Research: The concrete utopia of Adriano Olivetti. Aesthetics, ethics and politicsAfter graduating in Social and Political Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris with a thesis on Hannah Arendt, my interests turned to the relationship between Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics. In particular, looking at Italy after the Second World War, my research project aims to investigate the concrete utopia of Adriano Olivetti, eclectic entrepreneur who was able to “think with hands” a Humana Civilitas in harmony with the machines. The ultimate aim of my research is to critically investigate the Olivetti community as a responsible laboratory that was able, in a spontaneous manner, to bring together architecture, urban planning, sociology, publishing, politics, psychology, engineering, mathematics, art and design in a single project of sustainable and democratic development. Despite belonging to a now distant past, Olivetti’s way to design - the openness to untried possibilities and care for the common world - can remind us of and suggest practical solutions to many of the unsolved problems of our (post)Modernity.
keywords
Adriano Olivetti - Community - Concrete utopia - Self-reflexive Modernity - Aesthetic laboratory - Common world - Responsible enterprise