Eni Village

The Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, Belluno, Italy, was built between the late 50s and the early 60s. It raised thanks to the political and entrepreneurial ability, the ambition and willpower of Enrico Mattei, an Italian public administrator that restructured Agip (General Italian Oil Company) founded during fascism, into Eni, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (National Hydrocarbons Agency). Mattei was initially its president, then also the administrator and the general director. In practice, Eni was Mattei and Mattei was Eni.

The Eni Village is a large compound, of over 200.000 square meters, equipped with a plant developed on different structures. It was built, according to innovative criteria, in a large wood at the foot of the mount Antelao.

Unfortunately Mattei died in a mysterious plane crash in 1962. This reduced the necessary incentive for the realization of this experiment of social utopia in environment, which was therefore only partially completed, compared to the original project.

The idea behind this visionary and innovative project-construction site, was that of a sort of social city planning, conceived by the expansive mind of Mattei himself, and then built, with great architectural quality, by Edoardo Gellner first and foremost, in collaboration with Carlo Scarpa for some of its parts.

Gellner translated into reality the social-organic Mattei's criteria in a complete way, on every level, from the city-planning organization, to the architectural one, and very well into the tiniest details of the furnishing.

The Eni Village main structures

The site's main structure are comprehensive of the large Holiday Camp Building (called Colonia), a 17 separate buildings unit of 30.000 square meters linked one to another by a 4km system of sheltered ramps and aisles revolving around the large central pavilion.

The Church of Our Lady of the Cadore designed by Edorado Gellner with the artistic collaboration of master Carlo Scarpa. It is made of an ensemble of trusses braced by asymmetrical steel tie-rods, and supported by cement pillars. It displays all of its verticality through the equilateral triangular shape and a bell tower that, with its high steel steeple, gives lightness and equilibrium to the entire composition, becoming a clear impression on the landscape.

The Corte apartment complex and the Cadore Hotel. The Camping with permanent tents.
The 280 one-family cottages, a constellation of small, low, elongated houses built perfectly in harmony with the surrounding landscape.

The Eni Village is an exceptional and unique site in Italy, in which the relationship between the strong aspects of the landscape and the natural environment merge in an astonishing way with the organic architectures that today the wood literally devours.

The village, since 2000, is propriety of the Minoter. Dolomiti Contemporanee has started a collaboration, on the basis of a project of cultural and functional valorization of the settling.