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The La Fabril Financiera oil factory, founded by Juan Rossi in 1888, became a pioneer factory in the production of furfural oil. In 1919 it was acquired by the Compañía General de Fósforos and in 1920 by the Compañía General Fabril Financiera, becoming one of the most important industrial companies in the region. When “La Fabril” closed, the abandonment began: at the beginning of 2009, the official decision was made to demolish the complex to build a housing district, but a popular movement was organized to demand the preservation of the buildings, which motivated the Authorities to review their intentions and find a better solution to the need of the people of Chaco people.

The Porcheddu Company of Turin (importer in North Italy of the Hennebique building system) was charged of 13 projects in Messi-na, after the 1908 quake: the study of the unpublished material in the Porcheddu archive, hosted at DISEG in the Turin Polytechnic sketches out two construction sites for quake-proof housings, the economical homes for the “Unione Messinese” in the Orto Botanico district, with a reinforced concrete frame and the Homes for the State Employees with pillars made of a prefabricated steel cage and on site poured concrete. The two different construction systems testify the business and law debate on quake-proof buildings.

The industrialization of construction practices became established much later in Italy than in other European countries. The impetus of the so-called “Italian economic miracle” in the subsequent fifties, together with the still unresolved problem of reconstruction, induced designers and building contractors to resort to the use of prefabrication. The present work has the aim of investigating this complex situation, connected to the affirmation of building industrialization in the planning of public cities in the period from just after the II World War until the beginning of the eighties, taking the case of Turin into consideration as a study case.