The National Ironworks of Savigliano on the Mediterranean rim

La Société des ateliers Savigliano autour de la Méditerranée

Vilma Fasoli

p. 30-33


Texte intégral

1Founded in 1880, the Società Nazionale Officine Savigliano (National Ironworks of Savigliano, hereafter referred to as SNOS) began doing business outside Italy almost immediately: in 1883, it was awarded the contract for designing and building coaches for the Orient Express railway. The following year, it began supplying the Belgian Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. The Belgian company, which owned a stake in SNOS, was headquartered in Braine-le-Comte and manufactured railway equipment. Its managing director was Ernest Rolin (1841-1918). It is probable that Rolin, who had acquired experience on various construction sites in Central Europe, Russia, and Egypt, and was Chairman of the Belgian Bourse des Métaux et des Charbons, was instrumental in promoting SNOS beyond the borders of Italy, where it was already one of the most important mechanical industries.

2In Italy, the company competed directly with Impresa Industriale Italiana di Costruzioni Metalliche, founded in 1870 by engineer Alfredo Cottrau at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, with capital provided by the Belgian company Finet Charles & Cie and the Antwerp financier Édouard Cahen. Cottrau had been a scholarship student at French navy academies in Toulon and Paris. Upon graduating, he worked for the Ernest Goüin & Cie technical design office and locomotive works in Paris. In 1878, he became the sole licensee in Italy for the Eiffel portable military bridge construction system. He then filed a second patent in order to limit the spread of the Eiffel system in Italy. When Cottrau died in 1898, the company closed down, and SNOS became the Eiffel system licensee.

Figure 1: Street bridge on the Drin River, Shkoder, Albania (1913): Construction site

Image 1000000000000320000001B65093D25C605F8A0D.jpg

Source: Società Savigliano, Politecnico di Torino, Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura

Figure 2: Project drawing for the street bridge on the Drin River, Shkoder, Albania (1913)

Image 1000000000000320000000C756B53700C5D5E774.jpg

Source: Società Savigliano, Politecnico di Torino, Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura

3In 1914, SNOS celebrated the anniversary of its founding with a publication entitled “Types de Constructions Métalliques.” It contained a complete list of the company’s accomplishments, including many illustrations. Just prior to World War I, SNOS owned two factories (one in Savigliano near Cuneo, the other one in Turin), covering a total area of 170,000 m² (almost two million square feet). They employed a staff of 2,500, and had already processed a total of 200,000 tons of iron. The central theme of the publication was the construction of metalwork bridges, the structures which first won SNOS international renown. The company’s skill and reliability were recognized, not only in construction but also in design and testing. From its inception, SNOS’s technical department was headed by Swiss engineer Julius Rothlisberger (1851-1911), who designed the bridge over the Adda at Paderno (near Milan) in 1887.1 This two-level parabolic arch structure, with a span of 266 meters and a rise of 37.5 meters, enabling road and rail transit 80 meters above the river, still arouses the interest of scholars in building science and technology. It was a demonstration of engineering virtuosity, comparable to Gustave Eiffel’s Garabit Viaduct over the Truyère, because its construction was the first to apply the theory of the elasticity of an ellipse, hotly debated throughout Europe.2 The techniques adopted during trials on the bridge in order to check the working behavior of the structures under dynamic stress and strain were also innovative. SNOS conducted stability tests with eight locomotives weighing 83 tons apiece (traveling at a speed of 45 kph), pulling 30 cars loaded with gravel, for a total weight of 600 tons. This technical success, in terms of both engineering and testing on the Paderno bridge, explains the rise of SNOS’s international business. The company innovated again in 1895, with the construction of the swing bridge in Calchis (Greece) connecting the city to the mainland by the Strait of Euripus. The bridge, recently replaced by a more modern structure, “covered a gap of 40 meters between the abutments, by means of two projecting spans [with 21-meter cantilevers], opening symmetrically. Each span had two groups of supports, one for the closed bridge and the other for the opening. […] The deck is 4 meters wide between balustrades and 2.5 meters between beams. The lower flange of the beams forms an arch over the gap. […] The bridge is maneuvered […] manually. It requires two men per span, and takes eight minutes when the machinery is well-lubricated.”3 Despite the severe economic crisis threatening Greece that year, SNOS was awarded the contract for the construction of roofing and shelving at the Vallianos library in Athens. The building had been begun in 1887 (completed in 1902), supervised by the architect Ernst Ziller, on the basis of plans drawn up by architect Theophil von Hansen.4 SNOS’s enterprise in Athens is emblematic of the company’s progress: it had secured its first architectural contract outside Italy, as opposed to major infrastructural works, further proof of the company’s commitment to innovation and experimentation; and its attention to fire prevention and safety.

4SNOS’s international success continued with the construction of road and rail bridges: over the Danube at Ujpest (Budapest) in Hungary (under the design and construction supervision of engineer Giovanni Marsaglia); in Romania at Dragasani and Ramnicu-Valcea (1898-1899); and at Shkoder in Albania, built just before the outbreak of World War I. However, the construction of the railway line along the coast of Libya, where Italy launched its first political phase of colonization in 1912, left no written traces in the company archives.

5If the outbreak of war stopped all activities, the subsequent recovery was made more difficult by the economic crisis, and for SNOS even more so by the loss of one of its most important collaborators, engineer Julius Rothlisberger. Engineer Alberto Ballocco, who had previously held the position of technical director at Fiat, succeeded him. At the end of the war, thanks to solid diplomatic relations with the court of Siam, and to the presence in Bangkok of some architects and engineers trained in the schools of Turin between 1920 and 1922, SNOS became active again in the construction of bridges.5 However, the new business did not generate enough revenue to stand up to foreign competitors. Between 1906 and 1930, a large share of stock was sold to the Crédit Général de Belgique, leading to strong foreign representation within SNOS’s board of directors.6

Figure 3: Vallianos Library, Athens (1887-1902)

Image 10000000000003200000020E70451CB085007F96.jpg

Source: Società Savigliano, Politecnico di Torino, Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura

Figure 4: Ernst Ziller and Theophil von Hansen, arch.; Savigliano, cont.: Plan for the roof and the shelving structures (1895) and steel shelving in stacks

Image 10000000000002BB000003B81F93645BC0831020.jpg

Source: Società Savigliano, Politecnico di Torino, Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura

Figure 5: Bridge on the Nile in Girga, Egypt (c. 1930): Stability trials

Image 10000000000003200000045985287FC2ADA682FA.jpg

Source: Società Savigliano, Politecnico di Torino, Biblioteca Centrale di Architettura

6In 1926, SNOS began publishing the Bollettino Tecnico Savigliano as a means of promoting the company in foreign markets, because “the domestic market is no longer sufficient to consume the growing potential of the works.”7 Although SNOS could rely on uninterrupted international relations, articles in the company bulletin readily complained of the shortage of raw materials in Italy due to Fascist government policies like customs restrictions and the Italian currency revaluation imposed in 1926. Its statement “Industry must essentially help itself” was thinly veiled criticism of a government which was not careful enough to promote and support Italian companies internationally. In the 1920s, SNOS took a lively interest in the Egyptian market, where it was present beginning in 1928. That year, it began the construction of a large canopy measuring 17,000 square meters and weighing 1,400 tons in Abu Zabal, which was followed by two bridges over the Nile, one in Samanud and another in Banha. These were swing bridges with 64-meter spans, supported by 6-meterhigh isosceles-triangle trusses. Both bridges spanned broad gaps. The breach in Banha was 238.5 meters wide, with a revolving bay and four fixed bays spanning 54 meters each, whereas the Samanud bridge spanned 240 meters with five 43.8-meter bays, one of which revolved. In 1929, at the invitation of the Egyptian State Railways, SNOS bid on and won the contract for the complete electrification of the (standard-gauge) Cairo-Helwan line with a 1,500 Volt DC system. In the summer of that year, SNOS also won the competition launched by the Egyptian Ministry of Communication for the design and the construction of two railway bridges in Girga on the Cairo-Shellal line. This last contract was a particular source of pride for SNOS, for it won out over more firmly established Belgian, French, German, and British steel construction companies. Political and military events of the second half of the 1930s diverted SNOS towards the important works in the Italian colonies of East Africa.8 In the post-war period, SNOS specialized in the production of electromechanical installations for alternative energies, heavy structural work, the reconditioning of electric motors and transformers, and in hydraulic systems. In 1975, the company was taken over by General Electric.

Notes de bas de page

1 The bridge was opened on June 10, 1889. Nowadays it is part of the Adda-Nord Natural Park of the Region of Lombardy, cf. http://www.parks.it/parco.adda.nord/

2 Giuseppe Pistone, Vittorio Nascé, Anna Maria Zorgno, Clara Bertolini, Vincenzo Ilario Carbone, Roberto Roccati, Il Ponte di Paderno: storia e struttura, Milano: Electa, 1989; Vittorio Nascé, “Restoration of a 100 Year Old Iron Bridge, Paderno,” Structural Engineering International, vol. 3, n° 1, 1993, p. 37-38. See also the recent study by Rosalba Ferrari, Mattia Facheris, Egidio Rizzi, “Structural Analysis of the Paderno d’Adda Bridge (Italy, 1889),” Structural Analysis of Historic Construction, n° 133-134, 2010, p. 459-465.

3 Louis Petitmermet, “Notes sur quelques travaux maritimes exécutés en Grèce,” Bulletin technique de la Suisse romande, 30e année, n° 1, 1904, p. 1-10.

4 On the history of the Vallianos Library of Athens see the recent book by Vassilis Colonas, Ernst Ziller, Architect (1837-1923), [exhibition catalogue], Athens: National Gallery, March 22-August 31, 2010.

5 Francesca Filippi, Da Torino a Bangkok. Architetti e ingegneri nel regno del Siam, Bologna: Marsilio, 2008.

6 In 1930, the Board of Directors at SNOS consisted of: Paul Doat, Adriano De Sauvage Vercour, Pierre Liénart, Ernesto Ferro (President), Felice Guidetti Serra, Virgilio Abbona, Amedeo Poli. See Ivan Balbo, “La Società Nazionale Officine Savigliano,” in Sergio Soave (ed.), Storia di Savigliano. Il ‘900, Savigliano, (Cuneo): L’Artistica, 2006, p. 194.

7 L’attività delle Officine di Savigliano all’estero (esecuzioni e progetti),” Bollettino Tecnico Savigliano, a. III (1929), n° 4-5, p. 204.

8 Ivan Balbo, op. cit., p. 189-223.


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