Superstudio

Superstudio was one of the great protagonists of the experience of radical architecture which between the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s questioned the foundations of Modernism through experiments and protests with a strong political content. Founded in Florence in 1966 (the year of the disastrous flood of the Arno), Superstudio was inspired by the circles of the local faculty of architecture and was initially led by the two recent graduates Adolfo Natalini (1941-2020) and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (1941 -2019), to which in the following years Alessandro Magris (1941-2010), Roberto Magris (1935-2003), Gian Piero Frassineli (1939-) and Alessandro Poli (1941-) will also be added. Their research went so far as to question the very concept of the city, which they intended to replace with a new form of social organization and more radically egalitarian space. None of the buildings they imagined were ever actually built, often characterized by grid motifs that symbolized infinity (as in the famous Monumento Continuo of 1969), but the theoretical and visionary contribution to the development of architecture nonetheless had a considerable impact. Where they then left a very tangible sign of their idea was in the design of furniture, starting with the creations conceived for the "Superarchitecture" exhibitions which they created together with colleagues from Archizoom Associati in 1966 and 1967 and which attracted the attention of the experimental brand Poltronova, who put many of their ideas into production. Even more successful was the Quaderna series of tables and consoles, designed for Zanotta and today considered one of the symbols of Radical Design. Superstudio's activity diminished after its participation in the famous MoMA exhibition "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" (1972) and the failure of the Global Tools experience (1973-1975), which aspired to be a sort of counterarchitecture. In more recent years, the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the group has been celebrated with appreciated exhibitions in some famous museums such as the MAXXI in Rome.