Abstract

The article looks back at the «Milanese» origins of the Pirelli business culture, singling out its industrial humanism and polytechnic culture as the lynchpin of the group's identity and its success in international financial markets. From historic collaborations between businessmen and artists, photographers, designers, directors, writers, actors, musicians, to present-daysocial and environmental sustainability that translates into corporate social responsibility, and, in the contemporary guise of the «beautiful factory», inclusive and safe, like Renzo Piano's design for SettimoTorinese, which inspired «Il canto della fabbrica», a composition played by Salvatore Accardo on the violin and the strings of the ItalianChamber Orchestra. The activities of the Pirelli Foundation, the «PirelliHangarBicocca» with its investment in contemporary art, its company libraries, the staging of stories inspired by its historical archives (exhibitions, theatrical performances, catalogues), reveal how the factory has metamorphosed in the era of a new civilization of machines, in which culture and heritage are instruments of a distinctive competitiveness, of innovation in relations with stakeholders, and in language.