OLIVETTI THEATRE Manni Group Design Award
Olivetti Theatre, the new competition by YAC and Manni Group, invites designers to imagine the completion of the original design for the Olivetti library complex in Ivrea.
Olivetti Theatre arises from the ambition to continue one of the highest expressions of Italy’s enlightened entrepreneurship: that of Olivetti. A story capable of combining industrial innovation, social responsibility and architectural quality, whose legacy is still deeply embedded in the city of Ivrea, where modern architecture and landscape merge into a model of living and working that remains exemplary even today. This vision is now renewed through the Olivetti Leadership Institute (OLI) which, with the support of Manni Group, invites designers to imagine the completion of the Olivetti library complex designed in 1958: a third, never-built building and a large auditorium conceived as a new cultural and educational hub with international relevance. Olivetti Theatre is the competition promoted by YAC and Manni Group, calling contemporary architecture to engage with an extraordinary historical legacy and to define its future.
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The competition is set within the unique context of Ivrea, a city deeply shaped by Olivetti’s industrial and social vision and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018. Here, architecture, landscape and production historically converged into an innovative model that placed human well-being, work and community at its core. From the legacy of Adriano Olivetti, Ivrea developed as a true “factory-city,” where productive, cultural and educational spaces formed a single urban system. It is within this balance between function and aesthetics, industry and society, that Olivetti Theatre invites designers to intervene: not merely on a physical site, but on a cultural heritage that continues to offer powerful insights for rethinking the relationship between architecture, work and community today.
