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Personalities A number of people in the arts world had close and constructive ties with the Olivetti company and with Adriano Olivetti in particular. These relationships, formed through co-operation on major projects, were based on strong mutual esteem. The Olivetti Historical Archives house two very important collections on behalf of the Adriano Olivetti Foundation: the Ludovico Quaroni Archive and the Georges Friedmann Archive. The well-stocked Ludovico Quaroni Archive conserves material on an internationally famous architect, who was one of Adriano Olivetti's key associates on his town-planning activities. In a book on his work (Various Authors, Ludovico Quaroni, Gangemi, 1985), Quaroni writes that the progress achieved in town-planning during the olivettian period was based on an open form of experimentation of which great things were expected. This experimentation came to an abrupt end with Adriano's death and the frenzied arrival of a politically geared approach to town-planning, which coincided with the "loss of the center" in everything. As this quote indicates, Quaroni's relationship with Olivetti was close and intense. Pippo Ciorra (ibid.) notes that Quaroni's attempt to develop urban analysis systems by co-ordinating the various disciplines involved proceeded in full acoord with Adriano Olivetti's activities, which likewise aimed to identify the cross-references between the economic sciences and the new social sciences. Quaroni, of course, shared Adriano Olivetti's view of the territory as a complex entity; at the same time, the importance of their collaboration was magnified by the fact that Adriano's presence resolved to fundamental difficulties for the work of the architect: on one hand, the relationship with the political world lost its sense of coercion and pressure; on the other, the client-architect-institution triangle was transformed from the usual strait jacket into an ideal working platform. In addition, Olivetti offered a major stimulus for intellectual progress and a real opportunity for links with international culture. Although the Georges Friedmann Archive does not contain a large amount of material, it offers direct testimony on one of the most significant post-war projects in Italy's Mezzogiorno, the sociological study of the Sassi cave dwellings in Matera and the subsequent construction of a new village, La Martella. The project dates from the 1950s when Adriano Olivetti, together with Guido Nadzo, was a director of the Unrra-Casas housing relief programme, which promoted an organic approach to town-planning. On this occasion, Adriano Olivetti commissioned an extensive sociological survey from Georges Friedmann, with impressive results. |
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