Olivetti’s Ivrea: How an Italian Tech Giant Built the World’s Most Progressive Company Town
If you trace the path of the Dora Baltea River in early spring, when it swells with melting snow from the Matterhorn, you will quietly arrive at what first appears to be any other small Italian town. Yet in the 1950s, Ivrea was the site of an unheralded experiment in living and working.
The Olivetti Company, founded in 1908 by Camillo Olivetti, was now run by his ambitious Son Adriano, and looked a lot like Apple Inc does today — it was at the forefront of technology, blending design and functionality in ways that had never been seen before, reshaping the office landscape around the globe. This was in no small part because of Adriano Olivetti, who was not a conventional businessman. He was political and had strong inclinations toward humanism. He was a self-taught student of city planning, and he read extensively the architectural and urbanist literature of the day. He hired famous designers to work on his products, making some of them, such as the 1949 Lettera 22 typewriter and the 1958 Elea 9003 mainframe computer, into icons of design.
As Italy began to build out of the war, Adriano’s passion for design transformed into a comprehensive corporate philosophy. This vision aimed to enhance every aspect of company life, from the design of a space bar, the colour schemes in advertising, and the living standards of its employees. Ivrea was the bold manifestation of this.
In Ivrea, Olivetti didn’t just build a factory; it constructed a vision. Employees weren’t merely workers; they were participants in an experiment of living. Education was a given, with sales and trade school courses available on-site. Cultural enrichment peppered their lunch hours, with actors, musicians, and poets providing daily diversions. Retirement wasn’t a concern but a promise of dignity, ensured through substantial pensions.
Housing was not just provided but crafted, with modernist homes and apartments available for those who wanted to embrace the company’s vision of living. Children were nurtured, cared for without cost, while mothers-to-be were granted an almost unheard-of 10 months of maternity leave. World class healthcare, social services, and recreation were provided for free. July was not just a month but a breath of life, a time for employees to reconnect with their agrarian roots, tending small farms, bridging the divide between the urban and the rural in a harmonious balance.
And the buildings — factories, canteens, offices, study areas — were not mere structures but statements. Designed by leading Modernist architects, including Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, and Le Corbusier, they stood as airy palaces with glass curtain walls, flat concrete roofs, and glazed brick tiles.
Published in January 1960, just weeks before he died, his book Citta dell’Uomo (City of Man) called for urban development “on a human scale”, with the goal being “harmony between private life and public life, between work and the home, between centres of consumption and centres of production”. Olivetti’s Ivrea was more than a place of work; it was to be a model for Italy and the world.
The City
Social Service Centre
Designed by Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini between 1955–1959, the Olivetti Social Services building was envisioned as the social and community heart of Ivrea, housing the company’s library and social spaces. With a ship-like appearance from the street and a solarium along its rooftop ‘deck’, the building heavily incorporates hexagons in its layout and proportions to create harmonious, open spaces that foster a sense of unity and togetherness.
Olivetti Office Building
At the heart of the Olivetti Office Building, designed by Annibale Fiocchi, Gian Antonio Bernasconi, and Marcello Nizzoli (1952–1964), lies a stunning interior atrium. Dominated by a majestic staircase and adorned with luxurious materials, the atrium connects the three main blocks positioned at 120-degree angles. Adriano wanted the central space to create a sense of grandeur and unity, reflecting the company’s stature and importance.
Study and Experience Centre
Designed by Eduardo Vittoria (1951–1954), the Olivetti Study and Experience Centre boasts striking glossy blue klinker-covered walls in contrast with white horizontal beams and vertical pillars. Four asymmetric wings surround a central block, featuring a rhomboid staircase lit by a glass skylight. Initially hosting training courses for Olivetti’s mechanical designers, today, it serves as the headquarters for what is left of the Olivetti Company.
The Factories
Four different factories were built. Each connected to the other in one long strip. Above, the original 1908 red brick factory connects to the 1936 extension. Which itself connects to the 1949 extension, and the final in 1958.
Each facade evolves and refines the one before. Each reflects the architectural capacities of their era, each reinforcing Adriano’s ethos belief in the importance of natural light.
“The factory was designed to a human scale — [to] be an instrument of fulfilment and not a source of suffering. So we wanted low windows, open courtyards, and trees in the garden to banish the feeling of being in a constricted and hostile enclosure….”
Nursery
Between 1939 and 1941, the Olivetti Nursery School took shape under the guidance of architects Figini and Pollini, surrounded by boxwood hedges and hidden from the road’s gaze. Distinguished by its child-friendly architecture, featuring colourful facades, large windows, and outdoor play areas that encouraged learning through exploration and interaction with the environment. The school’s design was grounded in the theory that early childhood education should be engaging and stimulating to foster cognitive development and creativity.
Talponia
In 1971, it unveiled one of the city’s more unusual constructions: a housing estate best known locally by its nickname “Talponia” (Moleville) for the fact that it is built almost entirely under a hill, with only one face exposed. From the nearby road the only thing visible is a series of glass domes, poking out of a stretch of land covered with concrete tiles, like futuristic mole hills.
La Serra Complex
The La Serra complex was also opened — one of the few Olivetti constructions in the city centre. An enormous cultural centre, it had an auditorium, cinema, hotel and restaurant. Built in steel grey with bright yellow detailing, it was designed to resemble a typewriter, with its hotel rooms in pods that stick out from the building as if they were keys. It’s distinctive aesthetic inspiring apartments in Star Wars’ Andor, amongst others.
Company Towns and Power
In the United States, company towns were primarily established by corporations seeking to suppress progressive movements and exert complete control over their employees’ lives. However, in Ivrea, Italy, Olivetti took a different approach, creating a town that was more akin to a kibbutz than a typical American company town.
This unique perspective made Ivrea, for a time, one of the most progressive and successful company towns in the world. Unlike other company towns, Ivrea was not founded on the principles of control or convenience. Instead, it represented a new, albeit short-lived, form of corporate idealism. In this model, business, politics, architecture, and the daily lives of the company’s employees were all interconnected and mutually influential, creating a harmonious and progressive environment.
This is thanks in no small part to Adriano, who was within himself equal parts a grandiose humanitarian, self-obsessed entrepreneur and sententious rich autodidact.
Having been inducted into an already successful company, Adriano also had the crucial experience of working in a factory himself. This set him apart from figures like Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer from a generation earlier who, despite coming from an elite background, concluded that work needed to be rationalised to the extreme, leading to his concept of “scientific management.”
Adriano’s firsthand experience on the factory floor exposed him to the alienation of repetitive labor, an understanding he later articulated as “the awful monotony and the weight of repeating actions ad infinitum, on a drill or a press.” This experience led him to the realisation that “it was necessary to set man free from this degrading slavery.” Gastone Garziera, an engineer who worked on computing and electronics in the 1960s and ’70s, recalled Adriano Olivetti’s “desire to lighten in any way possible” the burden of work.
For Adriano Olivetti, urban planning was not an isolated endeavour but rather an integral part of a broader political project. In the late 1940s, he founded the Movimento Comunità (Community Movement) political party and was elected mayor of Ivrea in 1956. Just two years later, he became a member of the Italian parliament, further cementing his commitment to creating a more progressive and humane society, with Ivrea serving as a model for what could be achieved when business, politics, and the well-being of workers are considered in tandem.
The story of the Olivetti Company
The story of Ivrea is, in many respects, the story of Italy and Europe in the modern age. It is a tale of resurgence, innovation, and the struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
Olivetti, a symbol of historic pride, played a pivotal role in Italy’s post-war “miracle,” as the nation emerged from the depths of fascism and the catastrophe of World War II to become the world’s eighth-largest economy. In these years, Olivetti produced several of the products that brought it world renown. The lightweight and (relatively) portable Lettera 22, one of the most beautiful and functional machines ever made, became a popular typewriter for business as well as private use. Its baby blue coloration and the light, springy action of its rounded keys were part of the transformation from a typewriter as a loud, mechanical object for processing business to one that lent itself to contemplative, private writing. (It was the favorite of many American writers, including Thomas Pynchon, Sylvia Plath, Gore Vidal.) Later the P101, considered the first personal computer, cemented Olivetti’s global reputation.
In the early days of computing, Olivetti was a powerhouse. They introduced one of the first transistorised mainframes in 1959, established their own transistor company, and forged a strategic alliance with Fairchild Semiconductor, co-developing the planar process that revolutionised integrated circuit manufacturing. The P101 even played a role in NASA’s Apollo program, calculating the lunar module’s fuel consumption, trajectory, and landing time.
However, despite this early momentum, Olivetti’s success was short-lived. The death of Adriano Olivetti in 1960, coupled with the company’s ill-advised acquisition of Underwood, an American typewriter company, plunged Olivetti into crisis. Some attribute the company’s downfall to foreign interference, with rumours circulating about the suspicious death of Mario Tchou, Olivetti’s chief computer programmer, and American concerns about advanced computing technology falling into the hands of a country on the brink of Communism.
Under the leadership of Carlo De Benedetti, Olivetti attempted to streamline and adapt to the computer age, shedding its socialist impulses in the process. However, by the 1980s, global headwinds had taken their toll, and the company foundered.
In a fitting epilogue, Olivetti’s technology, even as the company faded, sparked the creation of the first webcam in 1991, used here in Cambridge to monitor a coffee pot. A testament to both it’s Italian heritage and its enduring innovative spirit.
The decline of Olivetti and Ivrea marked a significant shift in the balance of innovation between Europe and the United States. As the Italian company struggled to maintain its footing, American firms began to surge ahead, capitalising on the rapid advancements in computing technology that Olivetti had themselves originally developed. This period signalled a new era, one in which the United States would come to dominate the global technology landscape, leaving European companies, like Olivetti, to grapple with the challenges of staying relevant in an increasingly competitive market.
Olivetti and Ivrea’s tale encapsulates the tectonic shifts that reshaped post-war Europe, a stark reminder of the precariousness of success in an age of relentless technological change. As we look back on this pivotal moment in history, we are left to ponder the lessons it holds for the future of innovation, both in Europe and around the globe.
In the rise and fall of Olivetti and Ivrea, we witness a profound truth: that the fate of a company and its community are inextricably linked. Olivetti’s visionary ideals, born from Adriano’s singular blend of humanism, entrepreneurship, and intellectual curiosity, gave rise to a model of corporate responsibility that remains unmatched. Yet, as the winds of technological change and global competition buffeted the company, the dream of Ivrea as a “City of Man” faded, leaving in its wake a much smaller town grappling with its identity and future.
The legacy of Olivetti and Ivrea endures not just in the iconic products and buildings they left behind, but in the enduring questions they raise about the role of business in society. Can a company truly prioritise the well-being of its workers and community while remaining competitive in a cutthroat market? Is the vision of a harmonious balance between work and life, production and consumption, a utopian dream or an attainable reality?
As we navigate an age of unprecedented technological disruption and social upheaval, the lessons of Olivetti and Ivrea have never been more relevant. They remind us that innovation is not just about creating new products, but about imagining new ways of living and working together. They challenge us to think beyond the narrow pursuit of profit and to embrace a more holistic vision of progress, one that values the dignity of labor, the beauty of design, and the power of community.
In the end, the story of Olivetti and Ivrea is not just a nostalgic look back at a bygone era, but a call to action for a more humane and sustainable future. It falls to us to carry forward the spirit of Adriano Olivetti and to build a world where the “City of Man” is not just a fleeting experiment, but a lasting reality.
