In 1960 during the Tokyo World Design Conference a group of young architects and designers including Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho and FumihikoMaki prepared the publication of the Metabolism manifesto:
- megastructures
- a city could be extruded in a single building, or a relatively small number of buildings interconnected together
- ocean city, space city, towards group form
- material and man
- plug-in capsule towers that could incorporate organic growth
Viaggio nelle regione della ragione, superstudio, 1968-69
Superstudio : Florence, 1966
Architecture firm that was a major part of the RADICAL architecture movement of the late 1960s.
Adolfo Natalini
Cristiano Toraldo di Francia
Gian Pietro Frassinelli
Alessandro Magris
Roberto Magris
Alessandro Poli
established three categories of future research: "architecture of the monument" the "architecture of the image" and "technomorphic architecture"
-conceptual architecture works
- 1969 Continious Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanization.
Sturm Group:
emerged in Tokyo in 1966 by Giorgio ceretti, Pietro Derossi and Ricardo Rosso and used architecture to produce political propaganda by using irony and fiurative forms.
Radical movement of design
In Italian design, the "Radical period" took place in the late 1960s, with a shift in style among the avant-garde. Probably the most notable result of this avant-garde period is the installation called "Superarchitettura", made in Pistoia in 1966.
Another important studio was located in Milan and called "STUDIODADA". Members of STUDIODADA included: Ada Alberti, Dario Ferrari, Maurizio Maggi, Patrizio Corno, Marco Piva and Paolo Francesco Piva. Other professionals of that period were: David Palterer, Tomo Ara, Battista Luraschi, Bepi Maggiori, Alberto Benelli, Pino Calzana, etc.
In addition, a movement called "Postmodernism" or "Neomodernism" was led by Alessandro Mendini, director of reviews like "Casabella", "Modo" and "Domus" from 1980 to 1985. Mendini's postmodernism inspired exhibitions like "L'interno oltre la forma dell'utile" (Interior space after the form of usefulness) held at the Triennale di Milano in 1980.
- Opposed to rationalism and the primacy of design on the social and cultural role of architecture
- Needs of individuals over any other consideration
- irreverent designs questioning the praticality and taste of the previous design
- utopian city of the future
- free human being from the manual labor
- Superstudio and Archizoom invented "superarchitecture"
- They praticed a social radicalism declaring "to have the right to be against a reality that is meaningless"
- discovery of the concept of the void and neutral
- using of the Polyurethane
ABS and the more sophisticated production preocess, like injected molding.
- the concept of enlightenment as sculptural element.
- Joe Colombo and the Castignoli brothers were responsible for some of the most innovative light designs in decade.
ARCO
by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni
Archizoom's main features
- against Capitalism and consumerism
- questioned of "good design"
- they continued pop art's tradition by using bold colors and innotiative materials
- they used kich and pop to go against elegant lines for what italian design was recognized worlwide
- they ran counter to a reality that is missing 'meaning'
- turned italian design into a kind of firework ideas
Allesandro Mendini
Alessandro Mendini (born 16 August 1931 in Milan) is an Italian designer and architect. He played an important part in the development of Italian design. He also worked, aside from his artistic career, for Casabella, Modo and Domus magazines.
His design has been characterized by his strong interest in mixing different cultures and different forms of expression; he creates graphics, furniture, interiors, paintings and architectures and wrote several articles and books; he is also renowned as an enthusiastic member of jury in architectural competition for young designers.
The yellow tower of the Groninger Museum was designed by Alessandro Mendini
Fauteuil Poltrona di Proust
- for him it was possible to produce modern design
- full of irony
Micelle de luchi
Michele De Lucchi studied in Padua and the University of Florence under the direction of Adolfo Natalini. In 1973, he founded the design group that promoted the radical design. In 1978, he worked in the Kartell design studio in Milan. There he met Ettore Sottsass and they participated to the first exhibition. He conceived in 1979 many postmodernists prototypes for home use. They were not put into production but were impacted by the radical forms. Then he became a consultant for Olivetti.
First chair, 1983
Andrea Branzi
Branzi was born in Florence where he also graduated in architecture in 1966 with his project "Supermarket- Luna Park", a reproduction of this project "Luna Park II" (2001) is at Centre Georges Pompidou. Currently he lives and works in Milan, Italy, where he moved in 1973.
His work and interests relate to industrial design, architecture, urban planning, and cultural promotion.
Together with Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi, Gilberto Coretti, Dario and Lucia Bartolini he founded the Archizoom Associati in 1966. He is a promoter of the Italian Radical Architecture movement. From the Radical Period, came the very famous Superarchitettura theoretical framework, which brought his work to Anti-Design. From 1976, he participated in the movement Alchimia, founded by Alessandro Guerriero. The movement was defined as a laboratory for experimental industrial design.
His enormous work Vase is on permanent display in the courtyard of the Design Museum in Gent. In 2008 he installed his work Open Enclosures at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
In 2008 Andrea Branzi was named an Honorary Royal Designer in the United Kingdom. The same year he launched a series of shelf units and console tables entitled "Trees", which were exhibited at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris.
Ettore Sottsass
- while furniture industry will cast insults on the "useless, ugly, tasteless", on the contrary they took advantage of their product.
As an industrial designer, his clients included Fiorucci, Esprit, the Italian furniture company Poltronova,Knoll International, Serafino Zani, Alessi and Brondi. As an architect, he designed the Mayer-Schwarz Gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, with its dramatic doorway made of irregular folds and jagged angles, and the home of David M. Kelley, designer of Apple's first computer mouse, inWoodside, California. In the mid-1990s, he designed the sculpture garden and entry gates of the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg Gallery at the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. He collaborated with well-known figures in the architecture and design field, including Aldo Cibic, James Irvine, Matteo Thun.
Sottsass had a vast body of work; furniture, jewellery, ceramics, glass, silver work, lighting, office machine design and buildings which inspired generations of architects and designers. In 2006 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held the first major museum survey exhibition of his work in the United States. A retrospective exhibition, Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress, was held at the Design Museumin London in 2007. In 2009, the Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht presented a re-construction of a Sottsass' exhibition 'Miljö för en ny planet' (Landscape for a new planet), which took place in the National Museum in Stockholm in 1969.
Knoll Mandarin Chair Ettore Sottsass
Typewriter Valentine (1969)
- their products were tipically "national"
- renaissance of radical design
- expression / creativity / injection of color emotion
- bold / bright / vibrant colours
- exotic laminates
- veneers
- wild patterns / geometric shapes
- sense of fun
Memphis 1981 :
- theories on artistic and intellectual foundations of design
- drawings and designs in bold colors with futuristic shapes decorative styles of past years
- create controversy with their objects and openly criticize what was considered good design.
- Anti design
- product achieved much fame and caused much criticism
By the end of the twentieth century Bilbao
was big city which nobody thought that will become a tourist attraction. But
then a miracle happened! The Guggenheim Museum was built, which presents modern
and contemporary art, and from that moment Bilbao is associated with the
museum. The museum attracts many tourists and gave the city new life.
In the Cartoon
show "The Simson" it was presented in humoristic way the accidental
falling papers and playing with cubes as an inspiration for the creation of
Frank Gehry. It seems that Frank Gehry enjoy his creative process, just like a
game. I watched a video showing the working process of the creation of The
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and I saw how he looks on the model, crump the paper and
throw the paper, during making the model. The process looked as a creative
game.
However, it is
important to note that despite the impressive exterior of the building there is
a problem in the interior of the building.
