Steel and architectural experiments

As we well know, the industrialisation processes of the XVIII century coincide with drastic transformations in production methods, followed by the introduction of modern machinery.
The technological progress was sparked off by a series of experiments, including a number in Italy as well: one of the first hydraulic wheels built in England in 1717 by John Lombe in the silk mill on the River Derwent, was in fact inspired by the installations in Italian mills[i]. However, this is one of the few important contributions by Italian technology to the initial development of the Industrial Revolution which, while slow in taking off in Italy, spread quickly through the majority of Europe and America.

Consequently, Italy was outside the group of industrialised nations until the beginning of the XX century, when politics[ii] and the availability of efficient infrastructures[iii] could finally guarantee the right conditions for a modern industrial system to develop. At the beginning of the century, factories produced a drastic change to the country’s social and economic fabric, transforming the urban landscape, which became an industrial landscape, therefore losing centuries’ old farming traditions. Industry became the symbol for the new national economy and urban proletariat, playing a leading role in organising an unusual social model in Italy. However, the increasing importance of factories in the national social-economic framework was not corresponded by adequate reflection on the design of the factories, just considered purely in functional terms, neglecting the national architectural debate. Despite the interest that was raised in the thirties by articles in Costruzioni-Casabella[iv] or the glaring episodes of the Lingotto by Giacomo Mattè Trucco (1915), the New ICO in Ivrea by Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini (1934-1956) and the Olivetti factory in Pozzuoli, by Luigi Cosenza (1955), they were unable to raise the destiny of building production, often crushed by conventional and ordinary solutions. The building industry remained indifferent to the opportunity of producing excellence in terms of quality standards in the buildings, and this all reflected on the lack of metal structures, little used due to high production costs and the need for specialised labour. Therefore in the Italian case, the steel and factory duo remained only a potential, never investigated possibility.

Only a few isolated figures tackled the topic finding, in the relationship with industry and new opportunities offered by technological progress, the foundations for experimentation in continuity with the consistent international research. Among these, for the prestige it received, is the work of the German architect Konrad Wachsmann, whose results influence the aims and instruments of new research that the young architects were perfecting, leading to radical reconsideration in architecture generally and industrial buildings in particular. In this context Eduardo Vittoria, Bruno Morassutti and Marco Zanuso developed their personal research where steel was the protagonist, and their studies consider the theoretic-experimental assumptions and design experience of each one.

Steel constructions and architecture for factories are, for example, recurring themes in Vittoria’s planning practice. In the Olivetti fitting shop in San Bernardo (1961), Vittoria began with research into a systematic investigation of the structural, technological and formal aspects typical of industrial buildings. Theoretic-methodological assumption and foundation for designing the San Bernardo factory, on the outskirts of Ivrea, is the “quantity model”, a modular structure at the base of the development of the building, with its dual nature of technological element and “unit of measure able to face dimensionally the other environmental components in the landscape, such as the measurable quantity for number and size, [...] prototype [...] reproducible in a varying series of examples”[v].

The result is steel architecture designed as an open system that allows subsequent extensions, to respond to the new need for space[vi]. Wanting to guarantee a high potential of possible reconfigurations of the space, Vittoria developed specific design strategies involving different aspects: the structure, which can be extended by carefully studying the connections between the resistant elements that form the “quantity model”; the fixed partitions, made as narrow as possible; the roof, which guarantees natural diffused lighting[vii]; the network of the plant engineering integrated with the structure and extended to the entire surface, in whatever direction is preferred.

In the design for the Scarmagno factory Zanuso, who worked with Vittoria on this occasion, experimented with steel making leverage on long-standing personal experience in the use of prestressed reinforced concrete[viii]. Olivetti was once again the client in 1962 who commissioned their project for the new industrial complexes in northern and southern Italy, which would have supported the work of the Ivrea and Pozzuoli factories. According to the intention of the Piedmont based company, the experimental building in Scarmagno should have been an architectural prototype that could then be repeated in Crema and Marcianise.

The Scarmagno project was very different from Vittoria’s previous industrial experience, while analogies can be found in the modular design and method approach, the differences are clear in the solutions. The fitting shop in San Bernardo and the extension to the New ICO, solve the problems of flexibility with a widespread precise structure that identifies the optimum relationship between the sections contained by the resistant elements and the surfaces to be covered, while in Scarmagno the project theme is the great span to be covered with the modular metal structure[ix]. The requirement for large surfaces that the new industrial complex had to satisfy, means that each single “object-module” is very large, much larger than the previous “quantity model”, which allows an independent or aggregated function[x].

The factory in Longarone by Morassutti was, right from the start, a prototype. Built in just a few months in 1966[xi], the work is an exemplary project for introducing prefabricated structures off the site, and a systematic approach that guided the project from a territorial-functional scale to an organic introduction in the landscape – to the detailed scale, in defining each single component in the building.

The prototype dimension is characterised with the development of a modular, lightweight and flexible structure, where extensive study into the connections between the resistant elements is a prerequisite to achieve another equally important aim: assembly speed. The efforts were not in vain: the solution meant that the structure was assembled in just three weeks and, as it could also be extended in height, it could be repeated for the offices and industry in San Donato Milanese.

In Longarone, like San Bernardo and Scarmagno, the factory project concentrated on exploiting the technological and construction potential of steel, but elements required to identify them – first and foremost “spatial reticular structures in the roof”[xii] and compound columns[xiii] – have a different declination in Morassutti’s experience here. Due to the primary objective that is pursued they contribute to both the lightness of the structure and the attention to precise organisation of the operational phases, which were also subject to a very strict approach leading to significant innovations, especially if we consider a traditional building site in Italy in the sixties.

The experience of Vittoria, Zanuso and Morassutti highlight how one can experiment with steel even in difficult contexts, like Italy, and how the experimentation has complex implications that require a design approach based on industrial design operating methods[xiv]. This approach was later taken up by other Italian architects, who were able to take on and valorise encouragement that came, again, from Europe[xv].