About Fabrica

Fabrica, Benetton's communication research centre, was set up in 1994. The fruit of the Group's cultural legacy, is based in Treviso, Italy in a complex restored and enlarged by Tadao Ando.

Fabrica is not a school, advertising agency or university. It is an applied creativity laboratory, a talent incubator, a studio of sorts in which young, modern artists come from all over the world to develop innovative projects and explore new directions in myriad avenues of communication, from design, music and film to photography, publishing and the Internet. These artist-experimenters are accompanied along their research path by leading figures in art and communication, blurring the boundaries of culture and language and transgressing the traditional borders between a diverse range of communication mediums.

Communication research at Fabrica services a wide variety of social causes and disciplines such as economics, social or environmental sciences. Fabrica's aim is to grasp the future by giving innovative exposure to cultural or scientific projects which open a window onto tomorrow's world.

Fabrica is located in Italy, near Venice, in Villa Pastega Manera, an ancient villa built in the seventeenth century, which Tadao Ando restored and enlarged. This project included the creation of study areas, laboratories, offices, facilities such as a library and an auditorium, a cinema, meeting and refreshment areas. The use of natural elements, such as light and air, as part of the architecture reaches its climax in the huge elliptical piazza.
As Tadao Ando says, in Fabrica "there is architecture of the past and the present; the two put their trust in, and draw inspiration from, each other. The role of the new architecture is to bring out the charm and strength of the ancient villa and to give birth to a reciprocal, cathartic relationship between old and new in an atmosphere of complete harmony, transcending the limits of a specific period. Therefore, even the transit areas, which normally play a secondary or insignificant role, have been given due attention. They act as places for communion and communication between people, between people and history or nature; places which encourage dialogue between people from different backgrounds".