16 Aug 2022 | Opinions,Case Study

Olivetti: The story of the iconic portable typewriter company that defined the global course of design

Adriano Olivetti’s innovative ideas that configured an exemplary working environment for work relationships as well as creative production.

DS.WRITER:

Sophia Throuvala

Image: ICA: Olivetti Showroom, Barcelona, designed by BBPR (1965). Photo: F. Català Roca, courtesy of Navone Associati, Milan itsnicethat.com

Olivetti is the name of the brand that defined design in the field of technology as well as marketing and IT. In its 114 years in the market, it has managed to unite all creative disciplines in order to promote the personalized experience of technology and communication through design. From the beginning of the history of modern design as well as of "working" devices, such as the typewriter, Olivetti transforms the utilitarian into something aesthetically perfect, i.e. into a modern experience. From design to presentation and finally, to sale, Olivetti has triumphed, leaving its mark on the design world forever.

The Olivetti typewriter factory was founded in Ivrea (near Turin), Italy in 1908, by the Italian Jew Camillo Olivetti. Within a few decades, when it passed into the hands of his son Adriano, it conquered the industrial world as the most innovative and successful company producing advanced systems, introducing the first automatic and portable typewriter already in the 1930s.

Adriano, although an engineer by profession, had a great love for the arts and specifically for architecture and design, which was still "fresh" in Italy and in general. In fact, Adriano could be considered one of the "prophets" of the genre, since, combining the functionalism of modernist architecture and Bauhaus with a new production philosophy, he created utilitarian and elegant objects which he even used to exhibit in museums.

Source: ilcontrafforte.com

In particular, design enters the vocabulary of Italian visual arts only in 1954 (that is, 21 years after Olivetti's typewriter) at the Triennale X, and for the first time, it is clearly differentiated from the decorative arts as they were called (Arts Décoratifs), into something new between decoration, sculpture, architecture and industrial production. The reason for this new categorization was the “labirinto dei ragazzi” of BBPR, a group of four iconic Italian architects, to whom we will return below.

Olivetti Showroom, New York Decorazione Murale di Costantino Nivola -1954 | Source: ilcontrafforte.com

Olivetti, inspired by modernism and the manifestos of modernity, wanted to transform his father's factory into a place of culture, the so-called "city of man". Ideologically opposed to capitalism and Taylorism, he tried to build a new system of production, which he hoped would be able to change the industrial world from within. In the context of the reorganization of the production system, Olivetti integrates art in an unprecedented way. Specifically, in 1931, he visited the Soviet Union to study the productive pattern of communism, and returning to Italy he decided that he should create a marketing and communication department, i.e. a graphic department, inspired by Russian posters. For this purpose, he hired the most important artists such as Luigi Munari, Ettore Sottsass, Luigi Veronesi and Gianni Pintori, mainly for the creation of the advertising posters and the campaign, while he also invited to the group, among others, the graphic designer and architect Marcello Nizzoli, who designed the outline of the famous typewriters.

At the management level, he organized management departments and offered to all workers, without exception, housing for them and their families, while also reducing working hours and increasing wages, benefits and social services, resulting in an increase in productivity and sales, and lack of workplace conflicts. To house both his workers and his typewriters, Olivetti collaborates with well-known architects, who are called upon to realize the urbanist community vision of the industrialist and to give meaning through architecture to what Olivetti stood for. Among other things, the workers' residences were "green", as they had spaces for cultivation as well as recreation, while they also provided educational spaces such as reading rooms, libraries and function rooms, in which discussions of poetry and cinema took place, with guests such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Paolo Volponi. As Olivetti believed, the education of workers and their contact with art was the primary area of production, so spaces like Edoardo Vittoria's Centro Studi were structured around this logic, leaving room for personal development and happiness of the occupants.

Source: gr.pinterest.com

On October 22, 1952, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organizes the exhibition "OLIVETTI: DESIGN IN INDUSTRY", with abstract photographs, architectural models, objects and documents of the Olivetti industry. The names of the most important, mainly Italian, architects and visual artists are coordinated for the first time in a historic exhibition exclusively for design. As stated in the MoMA press release, "The purpose of the exhibition is to encourage American industries to follow Olivetti's example in organizing all visual aspects of production under a single high design taste." In just two decades, Olivetti is an example in the field of design, while managing to join one of the most important art museums in the world.

Invitation to a private opening of the exhibition | Source: "Olivetti: Design in Industry" on Oct 1952

Olivetti Showroom, New York Area espositiva, 1954 | Source: web.archive.org

Already having stores in Paris, Vienna, London, Brussels, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Mexico and of course Turin, Olivetti opens its historic New York branch on Manhattan's most important thoroughfare, 5th Avenue, a year and a half after exhibition at MoMA. The design of the store is undertaken by the Milanese architectural studio BBPR (Gian Luigi Banfi, Ernesto Rogers, Enrico Peressutti and Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso), while the interior decoration is entrusted to the famous Italian sculptor Costantino Nivola, who creates on the walls his famous brutalist reliefs with the sand-casting technique. Finally, the famous typewriters are displayed in a museum, as if they were sculptures and not industrial products, placed on marble pedestals, thus completing Adriano's vision of an endless confluence of art and industrial production, creating a design culture that still influences and inspires.

Thereupon, Carlo Scarpa undertakes to design Olivetti's emblematic branch in Venice on Piazza San Marco, while Le Corbusier himself is invited for the Milan factory. After Adriano's sudden death in 1960, the company passed into the hands of his son Roberto, who continued to support and promote his father's vision of a primarily cultural and civilized industry. He held artistic and sculptural symposiums and conferences and organized design workshops in which artists from Gruppo T and Gruppo N participated. Olivetti's strategy is still a key source of inspiration for small and large design studios around the world, who want industrial production to embrace artistic thinking and functionality, in an environment of collaboration and continuous development. This is what makes Adriano Olivetti's form and philosophy paternal in the field of design, and the reason why his innovative perspective remains from timeless to exemplary. Today, the well-known Italian design awards "Olivetti Design Contest" bear the name of the brand. They are held annually in Ivrea - the birthplace of the house - in honour of its long-lived career in the field of designing and selling new technologies.