Olivetti: A Working Model of Utopia.

摘要

Set within the interwar and post-World War II era from 1930 to 1965, this dissertation investigates the establishment of one of the most profitable Italian industries of the twentieth century, the Olivetti Company, and attempts to explain how the majority of its success resulted from a belief in the redemptive qualities of good design. The company was established by Camillo Olivetti (1868--1943) in 1908; however, its first major expansion occurred during the 1930s under the management of his son, Adriano Olivetti (1901--1960). In addition to his major contributions in the modernization of Italian industry, Adriano Olivetti was best noted for his business style which entailed gathering Italy's most accomplished architects, writers, artists, and engineers to design a wide range of projects for the company---from the planning of the company town to the design of advertisements. While the history of the Olivetti industrial empire has been retold many times, this dissertation attempts to add theoretical rigor to the Olivetti historiography by deconstructing some myths, and examining the design strategies employed to promote the utopian industrial community of Ivrea and, more importantly, the company brand. By investigating the political and economic origins of such strategies, this research seeks to reframe Olivetti's utopian project within the totalizing contexts of Fascism, postwar neo-capitalism, and the emergence of the mass media, ultimately illustrating the means by which design can perform as an effective and profitable medium in the exercise of economic and political power.;Each chapter is an interrogation into different scales of intervention within the Olivetti project of total design. They examine the political, cultural, and economic issues of design, and encompass the typewriter, publicity, the factory, regional planning, governmentality, the showroom, and brand. Each plateau of the Olivetti study is a vehicle to explore the question: What is the position of design in relation to the entire mode of production and the creation of value?