The Negozio Olivetti is located under the arcades of the Procuratie Vecchie, in Piazza San Marco.

It was commissioned in 1957 by Adriano Olivetti from Carlo Scarpa not as a simple shop, but as the Ivrea company's calling card in Venice's drawing room a representative space in which to display typewriters and calculators as objects of culture.

Between 1957 and 1958 Scarpa created there one of his most celebrated interiors: the floor in Murano glass tesserae in four colours, the staircase of cantilevered Aurisina stone slabs, the wooden galleries, and Alberto Viani's sculpture "Nudo al sole" placed above a pool of water at the entrance.

After the shop closed in the 1990s, the space was restored and reopened in 2011, and is today a heritage property managed by FAI – Fondo Ambiente Italiano, which preserves Scarpa's interior and a collection of vintage Olivetti machines.

On the occasion of the 19th Architecture Biennale, FAI presented there "The Shape of Things to Come", an installation by the duo Formafantasma, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, among the most recognised figures in international research-driven design curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.

The intervention consisted of a series of furnishings and objects made by recycling components of obsolete electronic equipment: computer cases, smartphone shells, technical parts reused without concealing their origin, so that each piece declared its previous life.

The project continues the research the duo began in 2017 with "Ore Streams", devoted to electronic waste and the responsibilities of the technology industry in the environmental crisis.

The setting was part of the meaning: in the space designed by Scarpa for a company that made the durability and quality of the object a cultural value, Formafantasma's furniture staged the exact opposite the planned obsolescence of contemporary technology treading lightly in one of the most untouchable interiors of twentieth-century Italy.