BENETTON FACTORY, ITALY

Designed by Alfra and Tobia Scarpa; 1967–
The Benetton Corporation was a groundbreaking manufacturer both in terms of their
interest in design and the transition from manufacturer of goods to the making of a
service industry toward the idea of service-oriented production industries of the late 20th
century, which created a culture around a product. Their advanced, just-in-time
production and continual flow of goods from manufacturing to distribution influenced the
layout, design, and siting of their facilities. Spanning three decades of development, these
complexes in Treviso, Northern Italy, were designed by Alfra and Tobia Scarpa,
architects and industrial designers, who designed not only the factory and administration
buildings, but also developed with Benetton a new approach to retail design, which was
initiated with their international franchises in the 1960s.

Tobia Scarpa designed the first factory building for Benetton in 1967 in Paderno di
Ponzano, Treviso, with Christiano Gasparetto and Carlo Maschietto. The complex,
adjacent to an historic villa, comprises an administration building and manufacturing
facility identified by the different roofscapes for the two building typologies, setting up a
dialogue between the two functions, while creating a sense of the whole site.
The manufacturing facility’s primary structure is a girder and parallel series of Xshaped
prefabricated concrete beams. The X-shaped beams, 1.3 meters high by 1.3
meters wide with the profile exposed, have skylight glazing in the interstices, bringing
light to the manufacturing floor. The beams are supported on the 84-meter-long hollow
girder for the entire length of the building, forming the main axis, and by perimeter 9.2-
meter-high precast panels walls with a C-shaped section. The X-shaped beams, with their
sloped angles, reflect light in the interior and have the double duty of integrating the
building systems of pipes and electric wiring through the hollow channel.
The long beam identifies a streetlike spine for local circulation and a wider delivery
area bracketed by the production areas. The success of this layout led to its continued use
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for three additional facilities. Variation in the manufacturing space, through paving and
spatial divisions, makes a comfortable rather than overbearing work space.
A courtyard links the manufacturing hall to the administrative offices, a custodian
house, and the heating plant. Capping the offices, the architects designed pyramidal roofs
with cupola skylights by assembling three triangular 3-inch-thick prefabricated concrete
panels, each with a base of 3.9 or 4.5 meters, recalling the surrounding domestic
landscape. Reference to the local context is also made evident in the rustic waddle and
dab walls, with the sticks still visible.
In 1986 this complex was renovated and expanded to house prototype production,
offices for the computer systems, a conference center, a meeting room, and the runways
for fashion shows. A 600-car underground garage reduces the use of automobiles at the
site and creates unobstructed views to the site. Pedestrian pathways over ramps and
arched bridges above water channels create “streets” to lead to displays of Benetton
prototype stores.
In 1993–95 Benetton hired the Scarpas to build a two-part manufacturing facility in
Castrette di Villorba, Treviso, based on the same layouts as the earlier factories.
Castrette’s singularity lies in the structural system and unobstructed production space
employing a high-tech industrial aesthetic and materiality. The single-story complex was
built as two identical 18,000-meter-squared manufacturing buildings in seven, 25-meter
modules based on the dimensions of the cotton machines. The factory layout has three
distinct areas—centralized assembly, a central roadway spine, and two production areas.
The just-in-time production method made the access key to the site, so the architects
made the central spine a 40-meter-wide roadway, larger than the earlier factory.
To achieve the essential flexible and unobstructed manufacturing space, the architects
employed a structural system developed by Bridon Ropes of Doncaster, England,
normally used for bridges and here used for the first time for a factory building. A
reinforced concrete pier in the center of each of the seven modules anchors pairs of 25-
meter-high steel pylons from which thin steel cables extend to brace the trussed roof. The
roof trusses are, in turn, supported on the exterior reinforced concrete walls. The walls
are clad with insulated ribbed galvanized steel, creating a horizontal emphasis to the
complex. The steel manufacturers dipped the panels in zinc coating to create a
herringbone pattern resembling woven fabrics, symbolic of the activity inside. The
architects recessed the building under overhanging metal eaves with a wide cantilever
over the loading street. On the east and west facades the shed module profile is exposed
in the framework of the seven bays. They were also concerned with maintaining the
vistas and the landscape, so they lowered the building into the earth for a lower profile. In
the below-ground spaces, large skylights illuminate the workers’ cafeteria.
The exposed high-tech structure also conceals in its wall panel system a high-tech
building technology system of robotic production and computer controls in a fiber-optic
cables network and electronic systems. In the 1990s the highly automated sys-tem
provided information to the administrative offices for the control of 7,500 items every
eight hours as they were distributed to Benetton’s 7,000 selling points in the world. Both
visually and structurally, the building expresses the design, manufacturing, and
distribution process of an innovative company.