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M&C 13
Capannone#18
Story, style,
identity
by Cristiana Colli
by Cristiana Colli
ASK, Reggiane
Parco Innovazione,
Reggio Emilia, 2018
Andrea Oliva
Architetto
Colmar
Monza, 2018
Cristina Baroni
BBM Studio
The place is a temple. When the train enters
Reggio Emilia station, a yellow sign on a grey
frescoed shed catches your eye: “Reggiane”.
The word is a world, a piece of twentieth-
century history. It evokes wide-ranging
industrial production consisting of
locomotives, fighter planes, engines,
agricultural machines, sugar refineries,
and dockside cranes. All of these still
vibrate today, with the intriguing shape
of the industrial shed, and in the archives
that testify to refined and ingenious
technical know-how, and to technologies
that remained avant-garde for a long time.
Le Reggiane survived the twentieth century
with huge changes, reconversions, struggles,
occupations, unparalleled welfare, training
and rights. The company witnessed the
contradictory social, cultural and economic
upheavals that heralded the new millennium.
When the Fantuzzi group ceded the business
to the American multinational Terex
in 2009, Le Reggiane became Reggio Emilia’s
economic and cultural modernization
challenge, no longer just an extraordinary
example of industrial archaeology, but
an urban area in a state of flux. It became
a place of memory where prospects once
materialized, and which now sees urban
recovery and regeneration schemes involving
almost a third of the 26-hectare site behind
the historic centre between the railway
and the airport. This area is set to become
the powerhouse for the city’s new economic,
cultural and social development.
Today, the Reggiane site is the headquarters
of Tecnopolo as well as an Innovation Park
with R&D laboratories. Here, medium-large
enterprises are investing in studies and
research in order to analyze and design new
products or services that will increase their
productivity. Special attention is paid to
products linked to the city’s proud history
of mechanical engineering: from farm
machinery to mechatronics;
from manufacturing excellence in the
automotive sector to packaging. It is a shared
lab, a hub of knowledge and innovation,
a stock of cognitive value and social capital,
which already includes key players such as
Ask Industries. Founded in 1965 in Reggio
Emilia, the company designs and produces
solutions for the automotive sector: innovative
and high-quality audio systems such
as loudspeakers, subwoofers, amplifiers
and antenna systems for connectivity.
It operates in various parts of the world with
approximately 3,000 employees. The shed
spaces in Capannone #18, with architectural
and interior design by Andrea Oliva, are
an installation within the installation.
In it, a sometimes ordered and sometimes
staggered sequence of transparent islands
is marked by the black uprights that define
and compartmentalize the spaces. It is an
archipelago of islands joined but separated
in order to guarantee functions, privacy
and team building. Furnishings designed by
Citterio – Wood Wall Rovere Cenere and
Programma 3 wardrobes – define rigorous
geometries which stand out from the white
walls and floors, and the anthracite grey
functional structures. It is a neutral and
contemporary place; a texture of colors;
a glass facade overlooking a not-yet-finished
multidisciplinary project. It is a dialogue
between contrasts: for example, between
formal knowledge and the ephemeral messages
of the street art which expressed
one of Europe’s most interesting projects
at Le Reggiane. Ask Industries has brought
the centre of excellence for antennas
and cables to Le Reggiane and it may be no
coincidence that the company sponsors the
only Masters degree in Italy on the Technology
of Sound and Musical Composition.
In 1923, in Monza, Manifattura Mario
Colombo started producing men’s hats
nd gaiters. The Colmar trade name is a story
within the story, being the acronym of the
founder’s surname and forename, shared
with his friends and scribbled on a cigarette
packet. Economic crises, wars and lucky
intuitions alternated with each other
throughout the twentieth century, as the
factory switched its production from hats
to workers’ overalls; safari uniforms for the
French Foreign Legion; and then overalls
for petrol station attendants. But the turning
point came with the use of Massaua 10 cotton:
a wash-resistant, pre-shrunk cloth ideal for
workwear that was used for the first skiing
pioneers around the 1930s. Leo Gasperl
was the holder of the first speed record on the
Chilometro Lanciato: 136.336 km/h in 1936.
Gasperl wore a thirring, also known as “the
bat”, a sort of hang-glider wing that inflated
on the skier’s back that served as a precursor
of the winged ski-suit. From then on, it
would become a legend. For Colmar, snow
represented vision and experimentation.
It was a chance beat the challenge by
hundredths of a second, and their products
were tested in the Fiat and Moto Guzzi wind
tunnels and their fibres in the labs of the
Milan Politecnico Institute. There were
adverts such as “In case of snow, Colmar”;
and events that used showbiz as a source of
marketing. Colmar was snow, the Olympics,
World Cups, National Championships in
uniform, Sunday coach trips to the nearest
ski lifts, “white” weeks and stickers on
scooters. Colmar was Zeno Colò, Celina
Seghi, Alberto Tomba (a.k.a. the Blue
Avalanche), faces on podiums and bedroom
posters, names that spelled national pride,
and a sport that became accessible to
everyone thanks to the economic boom and
the consumer society. Hands up anyone who
doesn’t feel their heart skip a beat at the sight
of one of Colmar’s body-hugging technical
sheath jackets or one of those wonderfully
warm wind jackets! Those bright colours
(red, white and striped like a flag) or that
C in the circle that made you “one of
the in-crowd”! Colmar was a banner for
the worlds of sport and style to the extent
that, today, that vintage cool is studied,
regenerated and re-elaborated in the
company lab: a hyper contemporary
platform that goes by the name of A.G.E.
In the Monza compound you breathe this air
of history and future that is a compendium
of creative processes. R&D creates new
materials that comply with a business model,
and which pay attention to stakeholders
who identify with the brand both online
and offline. The workplace is a sequence of
red and white tables that have been designed
for concentration and privacy. These are
spaces for the exchange of ideas about
programs and strategies, and for welcoming
guests, suppliers and clients. Everything is
transparent in a gradual multiplication
of modules that define, but do not separate,
iconic colours with subliminal references
– ice white, cherry red and anthracite grey
– that evoke the brand’s history and its
identity. Cristina Baroni’s design for BBM
Studio plays on the virtuosity of Citterio’s
Ray Wall, designed by Pinuccio Borgonovo
– an innovative partition system that captures
that paradoxical trend of contemporary
offices, where high degrees of specialization,
functional differentiation and privacy
coexist with a need for openness,
fluid spaces, dynamism and virtuous
interference between professional teams.
The renovation – created to celebrate 95 years
since the company was founded – is true
to the identity of the 1970s building, but
redesigned such that transparency and
lightness define the macro work spaces
within a substantially uniform architectural
whole. This is a ridge, of the kind that
Colmar has always managed to climb.
