Le fabbriche di Figini e Pollini: da Olivetti alla Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi

One of the most emblematic moment in the Figini and Pollini’s career as architects is the meeting with Adriano Olivetti, director of the homonymous factory in Ivrea and author of what can be considered the main stage in the evolution of the relationship between architecture and the industrial sector. A connection characterized by him with a more humanistic attitude, aimed at protecting the natural environment and improving the well-being of workers and of the whole society as well. The first originates from Milan, the second born in Rovereto, they fulfill and complement each other. An indivisible couple starting from the youth projects culminated in the ‘Electric house’ designed for the Triennale in Monza in 1930 as an authentic manifesto of a new architecture. During the V Triennale the three met for the first time, sharing from the beginning the need to go back to a rational and tradition path after the delirium of the war, which is just ended. Both the part support the spiritual value of creation, looking with hope at what is already happening in the ‘new world’, the United States. Thus, while Olivetti develops a program to renovate and valorize the industry from a political and social point of view, Figini and Pollini give shape to his ideas, transforming a workplace into the ideal community project for contemporary civilization. An ideal civilization that a few years later they will try to settle in the south of the country too, taking part in the Sparanise conversion project – a small village close to Caserta – from an agricultural area into an industrial site thanks to the establishment of the Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi. A project that, even if failed in its attempt to last, allows the two of them to see the vision of an ‘anti-city’, previously matured along their research, achieved. Made real here, through a factory conceived as an ideal harmonic dimension, marked by the search for a constant dialogue with nature, such as extension of the architecture itself.