A big article in the journal on May 23, 1923 was the inauguration of two new FIAT installations in Lingotto, Turim. The largest factory of automobiles in the world - a five story building with 507m in length by 24m in width - possesses, besides everything else, innovative characteristics. Its elongated form goes along with the development of the automobile's assembly line: the process initiated as ground floor with the treatment of source materials and finished with the vehicles exiting to an unusual test track with approximately 1km situated on the cover.
This spectacular building designed by Giacomo Mattè Trucco immediately became a model of modern architecture and, particularly, of Functionalism. With its structure in reinforced concrete supported on more tan 1000 supports and its functional design based on Taylorist theories of work rationalization which represented the belief in the power of Industry and Technology and was pointed out as example for the future. Le Corbusier himself was one of the ones who weaved wide compliments.
During several years the factory worked in fully and out of its assembly lines would come out near 80 Italian brand models, including the famous Topolino. In 1982, however, was definitely marked and at the same height a public architecture contest was launched in sight of its use as cultural equipment. The winning project belonged to the architect Renzo Piano.
Piano kept formal integrity of the immense building and attributed new tertiary functions, habitable and refined: commercial areas, bureaus, hotels, conference and expo centers, galleries, auditoriums, etc. Concluded in 2002 it remained an example of the future now distant from the one they anticipated initially. It became a standard of industrial archeology and a model of architectonic and urban recovery.
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