11 Only Architecture Will Be O u r Lives

Peter Lung and \Y/ill~ar~ Menkiig

31 53 65 73 Suicidal Desires
Peter Long
The Revolt of the Object
~vrllifl~>r r~Ier1kir1g
Memories of Superstudio
Cristiarro k r a l d o d i Frarrcia
A House of Calm Serenity Adolfo Na~alini
79 Journey to the End of Architecture
Piero Frassirrelli
84 Reflected Architecture Superstudio: Historic Projects 95 119 175 213 228 229
1 9 6 6 6 8 . Superarchitecture: to the Rescue! 1969-71. Superprojects: Objects.
Monuments, Cities 1972-73. Superesistcnce: Life and Death 1974-78. Supersimple:
Elementary Architecture Superstudio: Biographies Superstudio: Exhibitions and B
ibliography

Peter b n g
Only Architecture Will Be Our Lives
a ~ i dV~lltam I Menk~ng
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111 thore years i t becarrrc uery clear that 10 contirrue t o dcsigr~ fiirrrrrr~
re, ob~ecrs arrd similar household decorariotrs ruas rro solutiorr t o problnrrs
of liuirrg arrd 1101 euerr t o those of life, arrd cue12 less could i t serue t
o save one's otun soul.. . I t becarrre clear that rro beautrfication or c o s
~ ~ ~ e ru c r e ~ i e ntfficiio7t t o rerrredy the darlrage of tinre, the error
s ofnrarr arrd the bestiality of architecture.. . The oroblern therefore was tha
t o f irrcreasirr~delac/~rrrenl frorrz , those activities ofdesigrr adopting per
haps the theory ofrrrinirrral force i n a ~ e r r e m"process of rrdrrctiorl". l
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For those w l ~ o like ourrelues, are conuirrced that arcl~itecturc , is one oft
hefew wags t o realize cosrrric order on earth, t o put thir~gs
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t o order arrd abouc a l l t o affirtrr hrrrrrarrityi capacityfor acting accordi
r~gl o reasorr, it is a "rrroderate utopia" t o frrragirre a riear frrture irr w
h i c l ~ l l arcl~itec~ure be created w i t h a s i r ~ ~oct, a tuill le frorr
r a srrigle desrgn capable o f c l a r r ~ r n gonce arrd for a l l the rrrotiue
.r ruhich have irrdrrced rrran t o build dolrrrens, nrrtlhirs, pyrarrrids, and b
stly t o trnce (ultirrra ratio) n luhrre line rn the desert. SUPERSTUDIO, The Co
rrfirruous Morrunrenr: Atr Arrhirec~ural Model for Total Urbanrzation, 196Y
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In ,ronl
most g r a p h ~ c aspects of these 1960s protagonists to today's pub11c The col
lect~ve shows lack, ho\r,ever, suffic~ent space to explore ~ndlv~dual groups or
speclfic actlons In greater deta~l 'Though the many e ~ h ~ b ~ t l andsdustrate
d catalogues have done a respectable on
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job of d ~ s s e m l n a t l n ~ consequently revlvlng the works of a preand don

i~nanrlv European Rdd~cal archttecture movement over the last
the world's apparently boundless resources is now having to fight to retain that
dubious right. And just as Italy's cconomic miracle
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mary materials from this period are simply hard to come by: This is particularly
unfortunate for SUI'BKIUDIO who seem to have acquired the role as the Radical m
ovement's cover-child.' Scant little
ning of the new millennium. N o better moment, then, to turn back the pages of h
istory to that previous era when a similarly ample crisis ripped through rhe wor
ld economies: welcome to Italy in the
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understanding SUPEIISTUDIO'S provenance and the group's relationship to the many
cultural currents evolving through the European avant-garde in the 1960s. Since
none of these takes place in the distant past, most of the original protagonist
s are still very active on the scene, though their current identities are not al
ways transparently linked to their epic endeavours of youth. While clearly a thi
rty-year hiatus suggests a certain amount of aging many of the principal actors
remain highIv enereetic and active in the field while their works remain tucked
we are ironically trawling into a new kind of pop-~rp culture! What remains to b
e seen, however, is whether the recent 1960s' revival emerging in the schools an
d in some of the more progressive of- $ P fices goes beyond mere fashion trends.
' H A definitive and momentous transformation took place in the design and archi
tectural environment by the late 1960s: the increasingly debilitating crisis in
Modernist architecture would find some of its most laconic last acts played out
on the drawing boards : , ~reciselv here in Florence. Each group challenged and
eventuallv
2
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cia. Roberto Maeris. Piero Frassinelli and Alessandro Magris were
sewed to indoctrinate society into an irrelevant culture of con12
rators were trusted with their time and given open access to their remaining col
lection of projects and library. This publication has therefore been planncd and
organizcd to seme as a portable reference focusing primarily on s u ~ e n s r u
~ r o ' s critical writings i ~ relation to their better-known body of designs
r and architecture. O n e of the most unexpected conclusions we as curators can
draw from our invo~vement with SUI'ERSTUDIO is just how conscious the group was
from the outset of the historical importance of its investigations: SUPElUTUDlO
maintains an impressive archive that from the start nieticulously docutnents the
unfolding process of its critical research. While it's evident upon examining t
he material presented here that their most renowned images describe the momentou

s steps in thc group's philosophical development, these inlages can only partly
convey the complete historical passage. For this reason we have decided to initi
ate an operation of recovery, restituting in the process those projects and writ
ings -critical texts and storyboards - that are far less familiar but entirely n
ecessary in providing a more complete understanding of the group's oeuvre. 'l'he
timing for this revived interest in the 1960s' counter-culture is not that arbi
trary either: we are again at a point where the convergence of technology and co
nsumeristn, in its current socalled free market state is spinning steadily out o
f control: the small percentage of the global population still able to command
evocative images, the series beginning in 1969 titled The Conlinuor~sMonumen~, s
pread its glacially translucent grid structures throughout entire regions of the
planet enveloping buildings and entire cities, creating a monument to end all m
onuments. s u l m STUDIO'S renouncement of architecture, their conscious withdra
wal from the perverse system based on the con~mercialisationof popular demand, w
as deliberately intended to strip architecture of everything except its most nak
ed living truth. This publication is structured into two basic parts. Part I fea
tures the nvo curators' essays exanlining SUPEIUTUDIO'S history within the Flore
ntine context ("Suicidal Desires", Peter Lang), and an essay on s u ~ e ~ u r u
~ rpenultimate moment on the o's larger international sccne ("The Revolt of the
Object", William Menking), and includes the retrospective testimonials and criti
cal reflections from three of S U I ~ E I ~ T U D I O ' S nlembers: Adolfo Natal
ini, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and Piero Frassinelli. Part I1 is divided into
the following four chapters: E 1. 196G68: S U I ' E W ~ C ~ ~ I C C I U ~to the
Rescue! 2. 1969-71: SUI'Ellproj~ctr:Objects, Monuo1cnts, Cities 3. 1972-73: SUI
'ERexlsle~lce: Life and Death 4. 1974-78: s u ~ > e ~ i ~ n Elementary Architect
ure ple: In Part I1 each chapter engages in a specific historical moment and pro
vidcs related documentation on SUI~E~STUDIO'S theoretical and
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practical responses. The goal is to publish the group's niost significant projec
ts along with a related collection of images and their accompanying writings, st
oryboards and photos. While this publication is nor intended to become a catalog
ue raisonnk on the works of SUI>ERSTUDIO, been conceived as a work of conit has
sultation and reflection. Here every atteliipt has been made to pair significant
texts and storyboards to their corresponding architectural projects. This intro
ductory essay will navigate through some of the peak episodes that mark SUPERSTU
DIO'S architectural proThe quickest link between the two groups
SUPERSTUDIO
and
coming out of a particularly Florentine phenomenon that could, we
the catchall phrase used to regroup the variety of tendencies that have aspired
to shake off the liegemonic grip of modernist archius tecture in the 1960s. Radi
cal architecture is an a m b i g ~ ~ omultive. lent term that suggests different
and clearly contrasting meanings. Andrea Branzi, one of the founding members of
Archizoom, writing in 1973, gave this impression on the breadth of Radical move
ment: "Today the term 'Radical' architecture assembles at the international leve
l all of the eccentric experimentation with regard to the straight line of the p
rofession: counterdesign, conceptual architecture, primitive technologies, eclec
ticism, iconoclasm, neodadism. nomadism..."' Gianni Pettena, another Radical pla
yer active at the time in Florence, insists on giving the movelnent a more sinuo
usly fluid radiance, albeit with continental distinctions, weaving the 111g o r
~ o ~experiments of the Californian Radicals to the more self-conir scious langu
age emerging in England, Austria and Italy, whose works result from far deeper f
rustrations characterizing the profession in Europe.'" In effect. Pettena's pano
ramic view of the movement correctly depicts the international exchanges, throug
h publications, encounters and exhibitions, while devoting considerably less tim
e to the msny provincial accents buried in the chaos of translation, misreading,
and local cultural wrangling. Finally Emilio Ambasz's conception for T h e Neru
Dorncrtic Lorzdrcope makes the point that even \\,ithin Florentine circle of vi
sionary architects there \\.ere several contradictory positions regarding the ro
le of ilrchitecrurc and design -let alone radical politics. T h e weakness in es
tablishing ;In umbrella definition for the Radical architecture movement therefo
re remains, we believe, in the often-contradictory positions held by these disti
nctive activist groups. The Radical bind between the groups does not necessarily
imply that there were common denominators linking one to another, as clearly th
ose who saw themselves as neodadists were not necessarily willing to also act as
nomadisrs. Branzi's intent was to underscore just how insidiously the work of s
uch a diverse num14 ber of subversive credos were penetrating the 1960s' mainstr
eam
the scenes, the story of just how the two groups were founded is tied as much to
circumstances as it was to a prescient vision.'' circle in the early 1960s, was
asked by the Jolly gallery in Pistoia to mount a second show of his paintings i
n November 1966. Into Corretti, Paolo Deganello and Massimo Morozzi chose the deshis exhibition manifesto.

16
first date would have turned out to be catastrophic. O n 4 November, an Italian
national holiday, the Arno river overran its banks, flooding Florence and the re
st of the valley. Natalini recounts how he found himself almost under water as h
e worked through the night on the graphics for the Modena exhibition poster." In
need of a dry place ro work, Natalini went to his friend Cristiano Toraldo di F
rancia, who knew of a place to rent on high ground. Shortly aftenvards they foun
ded together the first SupERSTuDlo office at Via Bellosguardo 1. SUPERSTUDIO rea
lly only appears in some kind of recognizable form some time after the second sh
ow in Modena, lagging a bit behind Archizoom." In fact, it would take roughly a
year for Adolfo Natalini and Cristi:mo Toraldo di Francia to collectively gather
their forces to give a philosophical foundation to SUPERSTUDIO. Natalini's thes
is project on an art centre for Florence, begun in 1964 under the direction of L
eonardo Savioli, influenced him to study Louis Kahn. From Kahn, Natalini immerse
d himself in the history of monuments, a work that he himself has qualified as a
work benveen "pop and the monumental".'~oraldodi Franciak thesis presented in 1
968, a "Machine for Vacations", represented a dialectical investigation into tec
hnology and the evolving social realm. In 1967 Roberto Magris entered the Bellos
guardo office, adding his experience in working within the industrial design fie
ld. Piero Frassinelli joined SUPERSI'UDIO in early April 1968. Fmssinelli's univ
ersity research combined anthropology with architecture, a background that provi
ded him with exceptional skills in writing and storytelling.'' Over the course o
f 1967, SuPERSTuDIO laboured to establish three categories for future research:
the "architecture of the monument"; the "architecture of the image"; and "tecnom
orphic architecture". Natalini's 1966 thesis on the Palazzo dell'Arte served as
the initial genesis for the group's work on the architecture of the monument, la
ter developed with greater refinement in the competition for the Fortezza da Bas
so completed in 1967. The second category, on the architecture of the image, ins
pired the graphic-visual research behind the beguiling renderings that became th
e group's renowned signature. The architecture of the image provoked an extensiv
e visual experimentation into techniques and appliques, appropriating from diver
se sources, such as collage, pop art, cinema and dada.ln Toraldo di Francis's un
iversity thesis set the stage for a scientific-based research, using technology
as an interface medium for architecture." From these preliminary three categorie
s developed the first major critical project proposed by SUPERSTUDIO:the Journey
info theRea11n ojReason, an illustrated storyboard created to serve as "maps fo
r orientation ..." describing the unfolding relationship benveen natural and art
ificial environments. This pictorial exege/1
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P~sloia. December 196G Adolo Nalalnl. Andrea Bran28 and Masslmo Morozz, ICr#rlia
no Toraldo dl Francla 1 laklng s the p ~ c ~ u r e l
.
.
2 6 progressive visions on man and his relation to the built environment. The st
oryboard narrative, already developed as a form
office, in that they attempted to create more than a semblance of a legitimate p
ractice, while all the while seeking to enzlsperate the per" charged actions. Th
e "super" code of conduct required that homes and offices of a prospecrive welloff clientele. They were "super-operators", and as such producers of designs and
objects that would be over-loaded with symbolism and poetic content. As SUPERST
UDIO'S designs confounded the sense of scale and objective significance, the uns

uspecting user \vould find him or herself bccoming part of the critical process
of the design. The making and shaping of these objects were consistently related
to bricolage techniques, assemblies from exisring manufactured productions, or
adaptations from outside industries, such as

suporr~d~o,ha vfa~ C I I L tn
Mantcllato olllce 1981
these subvers~ve objects they reallzed " l n ~ t ~ a t e d a new level of con su
merlsm, and consequently another level of poverty" '"Havlng recoenlzed the futll
ltv of the strategy, S U P E ~ T U D I O retrenched.
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e Just l ~ k the m in had become powerful tool for all 11s bare slmone long pllc
lty, SUPERSTUDIO called for people " to live l ~ k e protest ", to engage In a l
ife long " be in Every object has a 4 pract~calfunctlon and a contemplative one
and ~tIS the latter that evasion d e s ~ g n seeklng to potentlate Thus there 1s
an end to the $ 1s 19th-century myths of reason as the explanation of everythin
g, the 5 thousand varlat~onson the theme of the four leaned chalr, aero
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s u P c n s T u D r o made yet another leap foniard, abandoning the last
-.
vestiges of a market-driven architecture, erasing once and for all
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plest a physlcal bar graph, the addltlon of the histograms to the
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for other more pressing activities. "We prepared a catalogue of tri-dimensional
non-contin"ous diagrams, a catalogue of histograms of architmure with reference
to a grid transportable in diverse areas or scales for the edification of a natu
re both serene and immobile in mhich we might finally recognize (re-know) oursel
ves. From the catalogue of histograms followed effortlessly objects, furniture,
environments and architecture... . But all these things didn't matter much, nor
have they ever mattered much. The surface of such hisroarams was homo1
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were also called 'the tombs of the architects'"."
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with the four members posing at its base, and an owl in the forefront gliding st
raight towards the viewer. The image, a morbid group critique, nonetheless came
in the shape of a riddle. A sort of death wish so beautiful and entrancing that
the message really didn't seem to matter.
19

nntive para<ligm, onc step ~t t i ~ n e As Natalini cmphasizc~l "By tht. destruc

tion of objects, \\,c mean tlie destr~ctionof their artributes of 'srarus' 2nd t
he conr~ot.ltions ilnposcd t,y powcr, so objects .reduced to the con<lirionof nc
urro! and that we live w ~ t h disposable elements) 2nd nor for objects. Dy thc
elimination o i thc city, we m a n tlic elin~in:~rion the accumulation of formal
strucof d tures of power - the elimin~tionof thc clty 3s Ilier~rchy~ n social m
odel, looking for n new freeeg~litarian t e , In \vIiich cverym one can reach <l
ifferenr gralles in the rlcveloprncnt of his possi. bilities, b~.g~nning equal s
tarting i)oinrs. By the e n J of work, from we mean the end of spcci:~lize~l rcp
critive work Seen as an on4
sewe~l:'' ..SUPLRSTUDIO. led by Adolfo Nntalinl, started in 1966 ~~y'~,",:$'~~,"
,","~~,",':"I ro produce a body of work which was more or less divided betwecn r
epresenting the form of .I 'Continuous Monument' as a mute ur- s - o e ~ ~ ~ ~ n
: ~ c l - ~ e e 2 h D ' c " """e"" ' 'I ban sign and proclucing a scricr oivign
ertcs illustrating ,I world from which consumer goods had !xen elilninated Their
work varied from the projection of v ~ s ~ m ~ c n e t r n bmeg.~l~rhs, c e d m
irror-&ss. t le f ~ in to thc <lcpicrlon of 3 sr~ence.fictionIsndscape in which
nature had been rcndcrcd benevolent '.i'The whole operation, Frampton may t,e su
ggesting, should not be ~nterprete<l n monulnent.il form ocas cupying an existin
g Ian~lscope,but instcnd J plisntom projection across.3 strangely .~ltcre<l spar
i.~l.ten~por.~l cont~nuu:~~." Charles Jencks preferred to inrcrprct I%eCbt~trnt~
utrr .\lonr~t?ti9trt 35 3Jacobin ~rchitecture, rcvo~utionorybu! despotic He fail
ed ulrlrnately in recollciling tlic ironic self-cr~tque that functione~lCIS a ~l
~sorclering col~rrol mcclinnis~n Fur if Jencks was not convinced that the Monume
nt's haunting mcss~gc coul<lbe so f.~lse, Kenneth Frampton's interpretation of S
U I ~ ~ K S ~picked up on a counter ~DIO c ~ ~ l t umessage, that he recognized
to be veiled bclou the image r~l itself. ' Bcyoncl the rule of thc perforrn~nce
principle" noted Framp. ton, ' u . h ~ c hthe philosopher Herberr Marcuse had a
lread) char. ~ c t e r i r c das defit~lng11fe In tcrms of instruments .lnrl con
sumer gooJs. surlLmrunro projecte<l n sllenr. anti-futurisr :~ncltechnologicslly
optimistic utopia . . " According to Frnml)ron. ' i t 15 s ~ g . n~ficnntthat (
~JI'LRSIUUIO chose to represent sucl~ non-repress~ve 3 world in terms of an arcl
~itecrure h ~ was virtually invis~blc,or. t t where v~siblc, totnlly uselcss an1
1 by clcs~gnauto-destructive" ' comes Frampton's read on \ u P r n r l ~ o ~ ~ ~
nllchncarer to the group's original intent, ~ I I 111scommentary .~lso I confirm
s tl1.11 f i r . C'utrt~trr~utrr .\lotrr~rnr,~r/ nor so cloakc<lin irony alld al
nbigul. ~vas I, .I, to lack legibilirv turrnsrunro c<lnscio~~sly examined each u
laycr ~n the proccss of <lesign 2nd arch~tccture butlt its alter. and
"' "
Lrlcr /or C'l,rirtm.lr: I'rr~ttronitio,rro/thr. .\lyrticol RL.birrhu/ Ur. bfitrr
mi, appe~ring the D ~ e l n b e r in I971 I S S U ~ AD. 111ahnost evcry of "lded
" city the pre<lominant tlic~nu u,os aI)out blind fnitli in rcclinological salvn
tion and the looming cffccrr of the A m c r i c a ~ ~ i z ~ t ~ o n
or)
hobitants, exccpt ~nsome cast. \!.here one might think of d c v i a ~ ~ n . . .
g "'l'he i n h ~ b ~ t a nIlve ~n the machine endlessly drugged along Ijy ts con
veyor bclrs, by chutes and pneulnaric tubes from tllc time of birth to rhc rilnc
of death The machine takes c ~ r of c v c ~ t h i n g . e along the innumcrJbls
routcs \vliich intersccr, unltu and divide 3ccording to the ~ncolnprehensit,lc
progrnmming o l the m ~ c h i n c . Thc inhi~bitnnts ~ n d f food and (car, slee
p an11 juy, sex n l ~ dhope. l death ~ n l anger, solnetimes also rcbcll~on,bur
thcy know very well 11131if they get off r l i e o b l ~ g ~ r rou:es establishe
d by the InJor~ chine, they will rncvitat>ly bc crushucl by 11s mach~nery."" the
, Once SUPLKS'rLDIO finlshcrl p r o d ~ l c ~ n g 7ir r9lve 7 ~ l r , rthcy
, '

lislicd a short uns~gneclreview on pagc 29 titlcd '12 Citti dcl futuro" ( I 2 ci

ties of the future^.'. 'l'he revieu~errum~rkccl."l'hc 21ternativc 1)rol)os3lsby
Super-studio' appear in succusslon Inscd on ar! im~ginary, iml)oss~ble playfid a
rchirectu~"An i n r c w . u.~tIi :lnJ ~ A~lolfo Nat~linifollowed. Natal~ni, any
event, hncl sent our scvin era1 dozcn copies of the 7ir;,lvL, 7hlr.r to Italiar
p ~ p e r s including , I1 .\lotrdu. I1 .\lutrdu's cultural c<litorduring tlicsc
ycars wns l t ~ l o ZI

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Though the connection remains speculative - what kind of influence would the svP
EllsruD1o piece have had on Calvino if he had indeed read it in 1971 - the coinc
idence nonetheless renlains intriguing. Calvino's short stories had a vast influ
ence on the general public, not to mention a whole generation of architects. Ano
ther cautionary tale? Also durine this time sulJaHs.ruolo began the production o
f its
background In one rnemorable scene w h ~ l e rhythlns are heard the n~elodlcallv
In the backeround the astronauts. seen feedme on
reconsideration of domestic space. SUPERS.rUDIOcollage their slick drawings of s
atellites, desert landscapes and people in the act of faVk ?f
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the effects arc indeed at times simplistic, but nonetheless powerful precisely b
ecause the hypcr-gadgetry of space-capsule life is suderr denly reduced to a tri
bal ritc." A poetic re~nise sci.~iein which the real protegonis;~are the histogr
am objects that penetrate the galaxy. SUI'ERSTUDIO'S incursion into the world of
film begins far from earth: evcrvrhinn, "from the moon to the planets is archi"no intention of doing withoutn."She is depicted sadly marooned amid her applian
ces on r small grass island in the middle of a plane "wirhout any messages in bo
ttles". In the catalogue this image is the foil for another, T h e Disinril Mou,
lroin, urhich portrays a youthful sybarite world of nomadic pleasures not enslav
ed to designed objects of mass consumption but free to experience their
a nostalgia precisely for primal knowledge on earth. oarticioated in thc Museum
of Modern In 1972 I;UI'EIISTU!JIO
to remove all commercially driven clutter from the object, o r the architecture:
as in their FiueSuburbor~I'illos project, each superiijjl $jilt
fi!ig
Their ~ n s s f l o rplastic lamp was selected by the show's c u n t o r ~ Emili
o Ambasz for the "Obiects" section of the exhibit. In addititr~rorrs M o , ~ a , ~ e r i ~ r indecorously neutralized layers of gratuitous
historical symbolisms associated with the making of monumental arlogue.'" This project, which took the form of a small plastic model, repeated ro
infinity in a cubed light box. As they describe it is " . . . a reconsideration
of thc relations between the process of design and the environment through ;In
alter~lative model of existence"." The images reproduced in the catalogue ore ni
ne variations from their film project Life, Srrpcrsurfnce and remain one of thei
r
outside this burdensome dichotomy. SUIXI&UDIO, beginning with the MOCIA show, so
ught to re-conceptualize the position of urchitecture altogether They discarded
the role of the c r e n o r the d e signer, the architect. Instead, the group mo

ved to espouse the complete reversal of the normative condition, to switch roles
, co find architecture in one's olun life.
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tempts to rake arcliitccturc onto n dlffcrent philosophic~l plnte.111. Renvecn 1
972 2nd 1973. Carrhrllo published $I'PEIL%TL'DIO~ ttor y b o ~ r d s n texts for
t l ~ c I I CF1~11da,,:r,it.7l ~ d F , Bctr: I.r/c. Edtica!to,:, Ct,n,,~to~ty,
C, and Death. The prolecr, of tre~nc.ndous Lo1 scope ~ n vision, conternplntes t
he existence of rhc architect, the W I I II ( , d co~~tplrt Iifc. Coriccivcd as
:an experimental film opus, orily I.r/e, on St~prrrt~r/acc Ccre,~o,r) were compl
eted in f ~ l ~ n and version. S N pr,rrt,r/.rn,, a collage anllnntion with its
flnnl scquencc filmcd outdoors in nature with n )oung couple, was screened for t
he MO\IA exhibition TI>?Nero Do,~rrtrcLn~~drcapc 1972.' C P ~ L ~ I Iwns I ~ ) ~
n IO shot IIVC ~n Florcncc the follo\v~n; year: The illustr:~tedtcxts for thc Fr
fih Ftorda111e,,t.11 Act Death wns set to a slidc show a t t h nn audlo soundtra
ck. 'rhc FILC ! l ~ ~ d r ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ t . 7 1 F Acts \\,ere published In series
in rtor) honrd forrnx. Llke the one for T/>/,r~Co~tt~~tt,~trr Alo~tIO?IPN~,stor)
boards for the I:r~c I O I ~ ~ I I I L ~ Nd~ ~ ~ c t ~cC ~ T the F were ~ d / ~
i In nnturc. sUllEalulIto's rn3nifcsto states: "Architecture never touches the g
reat thelnes, the fundnrnen131 tliclncs of our lives. I\rcliitecturc relnains 3t
the limit, arid Intcrvenes only 31 3 ccrta~ripoint in tlic process, usually whe
n hchnviour 113s dreadYbeen entlrely codified, furnishing answers to rigidly sta
ted problems Even if 11s answers .Ire nberr:lnt or evn.
Solo charr
dcrnically founded stilrl) on the making of peasnnt tools and sheltcrj. The move
cotr~cided with rhe co-tounding ot Global Tools 111 1973, a sliort-IivcJ but s~
gri~ficont mcctlrlg of niirids bcrwccn rlic far flurig rncmbcrs of the Radical .
~rchitccturelnovemcnt. Their collecrivc s t r ~ t c g ~ ethough never renl~zcdw:
rhln r h ~ s s, s:lmc enselnble, nonetheless moved parallel with the S U I ~ C R
\ur~ro'ssccond I phase oiproduction. Rut it should be c l e x that \\,hat S L I
' E R ~ T U D ~ ~ brought to their phase of research was the intcrisivc desire
not to repeat the forrnul~ h ~ would onl) serve to prolorig the conuncrt r ~ 1 3
rnnrkct.oriented cxplolt3tion of the deigrl profession Of course 1 tlils would h
e hy riow irnposs~blcto persevere, liowcver, given the
26
strurncnts nccuratcly predisposrd to avold nny dev~arion 'rhc working-class holn
c rcsernbles a st3tcly vllln in the sarnc 1t13y3s tlie dcsi<n of 3 Radical .irch
itect that of :~ri acadernlc or re:~ction.~ry nrcli~tcct.thc differcnce Ires onl
y in the quantities i r ~ of ltv~ng hnvc 31rc3dy hcen made. play, thv decisions
on the Accepting his rolc, the nrchitcct bccolnes nccornplice to the rnachu~at~o
r~s system Then the av.int-gnrdc architect f d s one of the of the nost r~gldlyh
xed roles dike the young lover 111 p l . ~ y s ~ . This tent~ttveanthropologicnl
and ph~losophicalfound.iriori of architccturc becomes the centre of our reducti
ve process."" SUI'LIISTUD!~, lnlght nrgue, succeeded In cleansing ~ r c h i one
tccture of all so-rces of contamlnntlon The only quancl.iry that \\,auld r e m a
n , of course, is what does In fact arcli~rccturc look likc \\,hen ) o u have t
he chance ro hcgln all over, \vhcn you c3n expcrlencc 11 through merely I l v ~
n when you c.in move freely 3cross ~, the lsndscnpe rns~de clty of tlic mind' n
File Ftrndarnrtifol ,Icfr srrs in motion such a level of dcstabtlization that th
ere would in f.1~1 ~lrnost recourse to .iction poshe no s.ble :~fterwnrds, seque
l truly possible. After 1973, the work of no xPcunr)~o entered by fiar into 3 se
concl plirse ~ r wliicli the group. i ns Peter Lang polnts our in Su~cirlnl Desi
rss". reconsrirutcs thcmselves as best 3s the) cln, by shifting llle ~ O C L I o
f the11 resenrch on. S to t l ~ prlm.lr) building blocks ~hemsclvcs, c rlirough
.in inrensivc acarnentir~griot just the style of life 111 the far renchcs of the Italian cour~try
slde, nlso the rigours of poverty. It Iielpcd to dcvclop hut liantly creative i

r i the use of rcc)cled matcri~ls, energy conscrvntion, distributed recourses. 3

r d multiple uses. The resc3rcli and
tcrial Cultt,rc project suggests some very inrerest~ngaltcrnntive
p ~ h to folio\\, now. s

If SUI~EWTUDIOhas succeeded in contributing to any particure lar lesson to inven

ting a f ~ ~ t uarchitecture, it would be not so much the individual "pieces" as
it would be the process itself, the strict critical vision focused on their own
roles in the much larger chain of production. This process of repeatedly and cr
itically re-esamining the normal drifts and currents moving across the domestic
landscapes has led them to design, or perhaps more appropri;~tely to un-design t
heir surroundings like no other group before or after them. We are far enough al
ong again to perform similarly criticnl interrogations and we hope as the editor
s of this project that SUPCRSTUDIO'S contribution may be to take another, c r i
t i c r ~look l at the objects that surround our lives.
su~rta-ru~>~o. 'His~o. ' Sar.th Dcyong plsced roo hlonumenrContinu 1969". 115.l'
.1<b. xrsms", rcprinted in / I , ' , mucll emphasis on thc L.iUo,sr~~,~a(no. . v
r,rrro,re dell,, ri,per/ior merabolis~r'influences re- April 2001. 80). ~ i o r
r n i Wr,,,r,ir,. ~r;lnal. Knrding~helrdlidnRroupa. " A. Brrnzi. "lnrroducPeccr
L.mg iMil;>n: CdiS. Dcyonp. "M~.moricao f ciun". ~n1 Nuvoncand R. . ' r m n i Pr
int. 1972. 19). I~L. Urban Foturc", i n T. Orlztndini, Archr/c~!~,rd 1 aut~t.t~~
iuoto. Con- Riley. ed.. The (%d,igbrg 0 Kad?c~lr.iblilun: Docu. 'The tinuourMonl
uuc~~t".Du,~~ir rbc,lvu,rr.G~rrdc; \/I/iria,,un. tnenti di C;lr.thclla, 1974. (n
o. 481, Dccember 1969). Arcl~irccrrrriDnirm,,~g~/n,~,,14). Brrnri strc>serlin ;I
rc~i,r cent ~nrervieu, 1 It~clical rh. ' 'I'he ~ u m ~ "lndicitl", f ~ r r ~r b
c l l o r ~ w r d G i / ~ ~<.;,ll,(/r,c. rion (Ne\r. York: a!oat,\, rrcbi~cc~ur
ei~~;lr ; rcc. "not l coined by Ccrmnno CrLnr t describc ;) \rhole r n n ~ e 200
2. 31). o opniznble lungudgc" r n d rhdr ir encornpurred "... of arustic pracric
er, i r too A aut,r.siuoto. dirbdndcd g~ncrrl. h e r u r h o n ~ beliwc, i n 198
6, rcconsrirured ir. m;my rmdly:oups a,ithour o t ~ d ~ c r i h t h c s p e c ~
f i c r n ,elf in rhc 1990s l b c r ~ c r a bix rhcmc . Percr L ~ n y il i ~ ~ ~
l 0 f ~ u 1 ~ 1 3bucn,c 1 O : 6 1 ~ ~ adminirrcr ixr current and 1Villi.lm Menk
inx. in'
'
hibir. concetved ro displt~y primsrily thusis projec,s. l'ct~.r L;mg, inturvieiv
a.ir11 Adolfo h';t,;lli[~i iFlorcncu. I4 Decembcr 2002) " For rhe lncn>hcrs o f
:" I'erer
1982. L.lng. inrcr!,iew wtrh Crnstl;~noTorsldo d i Fr.lncl;~ (Filotrfilno. 7 Dec
ember 2002). : ' , u t ~ ~ a m o ~ "Invendon o,
to its soundrmck, and requires further res~omcion.
Irrrerplioi~~~u~,I~chitcc~~~r(~,
1r;llion voice avcr. !r.ilh soundrrack, producerl by
b~.com,ngits ~pllyscc~l emic.11~:Design and Archifoundcn in 1966. Roberto "'C.Pc
rrenu, "Archicer~uia rccrurc 1960/75", i n VI b b g r i r joincd i n 1967. Redic
ale", i n Arc11,r~clrrre ,Lf\.lortr"l,rrenirrri,~~~nI~~ Picro Fr.~rsinelliin 196
8 mdicdcnle icir. 11). delm d Almsandm M a g r ~ s ~ ~ n" Roben Vcnruri. Dcnisc
d I B;e,,rrolc dr Ve,iez,n. cx. t , hibirion cnr;llogoe (Flo- Aleaarndro Poli i
n 1970. Sco~r BmunnndS~wcLen1'011 lcfi rhc group in 1972. our. \vho,c writlngr \
r.erL. rcnce: Ven~ll;~bro. 1996); Arch,rrcrrrr nalrnb,eshi. Frb~nces Urunror 1rd
ns1;ttcd highly respec14 nnlong [he bl~ioo cnh~logue.Villcursulan.\ruolc tcrts f
rom Radical community, wcrc b.>nne. Inrritut d i r r con- l e l i a n ro C n ~ l
i r hfor thc qu~cklocriricire~hcmoveI C I ~ I ~ M ~ I > - ~,i(.,Jt~nuoryinternr
rionsl journals and metx: 'IIo\r,e\,er. no erclliblay ZOO1 iBlrcclon;l: Di. maga
zines. l e c t ~ r e l 6 O he PIIS\YCI 10 ~ L agon;llc, 2001); D . Sourif, : Pop

-ups ure thole n;~p t o o n ~ u c b n r c h i ~ e c ~ u r e . ~ e ed.,C,,:~rr,,,

~?rd:Arrr ?brc,i. xlng lirrle lnrerner rdver- rerction of thc anti-archi,ru IY68
-IY8Y, cxh~hirlon tisenlenrr chsr ere increar. rm~rof~iDirp.rl~~pri~sfuc.tr,dogu
e(Ilorrncc:iM&IM, ingly jumping onto the ~ i l e the endless fondling ar 2002):
7'brCl~n,rgbigo/~/1~~ computur screens. ofiirelev;mr rubdccicr rr chc dircuns~on
other excrmlc i n the orhcr Ava~ir-Gurdc, e x h i b i ~ i o l l " F o r n de~ui
led on the contemporaly Icgil. mafizinm, though il is porC.ICJIO~~~, York, Thc N
e\v cy o f aut'altiruolo rec D , sibly Ins h r r n ~ f uonly bcl Mureurn o f Mod
ern Arr (New York: ,~~ostn. 2002). Rouillard. "Supcrr~udio: c u r e ir seldom ge
ls builr. bodimenr. This is onc oi rlie srgumcncr developer1 in Peter Lnnx's ess
ay "Sui.
York:
Anchor
Uookr.
" lhrrl 248.
"
1973. X r 5 7 ) . " {hid ". lb,d
rbrd 2.18--19.
28

32
Fascist regime contributed to the invention of Italian mass society, but did not
construct a mass consumer culture. That \vould be the accomplishment of the pos
t-war governments, whose laws were designed to promote private investments to th
e exclusion of all else. Private initiatives in housing were given a "free hand"
, urith no co~itrolsplaced on land uses, adequate service facilities like parks
or parking lots, nor sufficient safety regulations to ensure proper building met
hods.' The results were catastrophic, with sl>eculative buildings spm\rrling ran
domly through the urban peripheries and under reinforced buildings tragically co
llapsing in known high-risk earthquake zones. Italians were becoming more mobile
, more urban, more enatnoured with their object world, but adapting to this new
consumer-oriented lifestyle inevitably meant ruptures to traditional habits. Eco
nomic expansion came late relative to other European countries, but the symptonl
s of estrangement among the post-war Italian middle classes bore the common trai
ts of similar Western industrialized countries. The gro\\~ingprosperity within t
he Italinn society exposed ever-deepening rifts urithin the communities at large
, as well as intergenerational conflicts. During the 1960s the student populatio
n in the national university system doubled to half a nill lion students, provid
ing sufficient momentum behind the rise of a mass student culture.' This gradual
slide towards social breakdown was brought into explicit view through the work
of some of the country's most creative cinematographic artists. As Siegfied Krac
auer noted, "the more life is submerged, the more it needs the artwork, which un
seals its withdrawnness and puts its pieces back in place..."' Aesthetic manifes
tations depicting the general malaise of Italy's upwardly mobile classes and ali
eliated youth increasingly surfaced in the arts and in cinema by the mid-1960s.
After La r l o b vita was released in 1960, Federico Fellini turned the camera o
n himself and his profession, creating in 1963 Eight and a Hnlf, a spectacularly
personal inquiry and psychological confession on the existential state of cinem
a and society. Michelangelo Antonioni in his 1964 film Red Desert, constructed a
spiritually deprived vision of postlinked to a devastated landscape war Iraly t
hat was her~neticall~ of smog-choked fiactories and polluted landscapes. As the
characters move with empty gestures through Red Desert's world of manufactured s
ensations, only a siren-like song seems to penetrate the ambient stupor. The pri
mal recall remains an insidious reminder of a simpler past, a symbolic metaphor
that would find its echo in the reflections on che builc environment among the y
oung generation of architects who would form the nucleus of sUl%l<n'ut11().' Ove
r the course of their activities, SUl~ElaTUDlO elaborated on the grand themes of
alienation, rationalization, neuroses, therapy and the visceral fortns of suici
de. These themes informed the underlying critique that constituted the group's thoughts and actions from the ini
tial founding in 1966 to thelate 1970s. But these epic themes also can be seen t
o reflect tnore formulative life trajectories. The story of SUPEilSTUDfO,whose b
eginnings are announced in the historical staging of the 1966 Superarchitectnre
exhibit in Pistoia, finds its inception in Florence's rebellious youth culture.
SUPLRSTUDIO'S genesis, in fact, cannot be linked to a specific student movetnent
- the six members of the group did not come from the same ideological backgroun
d or belong to the same student
tablished its characteristic identity.' In many aspccts SUI'ERSTUDIO was formed
just as their name implied, as a "super-office", a design and architectural offi
ce that happened to have an extremely deep and foreboding sense of history and b
elligerent behaviour. it Yet to understand SUI~LRSTUDIO remains essential to und
erstand the university climate that existed in Florence during the 1960s, precis
ely because the generation of students who completed their e d u ~ l t i o n the
re were marked much differently than elsemodernization; the university administered itself as the pedantic gatekeeper of
this very same cultural legacy, and thc more innovative faculties found themselv

es isolated if not removed from participating in the city's architectural and ur

ban development. The
different directions. These are therefore the issues to follow in order to get t
o the heart of suPel?srumo's deeply internalized rebellion against architecture.
'rlie entire national university was put to test in the 1960s, pressured by stu
dents and many of thc faculties to renovate the archaic

36
gree. Zevi's American connections and deep dedication to reforming Italian archi
tectural culture had immediate impact on post-war debates. H e quickly establish
ed under the aegis of AI'OA the first "organic school" in Italy inspired largely
by Frank Lloyd Wright. Many younger Italian architects joined efforts with Zevi
in reconstituting the Roman scene. O n e of the challenges was to re-evaluate a
nd re-conceprualize a contemporary architectural style that could reconcile both
Modernist and Neo-classical contaminarion from rhe Fascist period. Over thc nex
t decade. Mario Kdolfi, Adalberto Libera and Luigi Moretti among others, develop
ed an urbanistic architectural language that, through the sponsorship of IN,\-Ca
sa, the State-subsidized housing authority, succeeded in promoting the developme
nt o f a n urban-scale hybrid Modernism combining labour intensive craft-work wi
th advanced concrete frame technol~gies.~ The urban fabric in and around Milan w
as heavily damaged during the drawn-out allied bombing campaigns. As the country
's major economic centre, reconstruction proceeded quickly. T h e development of
the city's regional master-plan, conceived with the participation of the Milane
se members of CIAM, went largely unchallenged by the city's traditional planning
strategists. The MoveInent. for Architectural Studies (MSA) was founded in Mila
n in 1945 with the goal of opposing a traditional academic education. The Lombar
d city was already predisposed to developing a Functionalist and Neo-rationalist
style of architecture to plug the many damaged sites. Milan's publication house
s quickly became the principal platforms for national debates on the future of M
odernist architecture. Ernesto Narhan Rogers took over Dornrrs from G i o Ponti
in 1946 and then moved over to launch an improved Casabella-Corrtinuit in 1954 (
the magazine remained under his direction until 1967). In 1947 the Milan Trienna
le opened its VIII edition featuring the most recent post-war developments in so
cial housing and urban reconstruction. Florence would also have its opportunitie
s to grab the centre of the debate, but it seems that each occasion was squander
ed by internecine quarrels among bitterly competing interests. There are three k
cy aspects that when collapsed together help explain the peculiar condition of F
lorence's conflictual artistic and architectural culture in the post-war period.
The first was the failed reconstruction of Florence's city centre, heavily darn
aged during the German wartime withdrawal on 4 August 1944; the second concerned
the equally disappointing manner in which the city exthe panded to ~iieet growi
ng populatio~iand manufacturing needs in rhe same period; the third was the sign
ificance of the student activist lnovements in directly and indirectly contribut
ing to reconstituting the School of Architecture into one of the most openly rec
eptive - if also least recognized -grounds for architectural
commercial districts abandoned to more ad hoc rebuilding methBenedetto Croce, while Leonardo Savioli's more timid MichelucRicci, did not gain much public support." In Manfredo Tafuri's opinion the ensui
ng proposals for the heavily damaged areas "...led to feeble and greatly colnpro
mised reconstruction of the histori-

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bly energetic, with extensive meetings, assemblies, all-night sitmore events and
experimental projects." Piero Frassinelli opined: "...Radical architecture is b
orn in the occupied university. One lives there and one sleeps there ..." Over t
he Ions term, the point may in fact not have been whether the reforms to the uni
versity system ever were entirely successful; some reforms were achieved, others
never came close.'" T h e students and the faculty engaged in a decade-long ide
ological battle over the substance of a contemporary architectural education and
this critical discourse undoubtedly succeeded in recasting the fundamental issu
es of the Florentine school. The prolonged struggle for educational reform is to
be credited with furnishing the powerful rhetorical ammunition exploited so pro
ficiently by the Superarcbiterlure generation. And then of course there is the h
istorically rich city of Florence, whose entire economy functioned outside of ma
jor industries like Milan or the huge bureaucracies like Rome. Florence was prim
arily an artisan-manufacturing centre with a very powerful shopkeeper middleclas
s. Students attending the School of Architecture in Florence in the 1960s had a
much harder time finding work, o r getting swept into working class struggles, o
r protesting national policies. Without the distractions of the big city setting
, students moved in smaller circles: but one event in 1966 would act to pull the
\\thole architectural community together
Kaprow, the sound artists from l3uxus." But in less than a flash, the past, now
buried deep under metres of mud and debris. Scenes ments of artifacts from the r
iver? sediment and painstakingly handling them like birds caught in an oil slick
were emotionally stirring, but ultimately a setback to the cause. The planning
for the first Superarcl~irecrr~re exhibition in Pisthe Arno valley as an enormous lake.
dle class were incapable of seeing beyond the city's customary traditions. With
all the talented artisans and small manufacturing in a state of existence that w
as neither reliably authentic nor confurniture and leather luxury goods for the
upper classes. Alessandro Mendini's land of "Good design" could be almost anywhe
re
42
If in fact Florence was hopelessly blocked by traditional conventions, the city'
s artistic community had been taking important steps towards building a receptiv
e place for an alternative contemporary art culture. Florentines were gradually
becoming acquainted with the most important players on the European art circuit.
Maria Gloria Bicocchi's gallery Centrodiffusionegrafica on Piazza Saltarelli (l
ater to become a d t a p e s 22, the pre-eminent video centre featuring the like
s of Bill Viola) was one of the first galleries to bring internationally acclaim
ed artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, performance artists like Al
lan
tions threw the two events out of sequence. There would be little time for Archi
zoom and sUPER5'TUD10 to evolve between the two

sentative medium itself, as it does from their subversive message. SUPERSTUD~O f

rom beginning to end stripped architecture down to i n most essential meaning. S
UI'ERSTUDIO requires additional levels of reading, precisely because there are d
egrees of deception constantly present in their elaborately assembled images and
projects. Their highly seductive and visually pleasing visions tend to veil a b
iting critique collaged just below the surface. Each stage of their work is mean
t to eel back another layer of social paralysis, of futile dreams and debilitati
ng social infrastructures. SUPERSTUDIOworked from positions of deep familiarity,
destabilizing from within each and every aspect of the architectural discourse.
Florence, as one of the most significant artistic destinations o n the 19th-cen
tury Grand Tour, finds itself transported in the work of SUPERSTUDIOinto a dimen
sion of science fiction, history's other." Twelve Carrtionary Talesfor Christmas
: Pren~o,ti!io~ts the M)~stical of Rebirth of Urbanism, apart from its anti-utop
ian visions and very personal form of inquisitiveness, refuses to celebrate the
role of architecture and urban design in the construction of city lile.'" The ex
quisitely drafted sections, axonometrics and illustrations depicting the twelve
cities reassure the
trolled and modified. This is what Adolfo Natalini referred to as "theory
+
practice
+
theory check", that ran into all sorts of
This may well have been an inevitable outcome for a research project that began
with the typological ordering of architectural monuments, images and ambient tec
hnology; and gradually spread farenough out to bring into its orbit a world of o
bjects and buildings, of monuments and landscapes, until nothing remained unduti
fully maintained touched by its reductive powers. SUPERSTUDIO
Piero Frassinelli, seem in the end to be much closer to a critique o n the prese
nt than evocations for the future: the twelve scenes unfold like exaggerated pro
jections on some of o u r most common obsessions, where consumer culture goes bl
ind, bureaucracies go mindless, high-technology pacifies. This may also be inter
preted as a critique of Americanization, a rising hen omen on in the contemporar
y Italian scene. The suggestive subtitle, "SUPERSTUDIO evoke nvelve visions of i
deal cities, the supreme achirvement of twenty thousand years of civilization, b
lood sweat and tears. The Final Heaven of Man in possession of Truth, free from
contradiction, equivocation and indecision; totally and forever replete with his
own PERFECTION ...", implies just such a world specially made for you, with no
need to do anything except to find the button. The project was not really about
anti-utopias, but was SUPERSTUDIO'S stark premonition on where contemporary tren
ds were leading. office had schizoFrom 1966 to 1973 the SUPERSTUD~O phrenically
advanced by pursuing o n one hand pragmatic and successlul furniture designs, tr
ain cars, residential and commercial buildings (the group could count o n the in
dustrial design experience of Roberto Magris), and on the other by progressively
dissecting those very same projects to reduce the variations, to streamline the
waste, to eliminate all clutter. The process devel4s oped into a series of chec
ks and balances, whereby the theory enus want to change ... but also allow us to retreat back to the con,. fort of our
real homes, our heavy objects, our annoying lives. But from 1973 on, coinciding
with Adolfo Natalinii teaching appointment at the School of Architecture in Flo
rence, the group moved in hvo different directions. It was a moment of deep reas
sessment. The individual members began working more independently on different t
ypes of projects, but also moved into the academic research and teaching. Natali
ni's class, taught with the assistance of Alessandro Poli, Cristiano Toraldo di

Francia and Piero Frassinelli, investigated the everyday use of objects in conte
mporary culture. Under the title of Ex~ra-Urban Ma~erralCukure, students were as
ked to return to their local family origins, and help anthropologically document
the material culture slowly disappearing in the countryside. Natalini's famed l
ectures on the walking stick -he boasts a large collection of handmade and manu-

48
The course in effect initiated a second phase in the SUPERSTUDIO oeuvre; whereby
there is a concerted attempt ro find a way to reconstruct the bare elements of
a new architecture. T h e anthropological research on primitive Italian peosanr
culruse, its tools and shelters, was one of the few projects of its kind going o
n during these years. Considcring the massive scale of the fami exodus into the
1960s, the real risk, that has since proved founded, was the permanent loss of a
highly sustainable lowgrade human ecology. E s t ~ < r - U r b o1'4oter;ol C ~
~ l t r ibears little re,~ re semblance to the fanfare and hoopla created around
the 1973 Global Tools symposium, which remaincd transfixed by consumer culture.
SUPERSTUDIOinitiated Histog~a171s, back in 1969, with the intention of reducing
design and architecture to a single threedimensional manipulation of surfaces.
When SUPERSTUDIO began its study on the design of silnple multi-functional utens
ils in 1973, it w:~snot to design a better and more marketable product bur to de
find proven l ~ w - ~ r a technologies that were uniquely versatile. The peasan
t farmer Zeno, in his native home in Tuscany, rebuilt a bent-wood chair from the
turn of the century, piecc by piece, over the course of about fifty years. Ever
y reiteration presenled the chair's proportions and function, though each time t
hc artifact was slightly modified. The goal of the research was to documenr and
le:~rnfrom these extraordinary human experiences; but this phase of SUIJEI(STUDI
~'S research lacked the checks, balances and earlier ironies that might have suc
cessfully lifted this project back on to a more international platform. A broad
overvie\\, of the project including many examples drawn from tlie student resear
ch was later mounted at the 1978 Venice Biennale to exhibit the category of Arch
itecture, under the title of l'roject Ze11o. This strangely Heideggerian vision
of the new world, a familiar revisiting of van Gogh's contemplation on a pair of
peasant shoes, suggests a project that nonetheless reconnects with the r e c l
~ r of architecture. t~ SUI'ERSTUDIO also presented The WiJe o J L o t , consist
ing of a welded iron table and moving tower designed to hold a fluid pouch fille
d with water. A tube dripped water over five salt nloulds representing the histo
rical stages of architecture: the pyrsmid, the coliseum, the basilica, Versaille
s and the Villa Savoye. With time, as in fact was the case, each of the salt mou
lds disappeared, a demonstration on archirecture's inevitable dissolution. This
project more than anything else physically embodied the dilemma of ;~rchitecture
'sephemeral existence, \vith the additional tension (hat such a delicately frame
d iron and s;llt structure produces by sitting at the edge of Venice's Grand Can
al. The artifact has since been lost, but its idea lives on as the anti-monument
dedicatcd to the mother of all monuments. The strange combination of profession
al practice and theoretical insurrectionism; of profitable industry contracts an
d sarcastic
I
assaults on consumerism; of global fame and peasant culture, are the conflictual
relationships in a body of research committed to engaging mainstream society. T
hc members of S U I ~ E R S T U D ~ ~ have sought t~ discover the way towards ma
king a better society, made up of individu:~lsresponsible to their communities,
critically cog. nizant of their natural resources and shared cultures. The funda
mental issues from the group's early beginnings Xrcere all directed towards a c
r ~ t i q i ofea hegemonic modernization: N ~ . ~
If the architect cannot become architecture, is there anything left but to take
one's leave of the stage?
' P Ginsbow, ,I Hirtnn $ Corilc~,~pomn lia(i8 (Lon.
rlon:l'cn~tlinhoks, 1990.
' D . Gi;~che~ri, SCI. ,l,ini
r.r,,lt, cr,anac;n 1" c/ti,,ai (Pis% BTS. 2002. 191 ' S Krlr.tocr. "Thc Horel Lo

bby". In 'The ~ L l o ~ r OrJirlnr.nl: IY1c.inirr &*!)a,

~rtlnsl. Thonl:>s Y L c r i n (Ca~nbridpc,Mnsr.: t l n r and minorron~lccrionrbc. ' Ilornc war bombitrdcd I" ~\r,eenthcm, bo, rhcr were m
d ;trotand #hc st;,. onlike Archiroom. who 11on ; ~ n d y;trds. mainly (corn he
beginnin): e ~ l r ~ c ddrnluging t h e a . o r h p d;~u ns s right and Iamncli
ar r c ~ i d c ~ ~ ~ i i l l Of San distTiCI group of fricndr or cohonr. L ~ ~ ~
~ , ~ ~ . " According ro Irl.lrca L ,-fie,,,.een Grirpigni, sutdcnr> rcvolr. Co
nrinuilgnnd Crisis: t l i s r d bec;>oscthes were con- w r y md I'rojecc in L ~
l i ; ~ ~ rciously ;~s..trct h ~ soclcly r ArchlrccrurJ CUI,,,~~ ,Ilc in \vould
nor be sblc ro proPO~CU,~~ period.., 2~ (no, ridcthcm\\,i~h workur rhc 15. B ; ~
C I ~ 2000.7). ~J,
.
1970 imld 19721, h u I~ I ~ I L rrsctlich n.as oor get porriblc l a d o in l he
school. l'eIcr Lang. inlcrrir\v x i t h hlc5smdro Poli Iflorcncc, Deccmher 20021
.
~ r i o n e poliric;~ violenrn. , c 1 '6R a I < O ~ ~ "in A. 1 ,
M.
(;rispigni.
"GLWC~. (venice. ~ I . , C ~ , I , ~ .
Agarti. L. P;>,serln~ N. ,md Tr~tnfi~glin, lri ' i r 1 r ; ~ m edh. e i ba b Jd
'68 (Milan: rg r
,', so lirrle hiSroric ccnrre. in Lcr, bc con. can
194-951.
1999.
3idered h i r ~ o r i ~ ~ l l ~ uc, bur for chc ~ c n million

this ii.a trivis~l obrema~ion

denrr from a v;tri region from RcFSioCmilie. Genoa and thc South. ar well as r "
Fontan2 (cit. 1951, '' IM. T;lfuri, H,rtnn,o/l/nl. largcnumbcrof fore~jin rnlim
r Arrbiiecl,,rc, 1944dcncn O f the porriblc iuc198.7, rirnrl.JerricaLcvinc tors
thsc lily behind Fla~nce'r growing ppulnriry. (Cin,brdFe. M~rr.: Thc \r.nr orld
admission by btlr Press. 1990. 71. "hlin~orc Fanfmi \\,as ~ h e rhe school's prc
ridenr. national-levcl policicisn Con.t h a ~ city hsd l e s the who sough[ f:~t
,o~rsv i ~ b reridcnrisl Iproblcmr than \ rhc \lorking cli~rrcs, thcrc- rhe olhc
r grca,er merropoby focu,ing his or~cntionr lirer and bccnure rhc !pro. fessorr
wcrc n,ore iaccorion \\,orking cl;er districts blc having I n r professionto beg
in w i ~ h accord But ;,I ,vork l o rlirrrncr rhcn?. ingtoCrirri;lnoToraldodi An
d here \\.as ,~l\vayso f Franci;,, the destiny ofFlo. rcncr war and remains coun
erhecirs'r;inirric h c r Nt~:tone.R o m ~ c c , locked i n the hitndr of rhe itn
gr IL? 7 Dcccmbcr 19661. rhopkeepcrr. n,ho nrc on. " "In his iwopural lerrurc \v
illing lo alloiv erperifor the new year, rc\,enlml: mentarion inro the cir?. 1%.
rei L%!ng, interview with ,hat rhere w r n lack of
ns to upen tire thesis projcrts i o a
\r,ider rnnjie of topics. Pirzoilo and Di
Crirtina. i n Gmhrllir-Co,i!i,ri,iId Ino. 287. Milan. lvlily 196-1.391 '' Tornld
o di Frzlncin m w rhc fight to do arvay with lhc expensive nmdclr us a sign rhnr
much tnorc had to ch;nnae: their demands were to opco the univeoicy ryrrcm co~?
.er)~one.from nII social clurrer.\vi~hrnsrr ;ecnrible toercr)nne.such ,\r i n f
s c ~rhc cost o f [he proferrionally m ~ d e tmodelr for thc (hesir proiecl. T h
n e \>.ere [he issuer [hat pro\,oked them to occupy the rec~or'r office on Plap
Z San Marco in 1964. ami~h I srbour lifly othcr students
p h r . Dcripns b y Arch!. zoom and Supciscudio". M Filer (no. 47. London, 20021
. Aho see M . Capo. biunco. " G l i Anni Qui~rnnvn', i n M . Cnpobianco and C. C
ilrreri. cdr. Ar. chirct~ami~rliilrrn: 191019.79 IN;~pler: Elecra Napoli. 1998.
1221, 'I. E. Cnrre". 'lnccrvirra ia BrunoZNi". 1991. inS0pee
our dirporitlon reparore inridenccthen, ~l>elirrrSt,and i ~ ~ ~ d e ~ u ~ ~ c e
r .ara c lp e r n r c l ~ d c c l : ~ r ~ r h o ~ ~ ~ i n P i ~ ~ p s.. iiir n s
r nor a prccire oblip- toia fc;lrured ciwdboard ittian roproviderhcmu;~nr and ~
n~r.bn:trd n r ~ n l h i arhich (he univcrriiy and ~ions.l'ctcrLnnp,inrcn~iew th
crchool ingcnectl nccd, with C r ~ t h n o o r ~ l d o T di ilndrhitr iiirno~the
precire Francid (Filortmno. 7 Deresponribiliry ofthe domi. cember 20021. nant po
liticxl class to have ' C a p o n e ~ r o Fmcnrriinnd lcfr the Iralian r c h w l
ryr- ni, i n G ~ n h c l i u . C o , ~ ~ i , > ~ , i ~ ~ i (no.287.Milnn.May 19
W. ~ r m such abandon and in misery". "Diwomo agli 5,". 401.
i n Romc. During the nr~cmblies[hey refused ro veuk bur chirped inrrei~d perrhcd
on [he bcnchcr likes raosring birds. See Grispigni k i t . 3MI. '" "In 1968 rhe
Iralii~n Schools of Archilecturc be" Umnir. 0 yello\v bound meekly news-stand publiand more could bc developed on each o i r h e indi.
war quite
c.lrian from Mondndari, v i d u ~ lmcmberr of the i ~ m u n d group. h4.znyof rh
ere godr rhe Florrntinc Radical were rhated. and it \\,auld cros-d. Scicnce Ficr
ion be imporrant ro go deeper works ar o son o f alterna- into su~cns-ruoro's gr
oup tn.c or escapist li~eri~rure dynamic.

of chc Florcnce School of hrchi~ecrurcwns published i n the Florentine daily in

Decembcroil966. Thesrliclc ourlined rhe tcnuour condicionr t?dngthe rchod after
che flwd, becoming a sonofwish lirr for the then ~ r Preside G i ~ i r c ~G oe i
who lpropored n new rh;lr a,ould relocatc rhe school inro (he pcriphcry running
along the fwrhills on the RorcnccPni+l'ir. toia ilxir, LO deal with thc wpid 1r
,p6n~oftheschwl'r populationduringthep~c. war pcriod (500rrudcnrs ln 1958 to 150
0 in 19661. According l o ~ h address by c SO Gori, Florence drew xu"V.Grc~otti." R c o l t i dcl corrruire". Crahell<r-Cot,,rriirird (no. 287. Mila
n. M;>y 19M. 191. "In inrcn,iewrwith rcvcrnl members of Archimam and SUPERYTUDIO
,hlaric Therer Stauffcr laced Dranzi, Corrctti. Dcg;ulello, and Tonddo d i Frenc
i;~as part of the group 111;tr occupicd the rector's office. See Slauffcr (cil.
35, foornore 37). " On the agenda were r l o dcnrs' demilndr to reeon. r,irucc t
hc existing power structures within (he oni. verri~y,to include rhe participstio
n ofrhcrmdentrin ar~demlc decirionr.;~r $vcll
versity in 1963 ond 1901. Bur they were prerenr e.ar. licr ;m reaching arrir~ant
r. :' Toraldo d i France recalled that Ricri'r course had rhc r~udcntr work on f
tlll-rcnlc models, a conrmverriril .tppro;tcb jii\,cn thc rchool'r pcnchsln~for
precise ink drmingr. Perer Lang, inrcrvicw wirh Crirr h n o Toraldo d i Franch (
Filottrnno, 7 Decembcr 20021. '' Leonardo Ricci, "Prab. lemi per una nuovn maggi
or~nza",lecturc held nr thc FncoltB d i Firenzc i n orrarian ofthe faculry confc
rence held i n Romc hc. t\\,een I 4 and 15 M ~ r c h 19M. Rq,nn,cd in C~rcrbel-

visionary drawings coming from the studios of young Florentines from 1966 on wer
e an altogether different level of creation, image making and thought than mere
product design. The drawings of SUPESTUDIO,Archizoom, UFO, Gruppo Strum, Gianni
Pettena, Ugo La Pietra and others were, as Doug Michaels puts it, "kick ass desi
gn" but more importantly they were "creative initiatives", unlike anything being
~ r o d u c e din America at the time.' They suggested a fantastic architectura
l scene in Florence that made California seem very provincial and unimaginative.
In today's \\.orld where architectural shifts and drifts are internationalized
cquickly across cyberspace, it is hard to imagine a small museum city like Flore
nce as a centre of international thought on architecture, urbanism and design. T
his small Tuscan city, as Peter Cook reminds us, is "a safe distance from Cape C
anaverd, the galleries of New York and Dusseldorf, and even the snlelly factorie
s of the P o valleyMand "there [is] hardly an insistent or threatening local mil
ieu of mainstream architects worth bothering about".' The arch scenes of Rome, V
enice and Milan were vibrant in their own ways, but this small museum and univer
sity city was very much a hot spot in the late 1960s. It had an architecture cul
ture that revolved around one of Italy's most lively and politically engaged arc
hitecture schools, the best art and architecture book store in Italy Centro Di a
nd Maria Gloria Bicocchi's out front gallery Centrodiffusionegrafica (later to b
ecome the important video tape gnllery art/tapes 22): Throughout the 1960s the s
eductively ironic and charged polemics of these Florentine architects were known
in North h l e r ica through Italian magazines but SUPERSTUDIO did touch down i
n the United States at the Rhode Island School of Design for a moment in 1970. I
ts "strategist" Adolfo Natalini taught there for a semester with Archigrammer Mi
ke Webb, and Austrians Raimund Abraham and Friedrich St Florian.' This connectio
n with the world outside Italy changed dramatically in 1972 when the Museum of M
odern Art in New York under the direction of design curator Emilio Ambasz create
d an amazing exhibition and spectacularly beautiful catalogue titled Italy: The
New Dornertic
be Webb Ratmund Abraham ~dollo Narallni and Frledr ch St Florran 1970
stage for its penultimate moment on the international scene." It was the first t
o feature the young Florentines and none of the other visionary architectural dr
aftsmen of the period: Cedric Price, Archigram o r the Austrians: Coop Himmelbla
u, Haus.Rucker-Co,
The exhibition and catalogue attempt to rectify this understand54
Landscape, Achievetnet~tsand I'roblems ofltalia~rDe.sig~z.~ The largest and most
expensive exhibition in the history of MOMA, featured alongside a survey of con
temporary Italian init dustrial and doniestic product design a SUPERSTUD~O Mimoc
vent/Microcrrvirontnetrt as well as projects by Archizoom, Ugo La Pietra. Gruppo
Strum, group 9999 and others.' It should be noted that during this period MOMA'
S architecture department truly had its finger on the ~ u l s of the moment. The
Architecture and e Design Department under Arthur Drexler created other importa
nt exhibits: Visiotra~~' Arch~tectrrre(1960). Architecture IVitbout architect^ (
1965) and just before Neru Dotne.rtic Landscape, Edusign culture.
Thc Ncw Domestic Lndscape catalogue begins
ion from Antoine d e Saint-Exupbry's Thl,r
"You become responsible, forever, for what
at mean - domesticated?" "It is an act too
h bonds."
:

with a short discussion on domesticat

Little Pri~~ce:
you have domesticated." "What does th
often neglected. It means to establis

......
"Please domesticate me", said the fox.

"I want to, very much", the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I
have friends to discover, and ;I great many things to understand." "One only und
erstands tlie things that one domesticates", said tlie fox. "Men have no more ti
me to understand anything. They buy things already made ar shops. But there is n
o shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so \ve have no friends any mor
e. If you want a friend, domesticate me ..." "What must 1 do, to domesticate you
?" asked rhe little prince. "...One must observe the proper rites ..." "What is
a rite?" asked the little prince. "Those are ;icrions too often neglectedn, said
the fox. "They re what make one day different from other days, one hour from ot
her hours."" This call for design is quickly followed in the introduction with t
he disclaimer thar "design cannot solve all problems that precede its crearion a
nd rhose that may arise f r o ~ nir"." If this were not cnough of a qualifier, A
mbasz then proclaims the irrelevance of objects: "for many designers, the aesthe
tic quality of individual objects intended for private consumption [has] become
irrelevant in the face of such pressing problems as poverty, urban decay, and th
e pollution of tlie environmenr now cncounrered in all industrialized countries"
." Furthermore, soriie of these designers "despairing of effecring social change
through design, regard their task as essentially a political one and therefore
absrain from physical design of either objects or environments and channel their
energies into the sraging of evcnrs and the issuing of polemical statements".'"
These absraining designers, in rhe spirit of polemical discourse, are given a c
hapter in the caralogue ro stare their position and critique those with whom the
y disagree about the production of objects. The catalogue essay by Manfredo Tafu
ri, for and example, attacks the work of sLJ~olU'l'L!~10 Archizoom for bcing "li
beration through irony [that] goes over the same ground covered by rlie utopias
of the avant-garde of earlier years"." When
in society"." They do not "invent substantially new forms, instead they engage i
n a rhetorical operation of redesigning conventional objects with new ironic, ;
~ n d sometimes self-deprecatory sociotradictions and paradoxes of the firsr two groups. In thc first tenlitical and philosophical action or complere \virhdrawal from the
mean here designed environments like T o ~ oF I ~ U I I S / J ~~ I I~ l U , by I
modular housing industry. T h e history of modular housing is er "conceive[sl of
work as an autonomous acrivity responsibleonly to itself and does not question
irs sociocultural context", simply refining "already established forms and f~nct
ions".:~ secThe ond group o r rhe reformists. itre "morivated by a ~ r o f o u n
dconcern for the designer's role in a society that fosters consumption as one m
ciins of inducing individual happiness, thereby insuring
most co~ilpellingapproach since it "corresponds to the preoccupations of a chang
ing society", and is what "rhe exhibition is
56

DIO
created a nine-panel project that arguably stands out as the iconic project from
the exhibit. The division of Italian design into three prevalent attitudes is f
ollowed in the catalogue by the two sections "Objects" and "Environments" that p
arallel and document the exhibition. The catfor their implications of more flexible patterns of use and arrangeto completely different categories. In "Objects" designs are seand finally "impl
ications of more flexible patterns of use and arrangement"."These definitions se
em flexible and loose because urn. It is a domestic product that appears in many
Italian design
concerns and their professional practices" can be placed togethwhich they work".
" In the first "Objects" grouping selected for their formal and technical means
are domestic designs by Joe Colombo, Vico Magistretti, Gaetano Pesce, Marco Zanu
so and Richard Sapper's early television boxes, Ettore Sottsass' classic Valenti
ne portable Olivetti typewriter, the Castiglioni brothers' lamps. Massimo Visee much difference in concept beyond their marketing.

Italian conundrum and needs an explanation. Adolfo Natalini commenting on Italia

n architects involved in this sector has said, "its super production of ideas is
due to the condition of complete unemployment among architects. In the Florence
School OF Architecture, there are 6,000 students, and architects in Italy are i
n charge OF only 25% of the total built volume of building. The soFirms with mor
e than 500 called 'Furniture industryyhas only t \ \ , ~ employees in more than
28,000 Firms (average number of employccs 4.8) and can thercfore, thanks to its
'craftsmen' size. allo\\' itself an ample margin of little experiments"." While
SUI'ERSI.UD~O did believe For a titile that the luxury goods market, created by
an extant artisanal Italian economy, offered them the opportunity to express des
ign ideas that were closed off to them in the building sector, they evcntually c
anie to believe it was a deadend street. It \\,as, thcy decided, little more tha
n an "inducement to COLISUII~C".I" In thc second section of the exhibition "Envi
ronments" Arnbasz presents a detailed, maniFesto-like seven-page Design Program
of "environmental concepts" that he hoped would become physical designs." The De
sign Progra~~r includes minutely detailed programmatic considerations and option
s that include cost goals (economically available to "low to middle income Itali
an Families"), exhibition light sources, a list OF "general considerations" and
a final separate essay, "Manhattan: Capital of the Twentieth Century" that all a
ttempt to put contemporary problems OF the domcstic landscape in context for the
designers." It is liberally sprinr kled with quotes From Siegfried Giedion's T1
1e A r c l ~ i f e c t f ~o fe Transition, Henri LeFebvre's The Explosio12,Marxi
sm and the Fre11c11 Upheaval, Ambasz's Princeton professor Abraham A. Moles and
Environnrer~!." The Manhattan text, Howard Searles' N O I I . H Z I I I I ~ I I
informed by W:ilter Benjamin insights, presents the island as an infrastructure
that provides the Framework in which "all crystallized fragments rescued from th
e city ofmemory, and all the Fragments envisioned For the city OF tlie imaginati
on may dwell together in an ensemble, if not by reason of thcir casual or histor
ical relationships (since no reconstruction is hereby intended), then by grace O
F their aBinities"." This essay originally published in Casabrlla seems gratuito
us and his call that it inspire designers to "make incursions into i~iiaginaryre
alms" is hardly necessary For groups like suPmsruuro."Based on chis detailed Des
ign Progra~n each invited designer or group is asked to design "a domestic envir
onment adaptable enough to permit the enactment OF different private and communa
lly imagined new events.. . sufficiently fixed to permit the re-enactment OF ...
constant aspects OF our individual and social memory"." In tlie Desig~rProgram
Ambasz presents his view that the probso lems of urban society are so severe tha
t designers must be chalanti-utopias are scvcrely criticized in the most po\verful text in The
ri's preferred standards OF earlier avant-gardes, sincc they risk be-

' M. Tsfuri,Hirrog o/IrnIianArcl,itcdurr: 11.1iL1181 (C~~mbridgc, Milas.: The

h l l l Prerr, 1990. 3831. ' Doug Michselr. i n nn cmstl conversation wirh the n
urhor. 2 January 2003. Perer Lnng. "Suicidal De. sires". in thl, c~tralo~oe. ' D
oug Michaels, i n an e. mail conl8enstton*irh the author. 2 J;tnuary 2003.
His text in the "Critical Articles" section of the catalogue is dense and insigh
tful on 20th-century Italian design, but his belief was "anti-utopian regression
\\,as therefore fated that SUI~BIISTUDIO'S to give birth to new utopias" and th
at a "private leap into the sublimated universe of 'artificial ~aradises'has not
proven prescient"." They did call for a \vorld "without cities, castles or road
s" but this
See G. Celant'r 'Rndicill Archircaure". ln Arnbarr. 4. Icir. 380).
r.drm ilrchirecrure Archizoom and Supcntud 6 a . e c c . - I rh;>r
r conmpruil ;an ne behnuiot~nl. Proclaiming it. lelf ar mdicitl. i
e r svirher ro be commercialized or rlienated, or t reo nounce irr
nnd
"

"All rhcnew 1
I t s rims A
r no l o n ~
o\vn idei~r ~

*' Ibid. " Anlbarr. ed. (cil. 13946).

':Il~rd147. lb,d 13946. " Ibrd 147. " Ibld 148. lhid. "lbid 143 "/bid, " Ihid. 2
42: oriGinslly in "sul)Khnu~,~o". CnmbellN
!?~enrr,~rrdPmbbnrg/ltnl- b u their aim ofdireng.tFing ~ ian Dcrign (1972). ~hem
sclver from, itnd ' C w k k i t . 49). bmlkinl: ~vlth, prcrenl thc
" D. Grnhrm.
'Art in ReI;lrion to Architecu~re Ar/ rhitcrturc i n Relatton to
l i o n a, MohlA i n 1972.
Hawmer, not only arc the
designerr fc.ttured i n this exhibit edunted 2%archi. [ecw but or informs all of
their ~ h a u p h and motiva~r rianr. Rcnzo P m o devlrcd . lighlwei~htstructur
e to I cowr the uppcr and lower terraces o f rhe museum'r garden, bur remained u
n" Ibtd
"lbid. '' l b ~ d20. ' ' IbiJ " Ilnd : lbid 2 I. ' Ribrd 139-210. *'lhld 21. " l
hd. " lh~d.
"ihrd
" A r n b ~ ~ rerl. (cir. 242). r, '-'lhiil 420. "'lhrd 421.
bilities of the design strategy. In the spirit of 1960s' polemical and protest c
ulture SUPERSTUDIO, placed on ~ I O M A ' S New Dornrrfic
to us at the start of the 21st century.
" lhid 245. The Neru Do,,,mic Lind- '^ A. Nnlnlini. 'l~sly: The ~ ~ o ~ c ~ ~ ~
~ r T h l , e A r c h Ne\v ~ ~ ~ r e i t e c Domestic Lnndolthe fleorfx Arts i n
1976, scape". Ar</~dedsreDe~i~,, u how thnt heralded I'orr. (no. 8/72, London.
1972. rnadernlrrn ur Moh1,I. 469).

tionr from the ~IOMA l i bmry. The next rnaior ;nrchirecrure exhibition after
" lhirl 94. " lbid 11 I.

Thus a series of guerrilla warfare actions are born, violence is imposed and suf
fered ... this is which creates the need for a "strategy for living", i.e. a ser
ies of practical rules, first-aid manuals, welltried methods for smoothing over
discord and bringing back peace and calm. Living strategy is substantially a met
hod for reaching the self-consciousness of horno bobitons through a series of sp
iritual exercises. And certainly every "manual of spiritual exercises for serene
living" must suggest the abandonment of all desire to be always "in fashion" or
the desire to be always stylish, or amusing, or to be liked at once: that is, i
t advises an immediate abandon of false problems, manias, hysteria.
sumes, dies; the great problem is that of finding a house above passion, a house
of calm serenity, a house for all seasons. We already move about enough ourselv
es to rendcr the architecture variable, changing its relationships with the pass
ing of time, with the changing of the seasons and life. Modern furnishing is lik
e a great race (from one exhibition to another, from shop to magazine) towards t
he most beautiful, the newest, the most functional. But to come in first o r las
t has no importance if the whole race is wrong, and the race of consumerism is d
efinitely wrong. Thus, the thing to d o is not to take part in the race, but to
get out of it as soon as possible, and to isolate oneself apart to colg
74
The Egyptians and the Etruscans used to put household objects in their tombs: to
day also most houses are the tombs of objects. Objects become museum-ified very
quickly, and are kept, it doesn't matter whether for a long or short time, with
all the dusty eternity of useless ornaments. If the purpose of furnishing is to
permit human relationships, e\,erything we have about us must always and only be
a witness to our mental o r emotional relationships: a series of objects to kee
p like messages in bottles, about our public and private histories. But the impo
rtant thing is to keep ourselves free from fear rep r d i n g memories: the impo
rtant thing is to keep control of the situation, with all its possibilities for
change, for abolishing or conserving. Each operation, each variation, must howev
er take place without drama, because usually nothing is bettered or worsened, ju
st changed. In the field of variability, much is talked (too much perhaps) of mo
bile space, consumable space, transformable space. There is the search for metab
olisms and cinetization, an architecture of "mobility, functionality, usability"
is substituted for an architecture of "firmitas, utilitas, venustas". At any ra
te, there is an effort to move what is still, without trying to stop that \vhich
is moving too much. is not that of searching for a house which imiThe tates mov
ement, which follows the man who mo\,es, lives, conThe problem is not to furnish roorns. and not even to propose objects both amusi
ng and perishable ... The problem is to furnish deserts, to awake consciousness
from long, dogmatic sleep, and force backward the monster created by the sleep o
f reason. Once, silver was used for protection against vampires and werewolves;
now we use marble, chrome, mirrors and rare roots against similar nightmare crea
tures, but now it is easier to distinguish them because they are nightmares in d
aylight, born, under fancy lights, lampshades and appliques, floating on blow-up
cushions, boxed into modular, transformable coffins; but at the same time it is
also more difficult, because now they frighten no-one (or almost): a policy of
progressive narcosis encourages them, and the illusion of well-being feeds them.
The pass-word is still let yourself go, let yourself be guided by Big-brother-\
\rho-knowsmore-than-you, above all because Big Brother is himself a civilized pe
rson, \\'ha understands perfectly that one cannot argue about taste and everyone
has his o\vn personality, and so everyone has the right to choose for himself w
hen it comes to slipcovers for the car, the lamps for the TV set and the seat-co
ver (or better still, the three-piece set) for the WC ...

131
1 1
I
We don't ~nrend lanore u ~ s s ~ o or des~res, detdch ourselves to na or
O n e has the lrnpresslon of a serles of hard, s h ~ n pleccs of ~ n ~
I\!:
1
and d e s ~ r e t h ~ n g s for themselves
they wllIgrow In the ddrk u n t ~ they become trlump l
! 11
wastc to be avoided is that of intelligence.
object made with the instruments of reason, appe
fprrion: the comolementnriness from the fact that. together, thev
serrcs of dctrons w ~ t h o u t vtolettce, rcndlng to rnnlnrarn non cornmun~cdt~
ng systems closed, dnd at the same tlme to state a slngle ldca of a serene and e
xact way of 11fe
around it as images. This is a kind of living with n o great adventures. which m
akes its choices without haste. constructine a form
!
of the oresent. that of Le Corbus~er.Mtes. ~ i e u e rMart Srarn, Adl,
lit!
already brllllantly passed all tests, ~ n c l u d ~ nthe hdrdesr of dl], g And t
here 1s other furn~ture the way to belonging to the on
There are uleces of furn~ture chrome and mlrror, s h ~ n y m metal
+'
w:c,ln
~maelne-it elnotv and then we can beam to fill 11, slowly,
ogmm or cube, and to p l ~ n them In sltt~ng-rooms, t bedrooms, on
1

theory" of architecture and art. I was more and more convinced of its instrument
ality with respect to social and economic forces, of its ambiguous aesthetic-art
istic ambition, of its impossibility to be authentic and to serve Man. In the co
urse of this critical ~ h a s e
I did NOTwant to find a monumental architecture.
I did NOT want to find a fashionable architecture.
I did NOT want to find a bmur;/r,l architecture. Instead I always sought a "skin
less" architecture, an architecture in which the outside arises from the inside,
straight out of the inner life of the men who live in it. And therefore archite
ctures the outside of which could be utilized, gone through, touched, made use o
f just like the inside, plain and hill architectures, an anthill architecture fo
r men (of course just the opposite of a phalanstery!); an "invisible" architectu
re (in the sense of the "invisible man"). That is why I say I did not find it. I
ndeed I fail to see it, even if I have a feeling that, like in the fdm on the "i
nvisible man", it has grown close to me, on the verge of revealing its outline i
n a puff of dust, of steam or in the rain: pouring rain (like in Rashornon!) tha
t Gavroche sought cover from in the elephant of the Bastille. The first example
of an architecturehon architecture that ento discern the birth of objects and of architecture starting from the primordial
, from men "bare" of knowledge and experience. Leaving aside the "cultivators",
sedentary owners of land, of cultivation, and of specific, already institutional
ized cultures, we followed the ancient and modern nomadic "gatherers", the "inve
ntors" of something out of nothing, out of flotsam, the great, the true, the onl
y "improvisers" of design, of architecture, of town-planning; the few who, eithe
r because they have not yet collapsed under the cozy, warm, all so sweet weight
of mass culture or because they are drop-outs from it, still had the brilliant p
rerogatives of chilAs you can clearly see, our journey, far from being a zigzagg
ing course without a real destination, as was often reproached us, was according
to me remarkably consistent and logical. A descent, perhaps apish but resolute,
from one branch to the other, down to the roots of human doing, down to where A
rchitecture is without Architects. To the only mental place where we might have
been able to find (maybe!) the magic formula for the Invention of the New Archit
ecture. It was there, at our disposal, ready to reveal itself, to let itself
1
I
2
P
f
'
come an architect. "Oh unexpected usefulness of the useless! Charity of great th
ings! Bounty of giants! This outsize monument, that had contained one of the emp
eror's thoughts, had become an urchin's shell: the lad had been accepted and tak
en in by the colossus. The bourgeois dressed in their Sunday best walking by the
elephant of the Bastille would say, examining it with their bulgiig eyes and an
expression of contempt: 'What is it good for?"' Victor Hugo, Les MisPrables, Bo
ok VI, I1 An architecture can be consciously negative, it can be intentionally d
esigned to be rmpleasat~t, uncorn/ortable, to not work. Bernard Tschumi Florence
, December 2002
Once we reached this place, we realised however that this search was no longer t
he business of the SUPERSTUDIO but of each one of us. In other words that anothe

r journey began here, this time an individual one.

a2
My search for architecture now appears to me like that of the Graal, of the Phil
osopher's Stone, the Phoenix. And I believe I did not find it. I say "I believe"
because I might even have found it without realizing it! I understand that this
is not a very credible l claim, but I shall try to explain. First of al let us
see what I did NOT want to find:

1966-68
Superarchitecture: to the Rescue!
The first chapter deals with the newly consrituted group SUPERSTUDIO following t
heir debut announced at the December 1966 S~perarchilecllrre exhibition in Pisto
ia. The period benveen 1966 and 1968 represents the group's early developmental
stage, constructed on a critical re-evaluation of their educational experiences
and tied to the contemporary architectural and design culture in Florence. We re
cognize this first brief period to be the Slrperarchitecrurephase in the group's
evolution, an intensive initiation to the world of architecture that paralleled
the early development of Archizoom. Many of their core theoretical and represen
tational concepts they later developed originated in this earliest phase benveen
1967 and 1968. Simultaneously, from their first offices in Via Bellosguardo 1,
the group organized a fully professional architectural and design office, that a
ttempted to translate the group's theoretical and ideological concerns into "pra
ctical" projects. The office began with Adolfo Natalini. Cristiano Toraldo di Fr
ancia, Roberto Magris, and after April 1968 Piero Frassineh. Benveen 1967 and 19
68 three main themes were identified for further investigation: 1. Archi~ec~ure
Mo~rrrrnen~ and 2. Archr~ec~rrre I~noge and 3. Techtlo~norphic Archirpcrure Thes
e three categories were subsequently synthesized in three major theses: I~luenri
orrDesign and Evasion Des~g~i (1967),]ourrrey into the Real111of Reaso~r( 1 9 6
8 4 9 ) and the development of a "single design", A Caralogue of Villas
(196748).

=
2
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1969-71
Superprojects: Objects, Monuments, Cities
/Lmc, &Z & ~%.

I ,

Y W
OFcao4i~ JmeC
.%a'&/#'/&a h 1 6
This chapter surveys SUPERSTUDIO'S most provocative period from 1969 to 1971. It
was during these years that the group generated its most renowned body of work.
After successfully formulizing a critique on design, architecture and the city,
the us group produced a ~ r o d i ~ i o set of conceptual projects through an i
nnovative use of multi-media techniques, en~ployingcollage, storyboards and lite
rary narratives. The professional "officc" continued its design activities, whil
e entering into one of its most creatively engaged and controversially subversiv
e periods. Almost all the conceptual production was intended for catalogues, arc
hitecture magazines and exhibitions. The most srriking images produced in the pe
riod found wide distribution internationally, from Europe to the United States a
nd Japan. 1. The Corrtitruorrs Monrrmmt (storyboard, with an audio-slide show, n
or restored) 2. Hrrtogrdms (architecture of objects, design objects Arc the and
I~rterpl~~netaty / ~ ~ t e c t r ~ r e ,first film to be produced e by suIJensTu
olo, ~vithAlessandro Poli, ~ n e n ~ b ofr the group from 1970 to 1972) 3. Euclu
e Ideal Cities (architecture of cities, with an audio-slide show to be re-enacte
d and recordcd in conjunction with the London exhibition. March 2003) Each of th
ese three categories represents a concise theoretical engagement on one of the f
ollowing disciplines in design and architecture: the object, the monument, the c
ity.

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wkrng 1118 mlll~on n l ~ a b ~ t a n ta ~ on r rlde lllraugh valloyi and hlllr,

lrom the
lhoure for more lhan four yearr after 1 s 1 conrlrucl#on, alter thlr penod, oble
ctr.
~ n d ~ c a t ~ n ggroundcovered the Lookat the perlectclly that producer
Factory 4 miles wide and 100 yardr high lhke the clly 8 1 contlnuourly producer
The Grand Fartory explo~Lr the land and the underground maler8als of the terrllo
ry 11crosses. and from ,here mamellourly arrarts all that 11requres for tho ronr
tlurLion 01 the clly The Grand Farlorydevourr shreds of urelorr nature and unfor
med m~norals 11sfront end and a1 emllr recllons of completely folmed clly. ready
for use. from 11s back end The Grand Factory mover loward at a speed ol Iloot 2
112 ~nrher pel hour The plan of the rlly IS bared on a chequer-board of roads p
erpend8cular and parallel to llle Grand Factory. the roads reparato rquaro blork
r. 261 x 261 yards. and ale 29 y x d r rvlde
roclenjr rejects, mador Insane
~nd#v~duals. dare to wander roll amongst Ihe rulnr. lhe delr8tur and rubble that
the rtly leaves belllnd 11 It Ir ~norder lo prerent the rillzens bemg reduced t
o such a despelale slate that lrom tllelr eallterl age they are lnrulralcdiv~lh
ronrepl lhal the everyone's g!ealertder~remust ativayr be a nnv house, and $1I S
for thsa fearon lhal the nervrpaperr, wandall other med~a ronl~nually advert~re
Ihe marvellous novetller af the new houses. the lerhaaal 8nnovat8onr. the neverbefore.reen romlo!lr What cobid be mole f a r r # n ~ l # n g fearruring than th
e and rperlarle of the famlher that dally drive up the perpendcular raadr tn lhe
w~lhgoodr locontnbule to tile grealer prosperlly of our graat counlryand Ihe bcu
er forluner olour well-loved rhareholderr .Eighth Clty. Conlcal Tanaced City The
clly rlrer ~nthe mcdrlof a groat plain, surrounded bya canal 600 feet w ~ d eI1
lr lormedaf MOc~rcular levolsane above the oher, each one of which has a dtarne
ler 32 fcet less than theane beneah Each level IS 8 feel high, lhur the lotal he
ight 8s 4.000 leel, while llle d~ameter the 01 lorverl level lr 16.000 leel. In
the c~aumlerence wall of each level are daatr 2 1 7 feet A1 giound level there a
re 6.500doorr. each rccerr8ve level has 13 doors less The 5Wlh level has only 13
doorr. and above
n parallel road next to them 8 3 days The grealert arplrauon of everyclslen 1 5
to move more and more ohen 8nlo
rpeclal grounds andcongralulater you' What hourcould be happier than when you en
ter your ncu home and
walls IS 16 leet The mar8mum dlstare behveen !he Iworad~al walls and the helghto
l the room IS 7
In
through bran impulseslooneor more ~nllab~tanls Ineveimore Lllan Iue at the same
amel lhv~ng the level beneath oo theone onwhch 8 owner Ises. ~ t ' r 6 not pars8
ble to trallrmll impulses to tha 8nltab1tants01 levels ye1 lurther dhvn nor lo ~
nhab~tanoolone's wmlevel. nor rtlll less lo those llvlng a b u e Theorel8cally.i
ulth anellon. 111s porriblelorelure to obey Iheofderr comng fromtlle mhab8enIr o
f the llmr abave. bulthe sense of gu1ltder8v8ng from lhls rebellton srogreal and
provokes ruch lnlenre monlal rullerlnri rhalonlva l e w u n bear ~ t l olong i
Throughth8i ryrlem-lhal~r, ordering Ihothlngs theyneed b m t h o r e l ~ v ~ n g
beneath-he lnhabllanlr obta~n evewhing they require Eachderlle parser from coil
rdmalor l o r 0 ordlnalor "nu1 It leaches the lowest levels, and almartaluay.unt
#l~tieaiher ground level.where the mhab~tanlra m l [he land,ivo~kad manulacturea

bteclr to ral~rtylhe demands01 the Inhabilanr of the upper levels Twice aday,al
flred tlmer, all ~nhab~tants the citq. putl8ng the), of heads (ma lheopenrngr gw
ng on lo the central space, receive, through the,, ca-ordinator. a programme af
diearns emlned by the man lhvlng ~n the cupola at the lop No one knows how the m
an l#v#ng ~n the cupola Ilver. but everybody maginpi hlrn to be happy because he
never orders anflhing, never needs anything It Is sad that Ihe cupola has
plied up hew and lherolerl~tqtothe lerm~tqol lhelr llghlr Aclually. 118s h e p8l
er 01 bodler lhal prowd.?Ihemorl urelul means of cllmblnglnalurally ~ndiu;dualr
wllh lam~l~pr. whoivant lo lake them along, are at ad~rartrantagel The lnhabllan
ls 01 Iho hlgherl levels who have very lew orders. and erperlally thore on the v
ery hlghert, who have none at all. rom~nually endeavour to gel 8nto 1he rupala,
which apparently has noopenlng at all 118s sad lhal 11one tauihcr a paillculal s
pa1 on ltr surface. 11opens up a recllon for a few seconds to admit the I ~ c k
y but na.one has one, eue,eme,ged l r m the ("pala la jell the others about 11.T
he mart myrler8our querlron rr what happens la the prev80ur mhab~lantrof the cup
ola. lhar Is, lharedethraned On the terrace ru,raundrog the cupala. a body has n
ever bean laund
Ninlh City. The Ville-Mechina Habiles The clly 8s a machine. ruch a large mach~n
e not even 11s lnhabllanls that knmv 1 s rze. Its p~peltner. rows of 1 Its gearmechan~rmr.conveyor bells. connecung rods. stretch away out of rqhtrh~cheve,way
one looks. ~nthe dim hall.11ghL grey and foggy, wh~ch flllr the cavern 1toccup8e
r.and lhore walls have never beenreen The mhabllantr ltve m Ls machine endlessly
dragged along by conveyor bells. by chutes and pneumatic tuber
The marlllne ISrcll-ruffoent. ~ t i a k e r * from the outrldeivorldanly some ra
ys 01 runllghl, air andwaler nch with the mlneial raltr 01 Ihe eanh 11 looks aft
er 11slnhabllanlr by elabaratlng and rynthtr\i<ngIhe subslancer or~g~nally place
d ~nI,. 11recreawr. ~ h a t ~ r , wllllrn meif. llfe ~ l e from planlcullurer r
andantma1 breedlng The perieclon of (he mechanlrm IS such !ha1 the add~t~onatqua
nttt~er ol energy and rnaller brought ~nby h e Ilghr. a>rand water became rurplu
r Any residue. anflhtnr) that d~er.lr t<anrlormed rile machine producer ferl~lti
err .Tenth City. City ol Order Thlr c t y has, apprenlly, nolh~ng strange aboul~
r11 rseelr. has squarer, gardens. new hourer and 11 8s in lart a city lhke any o
lher The only Ihng 8s that rt has been governed by the same mayor lor45 yearr Th
e rearan lor h ~ long stay ~nofftce r IS rfmplo he has an er~ept~onally g o d id
ea Insteadof trying to rult Ihe city lo Its Inhab~lantr.l~ke everyone else. he t
hought of rumng the inhab~lantrlo thetr clry Now.45 yearr later, thmgr are rlanl
ng logo really well. Ihe cltlzenr that lump the Ilghlr. damage clly property. co
mpla~n about the unpunclual~tqof buses or !he lark the oftvalerat the timer 11s
most needed. es are ever fewer Aclually. as soon as a cit~zencomm~o some
.
159