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Caption: ENI VILLAGE a visit to Borca di Cadore
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Caption: we rode to Borca di Cadore {near Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the amazing Cadore mountains} by lambretta, despite the cold and gloomy day.
Caption: i've been wanting to visit the ENI village for a long time. it opens to the public just on special occasions, and i was thrilled to finally see a guided tour organized by Progetto Borca on a day we could attend.
to properly understand the place a brief historical introduction is needed.
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Caption: Enrico Mattei was a visionary entrepreneur who made history in post WW2 Italy. he was head of the ENI group, a gas and oil company, from its foundation in 1953 to his unsolved mysterious death in 1962.
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Caption: Edoardo Gellner who worked in Cortina after WW2, becoming an expert in architecture on mountain sites and gaining visibility with Cortina Winter Olympics in 1956.
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Caption: Mattei chose Gellner to be the man to plan and carry out his project of the construction of a holiday village for the ENI group. "the goal was to express the ideas of progress and modernity that were Eni’s signature in the 50s".
the guiding principles were inspired by Mattei’s utopic idea of society: high quality for everyone, with no hierarchical distinction. workers and managers could enjoy the village in the same way. they called it ENI social village.
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Caption: "the trust that Mattei placed in Gellner allowed the architect to plan his project using an architectural register which didn’t formally evoke the rustic architecture of a mountain area."
Caption: "he expressed innovation instead, morphing the construction site into a downright technological lab. The result is an urban workshop, architectural and structural, which offers numerous solutions to different planning scopes."
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Caption: the site is located at the foot of mount Antelao
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Caption: the construction began in 1955. they have built a colonia (site meant for kids summer camp), a camping with permanent tents, a hotel, a residence, a church, 280 cottages for families.
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Caption: we visited the colonia and the permanent tents camping, the former was the space intended for children while the latter for boys and girls.
Caption: in the 50s, reinforced concrete was modernity. and Gellner, who designed the ENI village down to the tiniest decor detail, played with it in a way that sublimely suits the surrounding landscape. he was lucky enough to have the chance to work on this project from zero, there was nothing there except the forest, and no other buildings around to consider as a contex.
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Caption: the only context was the landscape, that he brought out beautifully.
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Caption: even today, i find it extraordinary, futuristic, crazy.
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Caption: entering the colonia is alienating.
the spaces are huge. empty, semi abandoned and surrounded by the colors of autumn, on a cloudy day, can not deny that sometimes the place gives the creeps. i wouldn't spend a night alone in there.
the colonia gives you a sense of MASS. it hosted 600 children and about 200 attendants. everything is designed to accommodate large mass actions. not something i’m accustomed to. it is actually something i look askance at. it’s weird.
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Caption: but i wonder how was it back then, full of voices, bathed in the summer light, in the middle of a social utopia in which the bed of the manager’s kid is behind the one of the usher’s.
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Caption: i think i would have liked it. i think it was enlightened, beautiful, inspired, functional, suitable for children, innovative. it would be, even today.
Caption: more about this story on www.idiaridellalambretta.com
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Caption: sources >> www.progettoborca.net/eng/history/
>> www.progettoborca.net/eng/anna-de-salvadoruna-scheda-sul-villaggio-eni/
>> www.dolomiticontemporanee.net/DCe2013/?cat=94
>> www.villaggioeni.com/#!about/c10fk