4
5
M&C 13
Historical catalogue for the Modulo3 system.
The Modulo3 system, designed by Bob Noorda and Franco Mirenzi,
photographed in the early 1980s for the new UniFor corporate identity,
curated by Pierluigi Cerri.
#UniforWorkEnvironments
by Fulvio Irace
The UniFor factory
in Turate 1985.
Studio Cerri & Associati,
UniFor stand, Orgatec
2010, Cologne.
Aldo Rossi, AR90 1990.
A commitment
to architecture
Concentrating on winning the race, the runner looks straight ahead: they care only
about the finish line, not the starting point. The reporter has a different point
of view. Sitting in the stands, they give an account of the event and then, at the end
of the race, they comment on the performance, reconstructing the wait, the sprint,
the speed, and the duration. Like a runner, a captain of industry rarely thinks about
the past, except perhaps as a reference to do better in the future. At the beginning,
their entrepreneurial story is always simultaneous – a continuous obstacle course,
interspersed with technical pauses and training sessions. What counts is the quality
of new ideas, their ability to break records. Thus they always imagine themself in
motion, as if stopping to remember things would only be a waste of time, or perhaps
even an act of reprehensible vanity. This is the work ethic that translates, in the sort
of open-air factory that is the Brianza design district, into gruff reluctance on the
part of those who are convinced that they have only done their duty, that they have
done nothing more than obey a rule – an unwritten rule that has been practiced in
industrious silence by generations of employers and workers, together in the operose
environment – maybe more mystical than legendary – that is the industrial shed.
In this sense, the history of UniFor, which is celebrating its first fifty years in 2019,
is the same success story shared by many design companies that have built the “Made
in Italy” legend. However, with one special difference – that calling to architecture
which makes it, at the same time, quite idiosyncratic and out of the ordinary.
