Il progetto di le Corbusier per il centro di calculo elettronico Olivetti a Rho RHO OL LC (1960-1964)
- Autores: Silvia Bodei
- Directores de la Tesis: Josep Quetglas i Riusech (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2010
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Xavier Monteys i Roig (presid.), Antonio Armesto Aira (secret.), Roberto Gargiani (voc.), Juan Antonio Calatrava Escobar (voc.), Pierre-Alain Croset (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The research aims to investigate the project for the Olivetti Computing Center in Milan-Rho (1960-1964) with the primary goal to broaden and deepen acknowledgment of Le Courbusier's works rarely studied by critics. The investigation essay has focused in particular on three important aspects of the project; The first, necessary for contextualization and understanding of some "reasons" of the project itself, is based on the affinities that develop between Le Corbusier and Adriano Olivetti, characterized by a common idea of the relationships between society, industry and architecture. The strong utopian visions shared by both the architect and the client, generates an intense exchange already since the early '30s, that develops and determines, many years after, the assignment of the project for the computer center.
The second part constitutes the main body of the research and is based on the reconstruction of the project through detailed and objective "genetic" studies of the different development stages and with special attention to the conceptual process and its evolution over time. This approach uses a methodology that explores the literary tradition about the different versions of a written work as a major challenge to identify and recognize the constant changes of the idea of signifier and significance in a work. Similarly, in architecture, mainly thanks to the availability of original documents, you can rebuild the project in its various stages, following the chronology of events punctuated by regular passage of time, from conceptual process, characterized by an apparently irregular rhythm, full flash-backs, second thoughts, anticipations, hesitations, insights, etc.. The main intention of this part of the work was to follow the path as if the author as if sitting by his work table: first describing, recomposing, measuring the documents found, and then focusing on apparent inconsistencies and contradictions, which may represent important clues to "steal" of the project and "approach" the work of Le Corbusier.
This type of approach is crucial for developing the third part of the research, which is based on the idea of intertextuality, a concept once again taken from the literature. This is a process of decoding the work in which we recognize, through comparison with other works, ideas and forms from which you structure your project. In this type of analysis we can will receive two separate levels: one, conceptual, which is expressed through symbols, metaphors, diagrams and the other corresponding to the formalization of these same ideas, which manifests themselves as an aesthetic experience and is continually subject to changes and experimentations. Borrowing this plurality of meanings, and therefore considered the Olivetti project as the result of other works before and after the event, you can create a bridge between the Computing Center and the works of Le Corbusier, architecture, art and essays, including models of reference of his imagination. With this in mind, the research investigates the relationship and similarities with biology, used by Le Corbusier in his "making of" urbanism and architecture, and in the Olivetti industrial project particularly apparent in the presence of forms and compositional structures that resemble human organs.
The idea that mainly seems to give shape to the project is an industry symbol of the car, turned into a great "natural" organism, which I think can be described by the term "biologic machine". This expression, not only helps to grasp the analogy "organism-machine", but it also includes the nature - industry affinity, an issue that from the first industrial revolution onwards, has an important place in Western thought and which is even concerned Corbusier.
The research is part of a larger vision so that, through the analysis of Olivetti project it aims to identify shapes and figures that are the basis of its conception, and then, after a run across other projects, written works, paintings and readings of the author, show more awareness as they emerge from the Olivetti Center project.
