RADICALS
Gianni Pettena
The architectural world of the late fifties saw the emergence of a utopian and visionary tendency in research. Taking on a variety of manifestations, it pointed to the need for new theoretical formulations after the rigidity of Rationalism and the inadequacy of many of the propositions of the Modern Movement had become clear. This was a period in which new conceptual foundations were laid and new languages developed to express the desire to head off in different directions, freed from the shackles of the past, however glorious it may have been, and from the limitations of a debate that had been superseded by the emergence of new social realities and new instruments of inquiry and proposal in architectural design.
At bottom it was a replay, in a contemporary key, of the same break with the conventional approach based on the dictates of classicism that had led to the birth of modern architecture as a consequence of the technical, social and cultural changes triggered by the industrial revolution. And it took to heart the lessons of the historical avant-garde movements and the ideology of progress to which they had given expression in an explosion of creativity before this was curbed by the canons of linguistic structures that were objectively “recognizable” and translatable into constructions.
The methodologies of research used by these new utopians did not leave the demands and requirements of society out of consideration. On the contrary, they drew inspiration and nourishment from them. What was new, however, was the different approach to the quest for a balance between form and function that had characterized the previous generation: that need to reconcile poetics with practice, formal intentions with the necessities of use, which had, in the end, killed off the creativity and spontaneity of its languages, placing architecture in a situation of cultural backwardness with respect to the other arts. […]
In the United States, in short, it was only funk architecture and the hippie movement’s experiences of constructing its own buildings that accepted “contamination” from existential experiences or from contemporary experimentation in the field of the arts, as if to take the place of a research that, however critical, was still carried out in relation to the “presence” of the undisputed masters of European modernism: Mies, Gropius, Schindler, Kiesler. While their theoretical assumptions and languages may be reinterpreted, it was rare for doubts to be raised about the instruments they used in design. In Europe, on the other hand, the early experiments moved on from the initial utopian vision to a progressive maturation, to the point where they were able to accept irony and allow their own visionary outlook to be used as a means of questioning the canons of the profession. Thus European architecture saw the emergence of an experimental attitude that was wholly independent of previous legacies but influenced instead, and developed in concord with, the climate of linguistic and experimental renewal of the other creative disciplines and the changes that were taking place in culture and lifestyle on the urban scene. The British group called Archigram, whose “utopian” approach to design was also applied to the large scale and to new models of cities or urban macrostructures, is emblematic of this different attitude, which was to surface almost contemporaneously in Austria, with Hollein and Pichler, and in Italy, with Archizoom and Superstudio. In the London of the early sixties the new languages of representation and expression, derived chiefly from pop culture and adopted and diffused by the mass media, had triggered an explosion of innovation and creativity. In contrast, the established architectural culture found itself unable to deal with the new urban reality, and therefore incapable of influencing an environment shaped by phenomena and models linked to mass culture. Archigram, with the boldness that came from a sense of irony, carried out an operation with regard to the profession that was at once a conceptual revolution and a linguistic renewal: in other words, a type of design that on the theoretical plane accepted and even laid claim to the characteristics of the consumer and mass-oriented society, those of transience and dynamism, of continual and necessary flexibility and of evolution in the functions of an urban environment, expressing them in the visually-alluring languages of the media, science-fiction cartoons, brightly-colored collages and magazines in which the articles were illustrated with pop icons.
What seems to have been particularly innovative about Archigram was its conscious transformation of architecture into images, its voluntary demystification of the project as an instrument with which to operate in architecture. This radical approach allowed them to take up the position, for the first time in an organic way, of initiators, superseding even the example of Cedric Price who, while basing his design on criteria of the indeterminacy, perishability and multifunctionality of space, had nevertheless stuck to a traditional form of design that did not yet seem to reflect an awareness of the need for “contamination” by other means and modes of expression.
An awareness that, on the other hand, and around the same time as Archigram was conducting its experiments in London, was growing increasingly important in the research of which Hans Hollein and Walter Pichler had made themselves spokesmen with their manifesto Absolute Architecture of 1963, in which the rejection of orthodoxy was taken to the point of an exploration of the spiritual, archaic and symbolic values of architecture that touch on the very essence of living and communicating. This was not just a refusal of any functionalistic and rationalistic approach, but went much further, leapfrogging all debate within the field and attributing to architecture a central role that theoretically led to the overcoming of all spatial or temporal barriers. With the assertion that “everything is architecture,” for good or ill, all interdisciplinary boundaries were erased and experimentation was able to make use of languages apparently remote from those of the architectural project but which were still intended to convey ideas about the human condition, about life, the environment and the city. This line of research took on various guises in Austria, from the visionary character of Abraham’s megastructures which progressively assumed rarefied architectural form to the conceptual and existential rigor of Pichler’s work and Hollein’s translation of concepts into architecture: these would take the form of drawings, performances, body art, spatial installations and the design of environments and objects, of “possible” works of architecture.
The conceptual approach taken by the early Austrian “radicals” was to have a great influence on the experimentation that had commenced in Italy as well with the exhibition “Superarchitettura” (1966), staged by the Florentine groups Archizoom and Superstudio. Above all, it was to take up the idea of crossing the interdisciplinary boundaries of languages and methodologies in an effort to challenge the assumptions of the discipline. Moreover, the Italian “radicals” had a source of inspiration and perhaps an involuntary forerunner in Ettore Sottsass Jr. who, in the early sixties, represented a fixed point of reference: an example, in terms of both action and conduct, of the possibility of “transgressing,” of overcoming the petrifaction and stagnancy of a discipline trapped in the legacy of the Modern Movement.[…]
It is not possible to gain a correct understanding of the two original currents of what would come to be known as the “radical” experience, the Florentine groups Archizoom and Superstudio, and then UFO and Pettena, one characterized more by its derivation from Pop Art and the other more by its connections with “arte povera” and the conceptual and behavioral, if they are not seen in relation to Sottsass’s work at the time. Among other things, this bestowed on Italian radical research two characteristics that differentiated it, notwithstanding the many points of contact, from what was going on in Britain, Austria and North America, i.e. the design of furniture and the abundance of theoretical writings. Just as Sottsass had done or was doing with his ceramics and with the furniture for Poltronova, which introduced new motivations as well as hitherto-unknown materials, colors and scales, for all the “Florentine” experimenters, in spite of the diversity of their approaches, the role and scale of furniture were meant to become the synthesis of a genuine allegory of intentions, strategies and ideologies.
An evident reaction to the problems and frustrations caused by the conceptual backwardness of the ideas about architecture passed on in academic circles led to the birth of anti-design and, in the years immediately afterward, grand project-images accompanied by all-embracing theories on the destiny of society, a series of forays into other spheres of art and culture and urban guerrilla actions based on what were called urboeffimeri, or “urban ephemera.” In particular the research conducted by Archizoom and Superstudio was to be taken over the following years to the extreme of global planning: their collages – more ironic and mordant in the case of Archizoom, more tangible in their vision of the “continuous monument” in the case of Superstudio – introduced an element of theoretical research into the city, the environment and mass culture that has to a great extent determined and shaped the course of many of the themes tackled subsequently, and not just in Italy.
The decade from 1965 to 1975 was to be, for the Italian radicals, a period of intense debate, of continual theoretical reflection, of commitment and of initiatives of shattering significance, such as the 15th Milan Triennale where Sottsass, commissioner for the international section on design, decided along with the coordinator Andrea Branzi “to present not products but ideas.” This legitimized and indeed placed the emphasis on the participation of the radical area where, especially in the early sixties, with Branzi’s column in Casabella, the writings of Mendini and Raggi and a whole series of publications by Sottsass, Superstudio, Archizoom, Pettena, UFO and Dalisi, theory and experimentation were being integrated within a common platform of research with what Celant, above all, was proposing as an element of confrontation with the visual arts, arte povera and conceptual and land art. The moment when this common strategy reached the peak of its intensity, but one which also marked the time when the participants began to head off in different directions, came in 1973 with the foundation of “Global Tools,” a “system of laboratories for propagation of the use of natural and technological materials and relative modes of conduct [...]” that set itself the goal of “stimulating the free development of individual creativity.”[1] This was to be a framework for communication and exchange in which the work of research was intended to specialize in different disciplinary areas and in which common experiences and design prototypes would be able to take on concrete form. Yet Global Tools, created as an opportunity for connection and a hypothesis for joint investigation of the possible themes of a mass creativity in the “leisure society,” never actually got off the ground and its failure helped to underpin the conviction that “the faith that there was any unitary direction to the political and cultural changes under way was lost, and in irrevocable fashion.”[2]
The end of Global Tools made Italian researchers aware that some of the grand social scenarios prefigured by Radical Architecture, and especially those of a society “liberated” from work by the new technologies, in which culture would find expression through processes of individual and mass creativity, might turn out to be illusory. However, this did not prevent them from carrying on with their experiments, following a course that was to remain exclusively Italian for several years, until the time when the experiences and the new figurative languages of the “new design” once again broadened the horizons to an international level.[…]