Past, Present, Future.

First opportunity to access this space to external visitors, the exhibition offered the opportunity to visit an area of the site where Chiesi Farmaceutici’s industrial set-up began to take shape. Starting from that 8 October 1955, when Dr. Giacomo Chiesi, together with some fifty employees, mostly women, opened the site in Via Palermo, purchased a few years earlier to house the first production plant of the company.

Divided into three sections — past, present and future — the “Past, Present, Future. The story of a trajectory: Innovation, Sustainability and Commitment” exhibition features a layout designed by art curator Alessandro Canu, who has successfully transformed the charm and complexity of industrial environments into a contemporary exhibition space with a strong communicative and immersive appeal. The site’s architecture, featuring the recovery and transformation of shelving and pallets into display elements, and a careful selection of works, including archive photos, historical documents and various objects, were the distinctive elements of the entire project, a true link between the company’s historical past and a future of growth and innovation.

The first section, Past, tells the story of the Chiesi Group through archive documents, historical photographs, laboratory instruments and products from decades gone by. The company’s first steps were exemplified by the drugs it produced, the sketches of its promotional campaign posters from the 1950s and 1960s, and the awards it received for its commitment to research and development, with the aim of improving the living conditions of patients and their care givers. Particularly noteworthy exhibits include an early 20th century copper distiller for alcoholic preparations such as mother tinctures, used for medicines/cosmetics/perfumes, and samples of the “Roi de Rome” perfume line, a legacy of the acquisition of Borsari Profumi in the 1950s.
Indeed, it was the 1950s that marked a turning point for the business: numerous products and specialities were produced and marketed by Chiesi, and an embryonic sales network was set up throughout Italy. The exhibition featured several drug packages, price lists and advertising posters that testify to the dynamism of the company’s products.
Innovative and modern thinking was also reflected in the choice of communication, which aligned with the progress and resourcefulness of this forward-looking company. Hence Dr. Giacomo Chiesi’s decision to use the language of the artistic avant-gardes of the early 20th century, while also embracing the graphic design of the schools of Armando Testa and Erberto Carboni. The Past section of the exhibition was therefore an opportunity for visitors to familiarise themselves with the cultural and historical context in which Chiesi Farmaceutici began its gradual transformation into an international biopharmaceutical group.

The Present section focused on a crucial moment for the Chiesi Group: the urban regeneration
project of the entire Chiesi site in Via Palermo seventy years after its creation.
The site, which has experienced mushrooming growth in line with the company’s development needs, has become the heart of the Chiesi Group, up to house all the activities of a pharmaceutical group in an area of around 10,000 square metres: R&D laboratories, production, drug storage, offices and management areas.
Around 2020, most of these departments have been relocated to other company sites in Parma, giving Chiesi the opportunity to write a new chapter in its history and transforming – in line with its value system – the Via Palermo site into a driving force for urban regeneration.
For these reasons, in March 2023, the Chiesi Group launched the international “Restore to Impact” Call for Ideas, a project aimed at soliciting innovative, evolutionary, and cross-cutting ideas as the basis for the guidelines for a future architectural building project to transform the Via Palermo site.
The central section of the exhibition featured a display of the best projects selected in the international “Restore to Impact” Call for Ideas: a project intended to accompany Chiesi into the future, marking the beginning of an open and participatory reflection on the urban regeneration of the Via Palermo site.

The future was the real star of the third and final section of the exhibition. This future was embodied in the 1:1 scale wooden model of a portion of the industrial line for filling sterile vials that is in operation in the new Biotech Center of Excellence that the Chiesi Group inaugurated in 2024 in the San Leonardo, district, the same where the site Chiesi Via Palermo is located.
This model is emblematic of the concept of future medicine, just as “Restore to Impact” condenses the notions and values represented in the future identity and appearance of the Via Palermo site.

Taken as a whole, the “Past, Present, Future. The story of a trajectory: Innovation, Sustainability and Commitment” exhibition was a model and symbol of a vision and method. Namely, continuous research and the ability to update internal skills and transform the spaces in which they take shape.