Archizoom

Even design had its '68, in which the basic principles of the discipline were challenged from the ground up by a group of young designers: it was the long wave of radical design, of which the Florentine group Archizoom Associati was forerunner and leading exponent. The studio was founded in 1966 by Andrea Branzi (1938-), Paolo Deganello (1940-), Massimo Morozzi (1941-) and Gilberto Corretti (1941-), who were then joined two years later by Dario (1943-) and Lucia Bartolini (1944-). Archizoom draws its name and main source of inspiration from the English group of Archigram and their magazine Zoom and had architecture as its first place of application, faced through a contestation of the prevailing dictates of Modernism which was accused by them of being based on unstable theoretical assumptions which, if taken to excess, led to purely irrational results. In the early years Archizoom was an animator together with colleagues from Superstudio of Superarchitecture exhibitions (1966 and 1967), to then devote himself to projects which, like the Wind City of 1969 and the No-Stop City of 1970, were intellectual provocations aimed at demonstrating the errors of the rationalist design philosophy. They also successfully applied their principles to furnishings, through extreme kitsch creations that argued against the dictates of rationalist Good Design, accused of having by now become a mere marketing tool at the service of consumerism. All of their most famous pieces of furniture, from the Superonda sofa to the Mies armchair, were produced by the Tuscan Poltronova thanks to a forward-looking intuition of its art director Ettore Sottsass and still keep their provocative charm intact. As with all large ensembles characterized by strong creative tensions, the story of Archizoom also came to a premature end, with a dissolution in 1974, but all its members individually continued to leave a strong mark on the world of design.