this is the engine.
the heart, the mind, the arm and the foot.
what is done here is one of the hardest jobs.
sure, like all jobs, you’ll say, it depends on how you tackle it; but here,
it’s about bringing the future to life.
the future, that’s right; and bringing it to life is not in the least the
same as predicting it. here it’s all about actually making the future, making
it possible.
projects arrive in primordial states; imagine a fuse, a spark. or rather,
even before that, the desire to start a nice fire. that’s it, the technical room
is the flint that, to the sound of hammer blows and rubbing, must liberate
the flame.
and there it is with its inhabitants: a close-knit team of engineers,
highly qualified personnel, specialised, expert, capable of realising ambitious
dreams; a group of men. real. men. not in the sense of “real men”. here,
we’re talking about human beings, normal human beings who, hour after
hour, day after day, manage to freeze the future on paper.
indeed. so, yes, you’ll recognise it, perhaps it’s not for everyone. well,
that’s the way they do it here, that’s the magic. here, we’re talking about
what will be, with a precision that’s difficult to describe.
of course, you need to have a handle on it to understand it.
there are many stories that could be told, this space has existed for
a very long time.
in the end, this is the secret that is added to the magic.
imagine a large room on the second floor of an old building – or
better still, on the second floor of an upscale property; the light entering
through large windows, a very high ceiling, workstations grouped into islands,
light colours, various shades of light grey, from beige to gainsboro,
monitors, chairs, shelves, baskets, folders and thousands, I mean tens of
thousands, of sheets of paper. 

thus far, it’s all pretty easy, there are millions of offices, and they’re
all more or less like this.
it’s what happens next that’s unusual.
now imagine, if you can, that on each of those sheets, every single
one, there is a part of what must be. every possible format – UNI ISO– of
cellulose felted with glue and colourants, contains a fragment of how a
project is made.
so, and if you can now manage to complete the puzzle, then you’re
done.
here you have the control tower, here’s the bridge, here’s the shed
and here’s the building.
here you have what will be.
but what you really can’t imagine, even if you try your hardest, is how
this is possible. every sketch, every line, every arrow, every dot, even every
white space has been thought out ten times, discussed, modified, corrected,
revised, critiqued, approved and, only at the end, considered worthy of
finding a place in the future.
and it is just like this that Reason, thinking it over, manages to place
in nature what it can know of nature.
certainly, you will say, how clever! there are engineers here!
exactly!
I confess: there are engineers here. but that’s not all. it’s not enough,
it’s not enough to put a load of technicians in a room to create the future.
the elbows on the table and the head tilted downwards are not
enough.
preparation, precision, speed are not enough.
it’s about the group, collaborating, sharing: this is the secret ingredient!
it’s about the particular interaction between people who have different
histories, different lives, but who work together for a living (and
certainly they resolved some time ago the question of whether to live to
work or work to live!).
it’s about the fact that, inside there, nothing is allowed to drop. every
idea is dismantled, investigated, experimented with and then simulated,
explored in depth and enhanced, and only then jettisoned.
the room, when they’re all together, is crowded, alive and sometimes
noisy, but tell me: is there really such a thing as a silent factory?
and so, there you go, that’s how it’s been possible. how it’s been
possible for a group of skilful dreamers to achieve so much. now you know…

(STRUTTURE COMPLESSE LIBERO PENSIERO ed Skira)