Fondazione Dalmine ETS
Created at the initiative of TenarisDalmine with the aim of promoting industrial culture by enhancing the history of Dalmine S.p.A., now part of a global company, Tenaris
Fondazione Dalmine ETS promotes Industrial Culture by reaching out to the generations of people who have worked in the company, families who have directly or indirectly experienced the connection with industry, scholars and researchers, visitors and people interested in understanding societal change through the lens of the economic, social and cultural transformations that industry has brought and brings when it is deeply rooted in an area.
The company's assets reflect the activity of a particular producing entity, related to a productive, industrial activity embedded within the business world, connected to the relevant economy. This is a heterogeneous heritage, which poses daily challenges with respect to the treatment of the media and its proper management.
The history of the company is intertwined with the general historical context of the 20th century. The documents in the archives kept by the Dalmine Foundation are a constant testimony to the thread that connects the industry both with its community of reference and with the international historical framework.
Fondazione Dalmine - Laying the foundation stone of the plantMuseimpresa
1906: The Dalmine industrial complex is founded
The Mannesmann Tube Company in Dalmine produces seamless steel tubes
Fondazione Dalmine - Dalmine. Transport of materials. Shipment of pipes by rail. (1920s)Museimpresa
1920: Dalmine Società Anonima was founded
During the First World War, German ownership was ousted and the company became Italian. In 1933, under the aegis of IRI, Dalmine became a state-owned industry
After World War I, production grew and the company became a leading player in the Italian steel industry.
Fondazione Dalmine - Architectural drawing. The urban development of Dalmine (1933)Museimpresa
Dalmine city map
Dalmine Foundation - Architectural Design. The urban development of Dalmine, 1933
Fondazione Dalmine - Dalmine. Kindergarten (1942) by Studio Da ReMuseimpresa
During the 1930s, awareness of the importance of corporate welfare grew; Dalmine promoted the construction of buildings for education: nursery, kindergarten and primary schools.
In 1906, the year the company was founded, the industrial settlement was located in an area lacking civil buildings and public infrastructure. To meet the needs of the company and its workers, an urban settlement was born and grew up around the industrial plant, which in 1927 became the Municipality of Dalmine. The town was entirely designed, starting in the 1920s, by architect Giovanni Greppi.
Fondazione Dalmine - Dalmine. Bowling green (1941) by Alessandro TerziMuseimpresa
There are health facilities, such as the polyclinic, infirmary, heliotherapy colony and facilities for leisure and sports activities for workers and their families: velodrome, swimming pool, tennis courts, company recreation club, bowling alley.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the company completed the planning of the city by reorganising the downtown area and building the canteen for workers.
Fondazione Dalmine - Dalmine. Residential district centre. Antenna (1930s) by Alessandro TerziMuseimpresa
The relationship between the industrial plant and the city is the result of a continuous exchange between production and housing needs.
From the mid-1920s to the early 1950s, the city grows with the increase in the number of employees and the demands for quality of life and services on which it depends. To experience the city is to relate to the company, even if one is not employed by it.
Fondazione Dalmine ETS also inherits this intangible heritage of relations, preserves it, passes it on and enhances it - like all other sources - so that it can be an element of added value for the community.
After World War II, Dalmine contributed to Italy's technological and industrial development, participating in important projects that saw it involved in the construction of large public works: aqueducts, motorways, oil pipelines, bridge ribs, radio and TV antennas. Dalmine tubes are also used in tubular carpentry for civil construction. In these years, Dalmine opened up to the foreign market and entered the CECA programme.
The archive once again witnesses the changes of the second half of the 20th century and dispenses sources that lead the company to represent its product outside its usual boundaries, creating synergies and interests in a borderless market. Images of trade fairs, visits by heads of state from all over the world, a new focus on technological development and the issues of a changing society.
Dalmine Foundation is among the first supporters of Museimpresa.
