SUPERZOOM

Italy and the Radical Commitment

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CONSTELACIONES #03 (pp.14-35). Blind peer reviewed. Ed.San Pablo CEU University. ISSN: 2340-177X. May 2015.

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Italy: the new domestic landscape, the ambitious exhibition that took place in 1972 at MOMA, means the recognition and at the same time stages the death of what some critics had classified as Radical Architecture; term that tried to unify the work of an heterogeneous and fragmented group of architects, mainly Italian, committed to the total rethinking of the definition and objectives of the discipline.

This would complete a short but intense period dynamited by many experimental proposals, in which the last architecture with socio-political aspirations was generated. This architecture was responsible for a vibrant theoretical legacy that proclaimed the return to the forgotten roots of the profession, and was more concerned about reflecting on its foundations than perpetuating the practice of a profession in crisis.

The symbiosis between the work of Superstudio and Archizoom, two of the most active radical groups whose indissolubility we wanted to highlight using the term SUPERZOOM, articulates this brief review as a flashback of the Italian radical movement, able to demonstrate in less than 10 years that the practice of architecture and its teaching application could be ethically and politically relevant, opening a critical path that at the present time of our deeply contradictory profession would be advisable to travel through again.

 

KEYWORDS: radical architecture, counter-utopias, counter-design, superarchitecture, Andrea Branzi, Adolfo Natalini