The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
FIAT LINGOTTO
Giacomo Matt�-Trucco
Turin, Italy, 1916 - 23
Fiat Lingotto Factory, Giacomo Matte-Trucco, Turin, Italy, 1916-23. Courtesy of Archivio e Centro Storico Fiat
Photograph � Christopher Hall
Hired by Giovanni Agnelli, structural engineer Giacomo Matt�-Trucco designed the Fiat automobile factory with Ford's assembly methods in mind. Production flowed from bottom to top, with finished cars arriving at the kilometer-long banked rooftop test track-- the building's most recognizable feature. Here, finished cars were tested, and then driven down to the street via spiral ramps with concrete structural ribs. With 16 million sq ft of manufacturing space to accommodate 6,000 workers, Lingotto was unprecedented in size and scale. Le Corbusier featured the factory in his manifesto, Towards a New Architecture, solidifying its iconic status.
