Paradigma Olivetti, Davide Maffei, 2020

Pavilion 2 and 4 - Arena

in collaboration with Milano Design Film Festival

The “product that communicates value”, “machines as domestic monuments”, and the difference between style and design: these are some of the characteristics that belong to the Olivetti legend and to the birth of the culture of industrial product design, deserving ample space in the world’s major museums and a long list of international awards. The story is well known, but it never ceases to offer new pages of further insights and new stories. The documentary covers the period from the 1960s to the ‘90s, the so-called “post-Adriano” era. The starting point is the arrival of Ettore Sottsass and the beginning of his colourful revolution in the world of offices and their furnishings, followed by the shapes and rubber “skins” of Mario Bellini’s portable calculators. And then the meta-project of corporate identity by Clino Trini Castelli, creator of a new corporate language. The avant-garde graphics by Perry King and Santiago Miranda. Artist installations. Numerous archive documents, which today are a counterpoint to the memories of the various members of the working group – from Albert Leclerc to Michele De Lucchi to George Sowden. Protagonists before the epochal transition of mechanics to consumer electronics. And then of the gamble in the competitive sector of information technology.