New York, October 24, 1929: a black Thursday which would be followed by an even blacker Tuesday, on October 29, 1929 when the New York Stock Exchange experienced the definitive collapse. The consequence was an economic crisis and a depression that overwhelmed the rich America of the first post-war period, reaping victims above all among the small and middle class.
But like all periods of crisis, this too was a time of transformation and renewal, dictated above all by the need to survive difficulties and misery. So it was that a group of lawyers, in order to continue their business while containing costs as much as possible by sharing services and goods, created a business center prototype, where the library, meeting room and secretarial offices were shared; the strength of the community was born from the weakness of individuals. This is the nucleus of the business center concept, a place where business is done without thinking of anything else.
The first business centers were born in the United States around the 60s and only in the mid-70s was the concept imported into Italy by Sebastiano Carpentieri who opened the first Italian business center in Milan, in Via Vincenzo Monti. The concept was enriched with decidedly more futuristic services when the virtual office was introduced, which today is concisely and effectively defined as: the postal domiciliation of business activity with personalized telephone answering. To tell the truth, however, this formula was already widespread in the United States since the 1920s, where operators took note of messages on behalf of users who did not have a telephone line or system, but instead had their messages left at the telephone company’s switchboard.
Nothing is invented, therefore, everything is transformed!
