With a surface area of 14,000 square metres and beyond 300 new employees set to be taken on by 2020, the new facility doesn’t only meet the demands of an ever-growing international market, it is also the expression of the willingness to strengthen the deepest values of Italian-made production.
Bulgari’s output is, with the exception of timepieces, the fruit of Italian master craftwork. High jewellery is made in Rome, accessories in Florence, perfumes in Lodi, silk in Como, only watch and clock mechanisms are made and assembled in Switzerland. In this picture, the new Valenza facility fits into that extraordinary Italian production network, which thanks to the masterful skill of craftsmen, has for centuries seen the production of aesthetic and extremely high quality objects.
The new Manifattura Bulgari spreads across two buildings with different architectural styles, that symbolically evoke tradition and innovation. The first building is the Cascina dell’Orefice, the very same where, at the beginning of the 19th century, Francesco Caramora, a goldsmith just arrived in town, gave birth to the process that would convert Valenza, initially a rural village, to a worldwide known golden city, cultural emblem of today’s Italian goldsmithing excellence that spread across the surrounding area. Nowadays the Cascina dell’Orefice, thanks to an efficient restoration which added offices and conference rooms, seems to be traveling across time and reach the future throughout the new wing which is completely encased in glass, called the Glass House. This touch of contemporaneity inspired by a Roman domus can also be found in the production building, built on three floors and characterized by a wide inner courtyard of 600-square-metre.
The building is designed to fit as much as possible into the surrounding environment, using innovative technologies, materials with low environmental impact, and following sustainability criteria. From the start the ambitious aim of the second building was to win LEED international certification (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) by the end of 2017.
The Manifattura Bulgari began its production in January 2017, with approximately 400 employees. The aim is to reach a total of 700 employees by 2020, most of them still working in the key area of jewellery making. In order to support traditional crafts and create a career path to professionalize new generations of craftsmen, Bulgari has decided to create the Bulgari Jewellery Academy at the heart of the new manufacturing facility. As a school of jewellery-making know-how, it will train all the new recruits. Given a capacity for 42 students simultaneously, it will opened in March 2017 with the first intake of 21 young jewellery makers.