THE LIVING ARCHIVE.
Strategic Design Workshop for the Activation of Olivetti’s Heritage.
Officine ICO, Ivrea, Italy.

Living Archive – Ivrea (2018) was developed as a participatory strategic framework for the sustainable transformation of the Olivetti Factories within the UNESCO site Ivrea, Industrial City of the 20th Century, inscribed on July 1st, 2018.

The workshop was conceived as a platform bringing together local and international actors to articulate a shared vision for the future of the industrial complex. Rather than treating heritage as a fixed collection of protected assets, the process reframed the territory itself as a Living Archive: a field in which tangible and intangible knowledge continues to circulate.

The first workshop took place in the historic Salone dei 2000, located in the 1934 extension of the Olivetti Factories designed by Figini and Pollini. It was in this space that the Living Archive framework was initially articulated. A second workshop further developed the approach, culminating in the submission of a Horizon 2020 project proposal.

By repositioning heritage as an active and relational field rather than a static object of conservation, Living Archive anticipates a dimension later systematized within Epistemic Design: spatial and cultural legacy is not preserved through immobilization, but activated through interpretative and projective engagement.

Displace — Heritage is displaced from an object of preservation to an active field of inquiry. The project shifts focus from safeguarding isolated buildings to reinterpreting the territory as a dynamic cultural system.

Expose — The Living Archive framework exposes the underlying conceptual, historical, and spatial structures of the Olivetti site, rendering them legible through collective workshops, spatial analysis, and shared diagrams.

Mediate — The process mediates between disciplines, temporalities, and institutional actors. Knowledge is translated across architecture, planning, cultural policy, and community engagement, enabling continuity between past, present, and future practices.

Activate — Living Archive activates heritage through operative scenarios and strategic roadmaps. Rather than remaining discursive, the process generates concrete project propositions and funding applications, transforming shared knowledge into institutional action.

Through participatory methodology and strategic reframing, the project treats territory not as a monument to be frozen in time, but as a living system to be continuously reinterpreted and reactivated.