Talk: Annmarie Brennan on Olivetti

Hear Annmarie Brennan, Senior Lecturer in Design Theory (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, UoM) discuss industrial design culture, particularly in relation to Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. In her PhD, Brennan discussed Olivetti, the pioneering Italian manufacturer founded in Ivrea in 1908, that was renowned for famous examples of innovative industrial design like the MoMa permanent collection featured Lettera 22 typewriter (1950) or the Programma 101 (1965) - recognised as one of the world's first personal computers. Brennan will contextualise this design and product culture with the groundbreaking architectural showrooms of the Olivetti brand, such as in Venice and New York, that placed Italian design and culture at the forefront of the everyday. This approach informed generations of Italian designers like Vico Magistretti, Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass and Anna Castelli Ferrieri - and was a design ideology keenly followed and explored by Enrico Taglietti in his designs for buildings, furniture and a future Canberra.

Dr AnnMarie Brennan is Senior Lecturer in Design Theory at the University of Melbourne, teaching architectural history, theory and supervising PhD candidates. Her research addresses 20th–21st century design and architecture, with interests in the culture of technology, digital heritage, industrial design, media (cinema, video games), AI, machine culture and the history of computing in design.

AnnMarie is part of the ARC‑funded project 'Locating Giurgola: From Philadelphia School to Global Practice’ (2022–2026), an investigation into the career of Romaldo Giurgola, who established successful practices in New York and Philadelphia, and later Canberra and Sydney. Giurgola’s most famed work in Australia was in partnership with Mitchell and Thorp of the Australian Parliament House in Canberra. The research has produced an oral history of the firm Mitchell/Giurgola and a co‑edited book anthology on the firm’s transcontinental practice and civic architecture. Her publications include the Yale School of Architecture journal Perspecta 32: Resurfacing Modernism and Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy (co‑edited), and articles in AA Files, Journal of Design History, Design and Culture, Journal of Architecture and JSAH.