Established in 1954, the ADI Golden Compass Award is the oldest but above all the most authoritative design award in the world.
Born from an idea by Gio Ponti, it was organised for years by La Rinascente department store, with the aim of highlighting the value and quality of Italian design products then in their infancy. It was later donated to the ADI, which has been responsible for organising it since 1958, overseeing its impartiality and integrity.
Olivetti is the only company
that over the course of the various
editions has received 16 awards
ranging from design
graphics and awards
career awards.
The “La Rinascente Golden Compass 1954” prize, awarded to the Lettera 22 portable machine, can be symbolically extended to the exceptional merits of Olivetti’s entire activity, which represents one of the world’s highest examples of stylistic coherence of an entire production in all its expressions, from graphics and propaganda to the architecture of shops, factories, homes and assistance. It is a merit and example of Olivetti to have constantly resorted to the collaboration of artists of great value, in the demands of aesthetic control of both its production and all its manifestations.
A key figure in the success of the great design that has always characterised the “Olivetti Style”, Adriano Olivetti was awarded the National Award by ADI.
The award given to the design of the Olivetti “Elea” electronic calculator recognises the successful aesthetic-functional solution consisting of modularity, usability and innovation in tackling this new technological challenge.
The overall result, which is in keeping with the tradition of an avant-garde industry in the field of design, represents a singular contribution to the aesthetic tradition of European design.
The Olivetti “Spazio” office furniture constitutes one of the first examples of total design of an industrial workspace according to a new paradigm. The completeness of the services and the modularity criteria adopted articulate the series of composed elements in different configurations not necessarily linked to traditional office furniture solutions.
Prize awarded to the CMC7-7004 programmed magnetic printer for the coherence and pertinence with which the use of a particular technology (that of the folded plasticised sheet) is explored to the point of producing the most organically linkable solutions to the proposed functional problem and continuously integrated to a compact formal precipitation.
The Commission considers the inclusion of high-level design in the field of machine tools to be of particular interest, both because of the design implications involved, and because of the importance of the numerically controlled machine tool, an expression of advanced technology, in the national economy and export, as well as the need to make the working environment more and more consistent with modern life.
Prize awarded to the electric writing adding machine because in the field of small, widely used calculators it offers an extraordinary solution that is not only functional and typological, but also of remarkable quality in terms of design.
The prize is awarded to the electronic desktop writing calculator for having determined a new image of the machine by creating a device where the electronic apparatuses are separated from the mechanical ones and conglobated in a single compact complex developed transversally, resulting in a new configuration of use, which creates a more suitable operational relationship between man and machine.
The prize was awarded to Rodolfo Bonetto and Naoki Matsunaga’s design for the Measurement Centre for Machining, Measurement and Industrial Automation.
The prize is intended on this occasion to highlight the design promotion activities carried out by Olivetti through its achievements, from corporate image to products and communication.
The world’s first portable electronic typewriter.
The articulation of the contrasting volumes that enclose the technical modules is resolved in a successful plastic expression that, while echoing the typical Olivetti image of other products by the same author, has the character of an exemplary solution.
Design of a machine tool that is an expression of basic research in a rapidly developing industrial sector.
The result is a product in which the factors of modular configuration, control systems and safety measures are integrated with careful consideration of the overall architectural value.
For the design’s successful expression of enclosing the technical modules in a compact space.
In recognition of the value of a strain that has illustrated Italian culture first with Adriano and Roberto Olivetti and, in more recent years, with its valid participation in the impervious and complex development of the culture of information technology. The Award is also intended to signal and encourage Olivetti’s convinced attention to the development of the new telematic IT opportunities that are initiating epochal changes in culture and society.
It encloses a complex multiplicity of functional components in a single volume of contained dimensions, giving formal unity to a ubiquitous element in the daily work of offices and professional firms with subdued presence.
