Abstract

Architecture represents quite a complex document. Its related histories tend to isolate some of its features by creating autonomous linguages (according to form, technique and typology). The essay studies the almost one century long construction and renovation of a famous building like Lingotto, weaving the traces of a possible different story. The factory's construction process brings to light how the land, the different scales of works, the changes in form of property and patrimonial estate and the ways scientific formalization legitimize practices during constructions work, do all outline new and useful paths of research. A story that could not be without the study of the making and remaking of such an architecture. Storing in its own structure the various stages of modifications, the building shows how technical and social elites, as well as organization of labour and technical and scientific knowledge, have all operated in defining structure and destination and in legitimizing the practices that have shaped the building. Perhaps architecture as a document may seem to show a frozen time, but it somehow offers evidence of transformations whose hierarchical order is not usually taken into consideration by contemporary historians.