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exploring taste – Spring/Summer 2016 heritage – Utopia made real
Elementary school and oratory Workers' houses of the agro-industrial center
of wool, leading, about a century later, to the creation of a manufacturing company, under the leadership of Luigi so far only been used to work the land), as well as sugar, glass, and soap factories and a cotton mill. The idea was to
Marzotto, the son of the family's first Gaetano. But it is thanks to Gaetano Jr. that Valdagno’s mills became Italy's create an integrated and synergic system of supply chains. To name just a few examples: the wine would be bottled
greatest industrial success story. By restoring the machinery and reorganizing labor—a real obsession for Gaetano using the locally produced glass; the soap factory would make use of the waste products from other activities; the
who was influenced by the new scientific approaches to labor being developed in the United States—he was able to sugar factory could provide and outlet for the locally grown beetroot. It is here, that Italy's first industrially made
transform the Marzotto factory into Europe's most efficient wool manufacturer. By the second half of the 1930s, fruit juice was produced. All in all, a total of twelve industrial plants were built. There are beautiful photographs
the Valdagno factory had become the leading national manufacturing industry and the number one Italian textile that document the early days of the new settlement. Like pioneers discovering land, the images document
exporter worldwide. All this optimization, however, transformed a part of the workforce into surplus (an estimated machinery loaded onto floats and moved through the shallow waters of the Laguna, tractors plowing the sodden
two thousand redundancies) and it is also for this reason that Gaetano Marzotto began to think of new activities fields. Marzotto’s vision is organized around three principles: human-friendly industrialization, optimized labor
through which to re-employ the Valdagno workers. In the Stucky estate, he saw the perfect opportunity to further management, and social prosperity for all. It is a social and industrial utopia, but it has come true, both here and
develop and diversify the family business. At the time, Villanova was a poorly developed area, divided among in Valdagno. An integrated and technologically advanced industrial estate is not enough, Marzotto wants a
small farm lease-holders for whom subsistence farming was the norm. The main crops were maize, beets and community, a city built around work. A city made not just of dwellings but of activities and centers where people
potatoes. The heart of the estate was and still is the casa Rossa. It stands today as a benevolent monument to Italy's come together. Thus pre-existing structures are re-qualified and new ones are built from scratch: a kindergarten,
agricultural and industrial history as well as being the symbolic center of the Marzotto business, situated alongside a clinic, a company canteen, a nursing home, a hotel with a swimming pool, a sports center, a movie theater. It
the cellar where one of Italy's best selling wines is produced. Under Gaetano Marzotto’s leadership, Villanova Santa is an urbanistic and a social experiment. Because it is understood that a company’s success is strongly based on
Margherita grew impetuously from the 1940s onward. Modern machinery for land reclamation and agriculture the welfare of its workforce, sure, but also because leaving a mark, a tangible legacy to future generations is an
were introduced. In addition to agricultural production, new livestock systems were implemented (animals had industrialist’s true purpose. The result is an interesting mix of far-sighted entrepreneurship and a philanthropic
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