Icons of the Italian Style. The Façade of Olivetti Headquarters Building in Milan (1954)

Abstract

The Olivetti historic headquarters in Clerici Street (Milan), built in 1954, is considered one of the most meaningful Italian works of the period after the Second World War. Designed by the architects Gian Antonio Bernasconi and Annibale Fiocchi, and by Marcello Nizzoli, the designer of the company, the building is one of the foremost achievements in the field of industrialization and prefabrication applied to the construction sector at that time in Italy. The project aims to reflect the “style” rather than the greatness of the brand. This result is obtained using innovative architectural solutions which are the expression of the principles that have always distinguished the brand: modernity, high efficiency and great precision. The building looks like a suspended volume, placed on a wide grid of reinforced concrete pillars coated with black oxidized aluminum. On the south-west front, the surface of the suspended volume consists of a curtain wall with mechanically orientable brise-soleils in aluminum. Since its construction, Palazzo Olivetti was considered as one of the greatest practical implementations of prefabrication, industrialization, mass production, optimization and use of highly specialized technologies. For this reason the building façade represents an icon of the Italian style of that period and the use of digital technologies is a significant implementation for its preservation and performance management.