A book and a podcast to tell the story of the Bergamo and Brescia Golden Compasses

Following the success of the exhibition The Heavy Factories at the Palazzo della Ragione in the heart of Bergamo Alta, which recorded nearly 41,000 visitors during its opening period from March 24 to June 4, 2023, the project The Thinking Factories. Stories of Compassi d’Oro from Bergamo to Brescia curated by Davide Pagliarini, is completed with the release of a print publication and an episodic podcast. It is conceived by DimoreDesign, developed by Marketing Association +39 and MULTI, under the patronage of ADI-Associazione per il Disegno Industriale.

The volume Le fabbriche pensanti collects in 380 pages the business stories of Bergamo and Brescia awarded with the Compasso d’Oro, telling the objects on display in the exhibition through in-depth research and interviews with the protagonists. The publication explores the public side of design, covering a wide range of topics from leisure to travel, from mobility to catering, from the home environment to furniture, lighting and microclimate comfort devices. It focuses on processes, details and evidence, enriching the narrative with period photographs, sketches and drawings. The book The Thinking Factories, published by the newly formed Tumulti Edizioni, is available now in major bookstores in Bergamo and Brescia: Libreria Arnoldi - Bergamo, Libreria Incrocio Quarenghi - Bergamo, Libreria Palomar - Bergamo, Libreria Tarantola 1899 - Brescia, Libreria Punto Einaudi di Baldassi Fabio - Brescia, Libreria La Fenice - Brescia, Nuova Libreria Rinascita - Brescia, Libreria Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Brescia, La Matricola - Brescia

Stefano Pasotti, designer and narrator of the podcast entitled Thinking Factories. I luoghi del design tells untold stories of design, and the creative and production processes that led to the products that won the 32 Compassi d’Oro. The podcast is developed in six episodes and available on major audio platforms. Pasotti, through his voice conducts interviews and conversations with key players in the field: design historians and critics, companies, designers and planners.

Design represents a universe of planning, research and innovation; it is expressed through products, furnishings, manufactures and cities. Bergamo and Brescia, neighboring territories that share a creative and productive fabric, emerge as protagonists in Italian industrial design thanks to companies and products that have marked the history of industry and everyday life. Discovering the history of Bergamo and Brescia through design allows visitors to relive the excellence awarded with the Compasso d’Oro, the prestigious prize conceived by Gio Ponti in 1954 to promote Italian design. In the more than seventy-year history of the Compasso d’Oro, thirty-two products from Bergamo and Brescia have received this recognition. These are joined by a thirty-third symbol from the Lombardy Region, designed by Bob Noorda, Roberto Sambonet, Pino Tovaglia and Bruno Munari. On the occasion of the recognition of Bergamo and Brescia as Italian Capitals of Culture 2023, the project Le Fabbriche Pensanti. Stories of Compassi d’Oro from Bergamo to Brescia that includes a special exhibition with all the awards, a “Future of” talk series, a print publication and an episodic podcast.

Thanks to the support of ABB Top Project Partner, Main Partner companies Brembo, Effearredi, Gruppo Azimut and Magnetti Building of the Grigolin Group, as well as Alias, Flos and Pedrali. The project was funded by the City of Bergamo through the Call for Contributions to Support Projects for Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023. With contributions from CCIAA Bergamo, Confindustria Bergamo and Regione Lombardia. The Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023 event features Intesa Sanpaolo and A2A as Main Partner, Brembo as System Partner, and Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and SACBO as Area Partners. The Ministry of Culture and the Lombardy Region are institutional partners along with Fondazione Cariplo, Fondazione della Comunità Bresciana and Fondazione della Comunità Bergamasca.

“Addressing the theme of design as a craft, ’Thinking Factories’ investigates a specific geographical area,” says curator Davide Pagliarini, “where designers and entrepreneurs, craftsmen and machines, tested skills, knowledge and advanced production systems tell how intelligence lies within making and not only precedes or orients it. This book-and the exhibition that was its counterpart-moves from the desire to establish unprecedented analogies between the parts, identify alliances and relationships, eloquent or subtle, and is the result of an articulated research project launched in 2022, dedicated to the exploration and narration of 32+1 objects produced between Bergamo and Brescia and winners of the Compasso d’Oro. Factories and their workshops are placed at the center of a choral and composite reflection on the role of industrial design in helping to transform the landscape we pass through on a daily basis. Gathering singular products manufactured between Bergamo and Brescia from 1954 - the year the Compasso d’Oro award was established - to 2022, this work defends their diversity from the homogenization of codes while promoting the valorization of a common feeling. More than making itself a narrative of individuality, ’Thinking Factories’ goes in search of a cohesion between specific knowledge and realities, of the possibility of confrontation and cohabitation. The idea of design investigated here is that of a widespread craft, capable of surprising us even where we do not expect it, under our feet or a palm away, but always within a real world to explore.”

“After the beautiful exhibition in Palazzo della Ragione, which, with an innovative and visually striking set-up, told the story of the highly competitive industrial production born between Bergamo and Brescia, Le fabbriche pensanti grows again, developing on two new actions,” stresses Nadia Ghisalberti, Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Bergamo. “On the one hand, an editorial publication, which retraces the themes of the exhibition and highlights the protagonism of the companies, discovering a little-known piece of history yet of international scope; on the other hand, the podcast cycle, which investigates with unpublished details the process of making each product. Two tools to delve into the history of the Compasso d’Oro, a testimony to the excellence of our territory, made possible thanks to the very high production and manufacturing skills of the creative fabric of Bergamo and Brescia, where research and innovation are intertwined in the service of everyday life.”

“Behind ’The Thinking Factories’ is a story that began in 1994, when we started an initiative aimed at rediscovering the artistic dimension kept in the historic residences of the city of Bergamo and developed every year until 2011, when Dimore&Design was born,” says Giovanna Ricuperati, CEO of Multi and President of Confindustria Bergamo. “Since its inception and for ten years Dimore&Design has been bringing national and international design to the city, inviting its best-known authors to interpret historic residences through the value of design, opening a confrontation and reflection on a profession that in Bergamo finds a counterbalance in the manufacturing vocation of its companies. An adventure that has since been enriched by the creativity of more than 40 designers and has also involved other cities such as Brescia and Bologna. From this experience, urged on by the year of the Capital of Culture in 2023 with Bergamo and Brescia as protagonists, we thought that the design objects produced in these territories and awarded with the Compasso d’Oro could be an important heritage to tell. Thus was born the exhibition at the Sala delle Capriate in the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo, flanked by an itinerary of meetings, called ’Future Of,’ and we conceived the idea of producing a publication, the outcome and testimony of a deep research work, supported by an apparatus of sometimes unpublished images and original interpretations. To this is finally added a podcast with the living voice of designers to bring a further contribution to the narrative of an evolved and advanced manufacturing territory, where the ability to make is project.”

A book and a podcast to tell the story of the Bergamo and Brescia Golden Compasses

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