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Superstudio: Life without Objects
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
- GenresArchitectureDesignArt
248 pages, Paperback
First published August 23, 2003
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December 4, 2019
After reading the Superstudio book, I think it resonates with me more than the history of the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was created to Make Perfect Things. Superstudio was created to investigate Do We Need to Make Things? Their fundamental ideology of splitting objects into purely functional/a-semantic utensils-for-filling-needs and metaphysical/meaningful objects-for-a-personal-mythology breaks with blind capitalism and investigates society at large. I’m fed up with things-as-status-symbols; an equal, beautiful world seems so utopian.
It might be helpful to recap the trajectory of Superstudio’s forays into architectural theory. Seeing how they got there can help me in my own train of thought.
1966-68
- lamps and furnishings
- Machine-like complex/resorts that make inventive use of their situation
- Technomorphic catalogue of architectural parts—gridded walls, columns, roofs
- Arrangements of these elements into specific villas (serene architecture)
- “Misura” furniture series (gridded laminate)
- Basically all of this ^^ in an attempt to eliminate “symbols” and “industrial design” because the poetry of living comes from how you adapt them, use them, and build a life from them
1969-71
- “The Continuous Monument,” an extensión of these ideals to fill the whole earth
- Moving outside of the urban environment (the city) to a pristine and difficult terrain (the desert)
- More concern with universal/primal man
- The work is at once almost sci-fi in its integration of futuristic, perfect shapes into existing human and natural landscapes
- “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Cities” becomes almost ironic; metaphors and prophecies for modern society: aspirations, consumption, judgement, life cycles, waste, laws
- Playing with cultural symbols/monuments—mixing up visions of things (underwater; paved)
1972-73
- “Fundamental Acts” becomes increasingly anthropological in its catalogue of human acts: Life, Education, Ceremony, Love, Death
- But it’s not concerned with history so much as cataloguing what could be: what is an ideal life? How do/can ideals be transmitted from generation to generation? What do our rituals say about us?
- Filmic, using imagery and context to convey ideas, types of people, wants, desires
- Abstract and phantasmagorical journeys (“I saw a man...”
1974-78
- Return to inherited knowledge, catalogue of rural tools
- Global Tools, establishing a school
- “The Wife of Lot”: what has architecture left us? What does historic architecture mean today?
- How do simple people meet their needs/make what they need?
- Destroy specialization of knowledge, learn handicraft
- Fill the void left by Radical architecture (“The only architecture will be our lives”)
It might be helpful to recap the trajectory of Superstudio’s forays into architectural theory. Seeing how they got there can help me in my own train of thought.
1966-68
- lamps and furnishings
- Machine-like complex/resorts that make inventive use of their situation
- Technomorphic catalogue of architectural parts—gridded walls, columns, roofs
- Arrangements of these elements into specific villas (serene architecture)
- “Misura” furniture series (gridded laminate)
- Basically all of this ^^ in an attempt to eliminate “symbols” and “industrial design” because the poetry of living comes from how you adapt them, use them, and build a life from them
1969-71
- “The Continuous Monument,” an extensión of these ideals to fill the whole earth
- Moving outside of the urban environment (the city) to a pristine and difficult terrain (the desert)
- More concern with universal/primal man
- The work is at once almost sci-fi in its integration of futuristic, perfect shapes into existing human and natural landscapes
- “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Cities” becomes almost ironic; metaphors and prophecies for modern society: aspirations, consumption, judgement, life cycles, waste, laws
- Playing with cultural symbols/monuments—mixing up visions of things (underwater; paved)
1972-73
- “Fundamental Acts” becomes increasingly anthropological in its catalogue of human acts: Life, Education, Ceremony, Love, Death
- But it’s not concerned with history so much as cataloguing what could be: what is an ideal life? How do/can ideals be transmitted from generation to generation? What do our rituals say about us?
- Filmic, using imagery and context to convey ideas, types of people, wants, desires
- Abstract and phantasmagorical journeys (“I saw a man...”
1974-78
- Return to inherited knowledge, catalogue of rural tools
- Global Tools, establishing a school
- “The Wife of Lot”: what has architecture left us? What does historic architecture mean today?
- How do simple people meet their needs/make what they need?
- Destroy specialization of knowledge, learn handicraft
- Fill the void left by Radical architecture (“The only architecture will be our lives”)
Displaying 1 of 1 review