PurplePrice Mag · · 3 min read
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Radical design, or radical architecture, is the protest movement that emerged in Italy in the mid-1960s. Its protagonists were young architects, many of them recent graduates, who rejected the elegant, rational "good design" of the post-war years, that of the Modern Movement, and the role of the designer serving industry and consumerism. Instead of simply designing better objects, they wanted to change the way people live and to question society itself. The name was coined in the early 1970s by the critic Germano Celant to bring together very different experiences.
Florence, 1966
It all began with an exhibition in a basement. From 4 to 17 December 1966, at the Galleria Jolly 2 in Pistoia, two newly formed Florentine groups, Archizoom Associati and Superstudio, presented Superarchitettura: colourful prototypes in wood and cardboard ironically celebrating "super-consumption", with music by the Rolling Stones as the soundtrack. Among the pieces on show was Archizoom's undulating Superonda sofa, which the Tuscan company Poltronova put into production the following year, in polyurethane foam covered with glossy imitation leather. The exhibition convinced Poltronova's founder, Sergio Cammilli, and its art director Ettore Sottsass to back the young radicals.
Archizoom (Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi, later Dario and Lucia Bartolini) designed the provocative Mies armchair (1969), which pokes fun at the master of Modernism, and imagined No-Stop City (1969–1972), an endless city without architecture. Superstudio (Adolfo Natalini, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and others) designed the Continuous Monument (1969), a white grid wrapping the entire planet, and furniture covered in its famous grid, such as the Quaderna table (1970) for Zanotta. Florence was also home to the UFO group, Gianni Pettena and Gruppo 9999.
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Turin and Milan: foam and pop
Radical design was not only Florentine. In Turin the company Gufram produced seats in polyurethane foam that look like works of Pop design: Piero Gilardi's fake boulders Sassi (1968), Gruppo Strum's giant lawn Pratone (1971), Studio 65's lip-shaped Bocca sofa (1970) and the Cactus coat stand by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello (1972). In Milan Gaetano Pesce created the Up series (1969) for C&B Italia, today's B&B Italia: armchairs sold vacuum-compressed that inflated by themselves when the package was opened. The most famous, Up5, known as La Mamma, with its ball-shaped ottoman tied by a chain, is a statement about the condition of women.
MoMA and Global Tools
The movement's greatest moment came in 1972, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz. The exhibition set "official" Italian design alongside radical design, with environments by Sottsass, Archizoom, Superstudio, Pesce and others. Several Gufram pieces entered the museum's permanent collection.
In 1973 the radicals founded Global Tools, a free school to bring spontaneous creativity and manual work back into design. Its members met in the editorial office of Casabella, the magazine edited by Alessandro Mendini, which became the voice of the movement. Global Tools was short-lived, however: by the mid-1970s the groups had broken up (Archizoom in 1974) and the movement had run its course.
Legacy
Radical ideas did not disappear. In the late 1970s Mendini, Sottsass, Branzi and Michele De Lucchi took them into Studio Alchimia and then into Memphis, where provocation became colour and decoration: the road that led to Postmodernism. Many radical objects, born as protest pieces, are now classics still in production and on display in museums all over the world.
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