'Torino al futuro', the exhibition that tells the story of the evolution of Turin's production system

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - A journey to discover the history of the city's industrialisation, starting from its origins and ending by offering visitors a vision of the future. It is the exhibition 'Torino al futuro. La cultura d'impresa, la cultura dell'innovazione" hosted from 14 April to 29 September at the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento and organised by Unione Industriali Torino as part of the programme of activities celebrating the title awarded to Piedmont's capital city as Capital of Business Culture 2024.

Eight chronological stages unfold through the museum's exhibition rooms. A free-access route that offers the public the chance to deepen the evolution of Turin's production system through a multimedia and graphic itinerary. "The 'Torino al futuro' exhibition is a fundamental element in the framework of the initiatives that we wanted to make available to the city community as part of the 2024 Capital of Business Culture programme," explains the president of Unione Industriali Torino, Giorgio Marsiaj. It is certainly so because of the cultural and popular value inherent in the exhibition project, but also because it contains all the elements that explain what corporate culture is and why it represents a key element of the identity of Turin and Piedmont'. In fact, the exhibition tells how, from a centuries-old scientific culture and a passion for savoir-faire, Turin has always had the ability to look to the future and is the ideal place to generate companies with a high content of innovation and creativity. Since 1864, Turin has become a territory of entrepreneurial experimentation, a space of material and immaterial future that has always been able to anticipate the great challenges of contemporaneity. The exhibition, whose creative project and layout was curated by Marco Barberis, was realised by Punto Rec Studios, thanks also to the support of the partner companies of the "Torino Capitale della Cultura d'Impresa 2024" initiative, with the particular involvement of Bper, Fiat, Lavazza, Sistemi, Iren, Reale Mutua, Umana, Fondazione Compagnia di Sanpaolo, Fondazione Crt, Alpitour and Fresia Alluminio.

The exhibition unwinds through seven chapters dedicated to the narration of the past, with the help of seven films, to which is added a concluding section characterised by an immersive multivision that leads into the industrial Turin of the future. It is "a skilful succession of images capable of igniting emotions, stimulating memories, arousing curiosity, building contexts, taking us to places of production and work, an essential part of our economic and social landscape," explains President Marsiaj. "Spaces of relationships between thoughts and products, work methods and organisations, constructions of objects and service structures, which reveal how our 'civilisation of machines' has been nourished and is still nourished by wisdom and intelligence. Embellishing the exhibition is the dynamic display of 64 historical advertising posters which, hung from the vaults of the hall, form an evocative backdrop.

The journey began in 1864, when the decision to move the capital of Italy to Florence the following year, together with the tragic street demonstrations that followed, triggered a process that had a strong economic shock for the Piedmontese capital. A trauma from which the city was able to recover, reinventing itself. That was the spark that led it to become a place of experimentation, capable of anticipating the great challenges of the time, becoming a fertile ground for the birth of manufacturing in Italy. A productive dynamism that from that moment on has been a distinctive feature of the area and whose consequences are recounted by 'Torino al futuro' on the basis of symbolic and characterising events of each era. From the great exhibitions organised at Valentino to the construction of the Antonellian Mole; from the birth of Fiat to the two world wars, up to the economic boom and more recent events such as the 2006 Winter Olympics. And the witnesses called upon to examine each period in depth are the companies that, over time, have played a leading role in the Turin production scene of yesterday, today and tomorrow. There are 106 companies that the exhibition explores through images and documents that illustrate their most important events. Realities that have marked the history not only of Turin but of the entire country, operating in the most diverse sectors, from textiles to cinema, from energy to telecommunications, from automobiles to foodstuffs.

With them, the city has become that laboratory of technological, professional, cultural and social innovation that continues to this day, as revealed in the last chapter of the exhibition, the immersive area that closes the itinerary by showing the prospects for development linked to the most advanced technologies, the aerospace sector, life sciences, renewable energies and ecological transition, sustainable mobility, Artificial Intelligence and logistics. A true leap into the future, with a new industrial vocabulary announcing the city's future through activities that are the fruit of new energies, different from the past, but an expression of that ancient Turin DNA generated by the union of entrepreneurial spirit and passion for things well done, complemented by the attention that has become unavoidable for issues of inclusion and sustainability.