Superstudio
Related: Italian design - Radical design - architecture
Il Monumento Continuo, New New York - Superstudio (1969-1971)
The Falling In Love Machine (1968) - Superstudio
Image sourced here.
Description
Superstudio was an architecture firm, founded in 1966 in Florence, Italy by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. Many of their projects were originally published in the magazine Casabella, and ranged from fiction, to storyboard illustration, to photomontage. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstudio [Jan 2006]
Some 30 years ago, Superstudio, a group of radical Florentine architects, proposed a gridded superstructure that would wrap around the world. Eventually, this structure, Il Monumento Continuo, would cover the entire surface of the planet, leaving the Earth as featureless as the smoothest desert, or, more to the point, as a wilfully low-brow, suburban-style western city. http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,1048090,00.html [Feb 2005]
[S]uperstudio's response was to develop its 'Anti-Design' projects: themes from which were echoed in the work of other radical architects and designers, notably the members of Archizoom, a fellow Florentine group consisting of Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Dario and Lucia Bartolini and Massimo Morozzi. Both groups were founded in 1966 and their first important project was to express their theories about the crisis of modernism in the Superarchitecture exhibition in Pistoia, Italy. A year later, they refined the ideas aired in Superarchitecture in a joint follow-up show in Modena. --http://www.designmuseum.org/designerex/superstudio.htmw [Jul 2004]
Superstudio : Life without Objects (2003) Peter Lang, William Menking
Superstudio : Life without Objects (2003) Peter Lang, William Menking [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
About the Authors
William Menking is a professor of city and regional planning at Pratt Institute in New York City. He is on the board of directors of the Storefront for Art and Architecture and The Miami Art Project.
Peter Lang has edited the anthologies Mortal City (1995) and Suburban Discipline (1997). Lang is currently a visiting assistant professor in the department of architecture, Texas A&M University.
Founded in Florence in 1966, Superstudio challenged the modernist orthodoxy that architecture and technological advances could improve the world by creating alternative visions of the future in photo-montages, sketches, collages and films. The five members of Superstudio: Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro Magris, Roberto Magris and Adolfo Natalini-were equally pessimistic about politics and its ability to solve mounting social, cultural and environmental problems. This Fall 2003 New York exhibition catalogue, drawn from Superstudio's archive and curated in collaboration with members of the group, will revisit its work and trace its influence on subsequent generations of architects. --Book Description via Amazon.com
Superstudio: Life without Objects collects nearly 200 of the group's most important images, collages, storyboards and critical writings. White monuments crossing over entire landscapes and cities, vast grid groundplanes spreading over infinite beaches populated by wandering hippies: these are some of the more evocative images that consolidated their fame as vanguard architects. In 1972, MoMA invited them to participate in one of the largest exhibitions in its history, built around Italian design and architecture. With essays from Peter Lang and William Menking, the book is designed to provide the reader with the most detailed account of this avant-garde design group and their lively assault on modernism.