Ricardo Legorreta and Olivetti: the project of a new industrial landscape in Mexico

At least until the end of the 1970s, Olivetti was among the best-known Italian-based company in world. Primarily due to its approach that explicitly conveyed cultural and social values to the industrial production, design and architecture, in 1960s Olivetti’s renown increased thanks to its widespread worldwide dissemination throughout showrooms, offices, plants, and schools. As a company paradigm, Olivetti in Mexico entrusted world-famous architects rooted in the local context, so as to place its corporate architecture in direct continuity with the natural and cultural landscape. By reconstructing the relation between the client and the architect, the undeniable role of corporate image in shaping national identity through architecture, and the dynamics that led to the success and failures of the project, the essay examines this process as a starting point for a critical interpretation of what seemed to become an Olivetti’s paradigm then widely applied abroad.