31st floor of the building, from where one could enjoy a breath-taking view over the entire city.

With a ground plan measuring 18.5 metres across and about 70 metres long, tapering at the ends, the ratio between its width and height (127 metres) was far less than that of other skyscrapers, and it had never been tried out before in reinforced concrete buildings. The inner structure had load-bearing functions but also had to withstand to the action of the wind, with the lift shafts and services at the centre. This arrangement meant there would be no unused spaces. The interiors are spacious, bright and practical, thanks in part to the thin window-wall that separates the inside from the outer facade, which reflects “the motions of the sky” during the day and at night illuminates the building with its own light, making the Pirellone stand out against the bright skyline of Milan.

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Family-led enterprises analysed according to how much resilience they possess

Resilience, or, the ability to withstand, be flexible and bounce back. A crucial skill in production organisations, too, and one that, in family-led enterprises – well known for their unique production organisation nature – seems to be particularly developed. This is why understanding the core foundation of these enterprises is important, which is the goal of the research study undertaken by Damiano Petrolo, Chiara Morelli and Lucrezia Soncini, researchers at the University of Eastern Piedmont, recently published in Impresa Progetto. Electronic Journal of Management.

The stated aim of the study is to explore and deepen the knowledge and understanding of a topic that has received little attention so far: that of organisational resilience in family-led enterprises.

More in detail, the authors explain, the paper investigates the sources of organisational resilience and therefore, ultimately, the reasons why family-led enterprises show greater resilience than all other ones.

Petrolo, Morelli and Soncini’s study begins by framing the topic and providing an overview of the relevant literature, before exploring the resilience/family-led enterprises dyad; it then examines the case of such three Italian organisations. For each company, the authors take into consideration the role of technology, that of external stakeholders and the values of the owners, whose entrepreneurial characteristics are analysed.

The outcomes, in qualitative and quantitative terms, reveal that, as explained, “three main kinds of factors play a crucial role in the development of family-led enterprises’ organisational resilience: the owners’ values and entrepreneurial features, the relationships with external and local stakeholders and the organisational resources (technology, management mechanisms and managerial competence).”

Petrolo, Morelli and Soncini’s study does not claim to offer a comprehensive picture of organisational resilience in family-led enterprises, but does provide good food for thought and a starting point for further and more detailed research on this topic.

Le fonti della resilienza organizzativa nelle imprese familiari: uno studio esplorativo (“Sources of organisational resilience in family-led enterprises: an exploratory study”)

Damiano Petrolo, Chiara Morelli, Lucrezia Songini

Impresa Progetto. Electronic Journal of Management, 3/2022

A recently published book analyses leadership and provides tips on how to achieve it

“Leadership is a collective, collaborative and altruistic process. It is a widespread phenomenon entailing several leaders, not just one boss, within a workplace”. This is the notion that leads to success in most different spheres, including the corporate one. leadership, which is not about a single person in charge, but something more complex and intense. as well as intriguing. And is leadership, in its many shapes, that Gianluca Giansante discusses in his recently published Leadership. Teorie, tecniche, buone pratiche e falsi miti (Leadership. Theories, techniques, good practice and misconceptions).

The book’s underlying concept is as described above: true leadership is a collective activity. Starting with this assumption, Giansante embarks on a path based upon various sources of information and composed of various stages, which ends up constituting a kind of “leadership guidebook” aimed at people whose role is to run a company. a guidebook that also provides concrete advice on how to behave and what to avoid. Thus, readers learn about the key features that make a leader, how leaders conceive what they do and why, the importance of sharing and emotions, cooperation and agreement, reasons for acting and the relationship between leaders and power, as well as the risks that a leader might face. All explained in a clear language and through answers and questions that may seem obvious but are far from being so. as well as through the narration of experiences by Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, Marco Aurelio, Winston Churchill and many others.

In his conclusions, Giansante writes: “Leaders are not on their own, they belong to a group and their main duty is not to boss people around but to motivate them towards collaboration as a shared objective.”

Leadership. Teorie, tecniche, buone pratiche e falsi miti (Leadership. Theories, techniques, good practice and misconceptions)

Gianluca Giansante

Carocci editore, 2023

About Cities is a well-executed magazine edited by Fabio Brioschi and published by EuroMilano Servizi, and for quite some time now it’s been focusing its attention on narrating urban and metropolitan change, in the belief that efforts driving innovation, change and an improvement in work and life conditions tend to concentrate in cities. The new issue is entitled “Sempre in movimento. Per parlare delle città e ascoltarne la voce” (“Always on the move. To talk about cities and listen to their voices”) and centres on theoretical analyses and first-hand experiences concerning mobility, quality of life, and the conflicts and contradictions that citizens encounter in their daily lives (something that’s also echoed in the other publications related to the magazine, such as the original anthology Elementi di urbanistica noir – Elements of noir urban planning – curated by Gianni Biondillo, architect by education and profession but also brilliant noir author, whose books depict the gloomy criminal nature lurking behind the “thousand lights” of wealthy, glamorous and fashionable Milan).

Here’s the crux of the matter: cities are brimming with potential for development, including sustainable development, but, at the same time, they’re also marked by a significant economic and social fragility leading to serious reflections on politics and culture.

An attentive read of ISTAT’s Focus report entitled “Profili delle città metropolitane” (“Outlines of metropolitan cities”) helps gaining a better understanding of all this – published at the beginning of February, the report adopts the same two terms we mentioned above, “potential” and “frailty”, to frame the interpretative analysis of such phenomena.

Indeed, Focus scrutinises more thoroughly the data relating to the 14 metropolitan cities founded in accordance with the indications outlined in the reformed Title Five of the Italian Constitution and Law no. 56 of 7 April 2014 – that is, Turin, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bari, Reggio Calabria, Palermo, Messina, Catania and Cagliari (though critics find it’s too many, as only four of these cities count more than two million inhabitants: Rome, with over four million; Milan, with over three million; then Naples, with almost three, and Turin).

Let’s look at some highs and lows: Turin is the most extensive (6,827 square km), Genoa is the “oldest” (269 elderly people for every 100 young people) and Naples is the youngest (130 elderly people for every 100 young people). Bologna is the most cultured (42 graduates for every 100 residents) and counts the highest number of working women (51 women for every 100); Milan features the highest income per inhabitant (€23,202) and the highest entrepreneurial density (106 local units for every 1,000 inhabitants, for a total of 346,000 enterprises), as well as the highest labour productivity (added value per employee, equal to €71,200). Catania has the lowest income per inhabitant (€9,844), Messina shows the lowest production rate (€29,200) and Palermo the lowest employment rate (49% for people aged between 25 and 64).while Rome is the city that, over the past 20 years, has experienced the highest population growth, with an increase of 14%.

A careful analysis of the ISTAT data also reveals some underlying trends: over 21 million people live in metropolitan areas, while the majority of the Italian people prefer medium-sized cities, towns and villages, thus shaping a territory marked by highly widespread urbanisation and whose productive structure extends to smaller towns, or, to “the shadow of bell towers”, as renowned economic historian Carlo Maria Cipolla used to say. A peculiar structure, which allows the economy to be flexible, creative, productive and competitive, promoting the prevalence of a culture founded on the notion of “beautiful and well-made” manufacturing.

The North of Italy, as a whole, is more economically dynamic, and that’s where the greatest opportunities for change are concentrated. However, it’s also the region with the most ageing population: a situation that, looking ahead, prompts some serious political and economic questions, including those relating to the continued upkeep of welfare sustainability.

With regards to the demographic drop currently affecting the country, its impact on metropolitan areas is lower (-1.5% in 2030, as opposed to the -1.8% average for Italy), though it’s very unevenly distributed: Bologna (+2.9%) and Milan (+2.5%, with as much as +7% in the capital) will continue to grow, Rome will lose only 0.1% of the population, while Naples will drop by 2.8% and Messina by as much as 6%.

Employment, businesses and education attract young and dynamic people, although, according to other surveys and journalistic research, the appeal of Milan, for instance, is affected by increasingly relevant issues concerning services, the provision of affordable housing (“Housing, Milan loses the middle class”, was the headline of Corriere della Sera of 20 February; “Living in Milan, a nightmare that would stagger Orwell ”, stresses L’Espresso of 29 January), the cost of life and tangible opportunities for integration – fragility, as we mentioned, also within a context of positive change and development.

The ISTAT study focuses on statistical analysis and as such doesn’t include more precise observations, yet this data, portraying prospects of growth and unresolved social issues, also illustrates that what needs to be addressed by the Italian government, as well as by regional and municipal authorities, are opportunities for sustainable, environmental and social development.

If current trends driven by the knowledge economy identify cities and metropolitan areas as the sites for prospective and productive involvement in economic and social transformation, then that’s precisely where we need to act in order to instigate a “paradigm shift” in economic values, in order to attain a circular, civic, fairer and more balanced economy. Discussions “about cities”, basically, equate to discussions about quality of life, production, employment, consumption, civil coexistence, new and improved communities, collaborative and “competitive” attitudes. Always bearing in mind that the term ‘competitiveness’ derives from cum and petere – to pursue the right future, together.

(photo Getty Images)

For the seventh consecutive year, the Pirelli Foundation is back at MuseoCity, which is promoted by the City of Milan. From 3 to 5 March 2023 the event will involve the city’s institutions and museums as well as some organisations from outside the city. Pirelli will be there with two events to be held on 3 March 2023, one of which is designed for young people.

Designing Light: Pirelli and the Architecture of the Workplace

4 p.m. and 7 p.m. (two tours – lasts about 60 minutes)

A guided tour of Pirelli’s most distinctive buildings of yesterday and today. Using contemporary and historical archival documents preserved by the Foundation, visitors will explore the company’s ultra-modern canteen designed by Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s, and the Pirelli Tower by Gio Ponti, a masterpiece of Milanese architecture. They will also see the Bicocca headquarters designed by Vittorio Gregotti, which incorporates the former cooling tower of the factory, the “beautiful factory” in Settimo Torinese designed by Renzo Piano, and the renovated premises of the Pirelli factory in Bollate.

To register, please fill in the form at this link. Booking is required for the event and is subject to availability. Registration ends on Wednesday 1 March 2023.

Light at Pirelli: Make Your Own Magic Box

Workshop for children aged 8-11

5.30 p.m. (lasts about 90 minutes)

What do a cooling tower, a towering skyscraper and a factory surrounded by colourful cherry trees all have in common? What makes these places so beautiful and welcoming is the powerful presence of light that floods them. After visiting the Pirelli Foundation, the children will take part in a workshop, where they will be able to create a “magic box” that is activated by light and that will project their drawings. They will also be able to visit the Pirelli Historical Archive.

To register, please fill in the form at this link. Booking is required for the event and is subject to availability. Registration ends on Wednesday 1 March 2023.

Visitors’ entrance: Pirelli Foundation, Viale Sarca 220, Milan

For more information please write to visite@fondazionepirelli.org.

The training and refresher course for secondary school teachers is back. The 11th edition of Cinema & History, promoted by the Pirelli Foundation and the Fondazione ISEC, in collaboration with Cinema Beltrade, is devoted to the theme of travel. Always on the borderline between metaphor and reality, travel is replete with historical implications: from the Grand Tour to low-cost flights, from the exploration of Africa that accompanied the building of colonial empires to the great migratory flows across the centuries, through to the study tours of entrepreneurs.

And travel is not just about people, for also things and ideas move and interact, in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world.

The course is designed as a journey in five stages, linking history and cinema, and providing teachers with the tools they need to turn a theme that is often trivialised into an authentic experience, with a wealth of new stimuli and perspectives that will come out in the classroom activities.

To achieve this, the five historical sessions will be accompanied by a selection of films curated by the Cinema Beltrade. Finally, a workshop entitled “Travelling with Pygmalion – The Power of Moving Images” will help teachers use the films for educational purposes.

Registration for the course is free of charge but required. Please write to didattica2@fondazioneisec.it by Monday 13 February 2023. The meetings will be held live on the Microsoft Teams platform (we recommend you connect a few minutes early for technical tests if required).

Places on the course are limited and registrations will be accepted in order of receipt.

For the general programme of the course, please click here.

Join us on 20 February at 4 p.m.!

We look forward to seeing you.

The theatre training project organised by the Associazione Pier Lombardo in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation gets into full swing

The theatre training project L’UMANA IMPRESA. La fabbrica degli attori (“HUMAN ENTERPRISE: The Actor Factory”), organised by the Associazione Pier Lombardo in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation, was launched in December 2022. The investigation, in theatrical form, will take its cue from a reflection on some concepts that are shared by both corporate culture and artistic activity: vision, identity, transformation, and research, as well as the human ability to create artefacts and stories, and material and immaterial products, while also touching on the question of the relationship between man and machine.

Based on their memories and experiences at the Pirelli Historical Archive, six young twenty-somethings – chosen from among the new graduates from the drama academies of Milan – will have the task of telling the story of how companies that have their roots in a vision, and in an idea of a society that we dream about, can become the driving forces of change. With the communicative power and immediacy of theatre and with the use of dialogues, monologues, choral scenes and videos, the young actors will talk about science, research, production techniques, and creative relationships between people. And they will touch on topics such as sustainability, the economy, the fight against inequality, and protection of the environment. At the same time, they will improve their skills as creators of stories – immaterial products that have always been used to give meaning to everything around us, to life experiences, and to what still awaits us in the future.

The project consists of three stages: the first, which ended in December, was devoted to planning and to the selection of the actors. The second stage is focusing on training and research, with four weeks of intensive work at the Teatro Franco Parenti under the guidance of the director Stefano de Luca. This will examine the techniques of scenic art and create investigative drama situations based on the value of work and on that of industrial, commercial and artistic enterprises. Visits to the Historical Archive, which is now preserved at the Pirelli Foundation, and the visit to the Pirelli Research and Development laboratories will be invaluable, giving a far better understanding of certain issues and aspects of corporate culture.

The third and final stage of the project will be the show itself. There will be two events: on Tuesday 28 March 2023, there will be an interactive show for students from upper secondary schools and universities who will be involved and encouraged by the company to express themselves on the themes in hand, bringing in new ideas and insights. The second event, which is open to the general public, will be held in the evening of Monday 3 April 2023. It will be an opportunity to share the social value of the theatre.

Show:

L’UMANA IMPRESA
LA FABBRICA DEGLI ATTORI
Directed by Stefano de Luca
With
Tobia Dal Corso Polzot, Elia Galeotti, Lorenzo Giovannetti,
Claudia Grassi, Edoardo Rivoira, and Emilia Tiburzi

Information and reservations

For those wishing to take part in the show on 3 April, all the latest information will soon be available on the Teatro Franco Parenti website www.teatrofrancoparenti.it

We look forward to seeing you!

(Photo: Ilaria Maggioni and Andrea Salafia)

A study published by the Bank of Italy shows how effective the collaboration between production and research organisations can be

Collaborating in order to grow better, discovering new products and new markets – a state of affairs that also concerns the relationships between the business and the academic worlds and a significant indicator, too, of corporate and production cultures that are above average and different than the norm.

It is, however, important to properly understand the relationships, bonds and outcomes resulting from combining production and research, and amongst the many studies devoted to this topic, the one conducted by Daniela Bragoli, Flavia Cortelezzi and Massimiliano Rigon, published as part of the Temi di discussione (Discussion topics) series by the Bank of Italy, provides the perfect opportunity to do so.

“Innovazione delle imprese e cooperazione con le università. Nuove evidenze da un’indagine sulle imprese italiane” (“Innovative enterprises and collaborations with universities. New evidence from a study of Italian companies”) aims to analyse the impact that collaborating with universities has on the innovative spirit of Italian enterprises, distinguishing between purely technological, organisational or joint (both technological and organisational) innovations. Despite the fact that the study incorporates data gathered in 2007 and 2010 by the Bank of Italy’s Indagine sulle imprese industriali e dei servizi (Survey on industrial and service companies), or ‘Invind’, the outcomes reached are nonetheless significant for the understanding of the inner workings of relationships between production and research. After summarising the existing literature and analysing all the available data, the authors reach a number of final considerations. First of all, that collaborating with universities urges companies to adopt both technological and organisational innovations, which the literature generally sees as the most efficient factors when assessed in terms of market results, while companies that do not collaborate with universities tend to introduce new features that are purely technological. However, both technological and organisational factors are essential to succeed in the creation of virtuous and solid expansion paths, especially in times as complex as these.

Innovazione delle imprese e cooperazione con le università. Nuove evidenze da un’indagine sulle imprese italiane (“Innovative enterprises and collaborations with universities. New evidence from a study of Italian companies”)

Daniela Bragoli, Flavia Cortelezzi and Massimiliano Rigon

Bank of Italy, Temi di discussione, February 2023