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

The workshop was conceived to develop a vision for the strategic and sustainable development of the Olivetti Factories within the framework of the newly acknowledged UNESCO site Ivrea, Industrial City of the 20th Century (inscribed on July 1st, 2018). The process was structured as a participatory platform involving local and international actors.

The work resulted in a roadmap defined as the Living Archive: an approach that frames the territory itself as the tangible and intangible archive of Olivetti’s heritage, not as a fixed collection of assets but as a field of knowledge in circulation.

A first workshop took place in the first extension of the Olivetti Factories designed by Figini and Pollini in 1934, in the so-called Salone dei 2000, where the Living Archive concept was initially articulated. The framework was further developed during a second workshop, leading to the submission of a Horizon 2020 project proposal.

Displace designates a critical shift in perspective: heritage is repositioned from an object of preservation to an active field of inquiry.

Expose identifies the moment in which a shared conceptual structure becomes legible through spatial, discursive, and diagrammatic means.

Mediate refers to the transfer and translation of knowledge across disciplines, scales, and temporalities, enabling continuity between past, present, and future practices.

Activate designates the transformation of this knowledge into operative scenarios, roadmaps, and project propositions.