CORPORATE CULTURE storytelling book. Concept, text, art direction.

This book is a documentary, not a report. The story that articulates it does not describe only the dynamics of work. Try above all to discover the life and emotions behind this work. Corporate Culture, connections between a factory and the home or the school: the territory as a habitat and scenario of the days.

It is not easy to develop a project like this. You need the support of a Board deeply committed to the dignity of its employees and a lot of complicity with these, you must understand the sense of work beyond the product and, at the same time, learn about how and why this is manufactured. I will always thank everyone for trust gave rise to these texts and this book.

The large lightboxes suspended in the factory are the result of intense prior work that I document in another post. All photographs are by my friend Marco Dapino.

“A JOB WORTH LIVING FOR:

A factory is not a place at first but like a house - a place we always carry. Before we occupy it as members of a group, each one of us feels it in a profound and unique way.

Shared gazes and activities instill a real identity to every corner. Whenever actions requires hands a relationship is born. Vocabulary comes into play: cast, relay, bolt, exchanger… excellence.

Excellence, as you know, is the result of your training and responsibility. A team adventure, not a page taken from a Marketing handbook.”

“ROOTS. RESPONSIBILITY.

Once the machine is tested, the steam wand is switched off. A small steam cloud vanishes. Something much lighter immediately fills the vacuum triggering: gestures, time, your own thoughts and the will of your meticulous hands. Bare signs. Trails, prints.

The character of a new machine is cast. As you close its body your thoughts drift to wonder who will open it at the other edge of the World.

Perhaps, to carry out its maintenance someone will and cry out `What a fine piece of work!´.”

"A BAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD WHERE OUR JOB IS APPRECIATED.

Tuesday, April 11 2007. Icebreaker Almirante Irizar on course to Antartica is ablaze 260 Km off the south coast of Argentina. A failure in the generator room. Luckily both the crew and passengers, two-hundred and one people, were saved.

However the great ship turned into an inferno drifting for hours under a huge cloud of black smoke and burning fuel. Later on firemen fought their way through to reach what was left of the bridge. Everything had been destroyed and they continued fighting the flames under the deck for days.

In the canteen covered with soot, among chairs and twisted tables, among burst bottles and swollen panels a coffee machine built in Susegana was found. It was blackened and dirty due to the fire but whole and with its hydraulic system intact. The two steam wands challenging and perfect in their thinner revealed some fragments of the last cup that was placed on the grill.

A fireman cried out: "What a fine piece of work!"