The IF – Industria Festival Architettura took place from March 18 to April 8, a multidisciplinary festival that explores the function and socio-cultural potential of industrial spaces, in a series of over 60 events centered in Modena and spread throughout the Emilia-Romagna region1.

The project, conceived by the Fondazione Architetti di Modena, winner of Festival Architettura and promoted by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura, aims to shed light on crucial themes such as the reuse of abandoned industrial areas, new processes of industrial and urban development, architectural design, and sustainable solutions. It gives voice to transversal and multidisciplinary approaches, involving perspectives from all sectors: from architects to sociologists, economists, and archivists, fostering a dialogue between businesses, entities, and local communities.

It is precisely the bond between territory and local community that highlights our choice to participate in the festival, as Fondazione MAIRE, through an intervention by our Heritage manager Francesca Rinaldo: industrial heritage is collective cultural value that must be returned to communities.

Just as an industrial building can find new purpose and life within a community, maintaining its historical narrative while serving the community that hosts it, so too are corporate historical archives ideal places where transversal skills and historical knowledge merge and coexist, a starting point to investigate for initiating a process of redevelopment and reuse.

We discussed this on March 29, in the panel “Reuse of Industry. What architecture?”, retracing daily life with the MAIRE historical archive, which, as a Foundation, we curate for conservation and enhancement. From use for research, theses, historical insights, to literary contests on historical tools, exhibitions, installations, to school and university lessons: a heritage at the service of the Community that preserves its history while simultaneously contributing to writing the modern one.

A Saturday afternoon at the open laboratory ex-central AEM in Modena, which saw authoritative voices alternating, investigating multiple perspectives: from the strength and fragility of the 20th-century industrial heritage narrated by Prof. Edoardo Currà [Full Professor of Technical Architecture at “Sapienza” University of Rome and President of AIPAI] to the story of the historical heritage of automobile factories by Rossella Maspoli [Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at Politecnico di Torino and AIPAI Advisor] to the journey through the census of Italian industrial architectures of the second half of the 20th century held by Architect Lucio Fontana, followed by stories of redevelopment projects throughout Italy.

The IF – Industria Festival Architettura also provided a splendid setting for the "AIPAI Photo Exhibition 2025", the photographic exhibition promoted and organized by AIPAI - Associazione Italiana per il Patrimonio Archeologico Industriale ETS/TICCIH Italia, International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage in collaboration with DICEA – Sapienza University of Rome, Ministry of Culture – UNESCO Office, Parco Archeologico dell’Appia Antica, Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica, Do.co.mo.mo Italia, Fondazione AEM, Fondazione ISEC, Fondazione musil, RoMe Museum Exhibition and Rete Fotografia, along with us. The exhibition allowed visitors to admire the winning, mentioned, and selected shots from the first three editions of the “AIPAI Photo Contest”.

Industrial heritage belongs to each of us!