Italy

On 27 February 1960 Adriano Olivetti died. With the disappearance of the businessman-guide, the construction cycle of its industrial and social project terminated and a period of great uncertainty opened up: the company, financially fragile, underwent a forced change of ownership and strategy.

Architecture, the space of human being, was for Adriano Olivetti an irreplaceable tool for the creation of communities. Ivrea and the Canavese territory were the main fields of action of an industrial policy characterised by strong social responsibility.

Eight weekly sessions, presented by international academics reflecting on some of the protagonists of the European and Latin American Modern Movement who trained or carried out part of their professional careers between the two continents.

"Rome and the Legacy of Louis I. Kahn", by Marco Falsetti and Elisabetta Barizza, will be presented as part of the review ‘Books at MAXXI’, in the Sala Scarpa.

The Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome and the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin present an exhibition by the architect and draughtsman Sergei Tchoban. A native of St Petersburg who has organically absorbed the harmony of this city’s proportionality and similitude, Sergei Tchoban has always striven to understand the laws which govern the development of cities like St Petersburg and the great prototypes in whose image it was created. Is it possible to preserve these cities’ outstanding quality? And is it possible to pursue this quality today, at the current stage of development of architecture? These are the central questions posed in the present exhibition, which marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 – 1778). One of the greatest artists of his time, Piranesi succeeded in capturing the development of the European city as a phenomenon which, despite many layers and internal contradictions, is nevertheless harmonious.