FABRICA
by Luciano Benetton

According to a popular Italian saying, a whole ocean lies between talking about something and actually doing it. With Fabrica we tried, right from the start, to close the gap. The original idea, elaborated with Oliviero Toscani, was already a bridge between a visionary dream, a workshop for the development of communication of the future and hands-on fieldwork; between utopia and the reality of a world facing changes that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. Between, as it were, talking (thinking, planning) and doing.

From the word go Fabrica was a place where different cultures come face to face and seek a dialogue. For the renovation, enlargement and modernisation of the seventeenth century complex which houses Fabrica we thought of Tadao Ando. He greatly appreciates the Palladian style and immediately understood the essence of Fabrica. Ando breathed new life into the existing structure, creating a remarkable architectural work, where he brought together the classical beauty of Italian, western, tradition and Oriental harmony. The ancient combined with an innovative perspective on the future. Spaces for human occupancy open to the sensory elements of nature.

Now, more than ever, Fabrica shuns definitions, pigeonholing, conventions. We see it as a workshop for creativity applied to communication where young people from all over the world come to elaborate real, working multidiscipline projects. In Fabrica teaching is unconventional and there are no exams. By collaborating with others and measuring themselves against real projects, these young people learn to think for themselves and develop a critical eye

So Fabrica is not intended to be nor is it, a sterile temple for meditation. It works on concrete projects for cinema and television, for new media like the Internet as well as the more traditional variety, such as books and newspapers. Fabrcia works with industries and with non-profit-making organisations. As always, the focus is on interaction and universality, on the search for new ideas.

I'm often asked why the Benetton Group founded Fabrica. I like to reply by saying that doing business is not just a question of running an enterprise but of being enterprising; of being receptive to everything that experience and our interaction with the world can teach us. So Fabrica's and Benetton's activities are not so far apart. Indeed, concepts of cultural planning and organisation, of communication, of artistic creativity are vital to a global group who operates over 360o in the clothing sector, therefore closely allied to taste, style, quality of life.

I consider Fabrica the bridgehead of our corporate culture, where the continuous quest for new points of reference serves to remind us that we must bring not only our resolve to our work, but also our wealth of imagination and creativity.

Villorba, 21st September 2000