The Learning Factory

The Learning Factory is a private university for applied arts and design, located in a historic, early twentieth-century industrial complex near the railway in Bologna, Italy. This new university has renovated the former Ovidio Vignoni hand-decorated cement tile factory, without occupying any extra ground. This regenerated space is designed to offer innovative, flexible teaching facilities based on shared, adaptable environments.  
 
Below its distinctive ribbing, the pitched wooden roof creates a large, articulated covered plaza that is open to the mixed agenda of the university's different activities. Over half of the environments on the ground floor house flexible teaching spaces and shared informal areas, which combine with standard, closed classrooms. Large windows divide the classrooms from the other spaces, allowing a visual connection to be created between the people involved in the various teaching activities.  Due to its past use, the structure features large, spacious areas with a marked verticality. It is divided into two main wings, distinguished by façades overlooking two different streets, two internal courtyards and walls treated in different ways. These are linked to its production-based past, enhanced by the overall design and structurally adapted to be anti-seismic.  

The ‘exposed brick section’, on Via Jacopo Barozzi, features a powerful contrast between brick and calamine black iron, while the ‘plastered walls’ section, on Via Attilio Muggia, adopts white as its main chromatic filter for the walls and steel elements. The structure’s exposed concrete floor, wooden roof and artificial lighting act like connective tissue, uniting the various rooms. Cylindrical iRoll pendant luminaires have been used in the shared spaces and double-height classrooms, while iPlan pendant luminaires grace the environments with lower ceilings like the offices and meeting rooms.