During the early Sixties, the world seemed to fall under the spell of Italian design. It was a time referred to as the “Italian economic miracle,” designating a period of strong economic growth in Italy after the Second World War to the late 1960s, during which the country transformed from a poor, mainly rural nation into a global industrial power—a period of momentous change in Italian society and culture, as well as around the world.
During the early Sixties, the world seemed to fall under the spell of Italian design. It was a time referred to as the “Italian economic miracle,” designating a period of strong economic growth in Italy after the Second World War to the late 1960s, during which the country transformed from a poor, mainly rural nation into a global industrial power—a period of momentous change in Italian society and culture, as well as around the world.
To meet the challenges of supplying an increasingly urban, increasingly consumerist population with everything they might need, leaders in the mechanical and manufacturing industries developed special relationships with architects, designers, and artists to instigate what would become a far-reaching redesign of all household objects.
Italy saw a growth in industrial production and, for the first time, mass-made furniture—an exciting if not jarring advancement for a country with such a long history of traditional craftsmanship. Italian companies such as Campari, Olivetti, and Pirelli afforded designers the opportunity to experiment with new materials and expand upon new ideas, fueling a revolution in style and functionality, producing everyday objects enriched by the kind of decoration that would bring art into ordinary people's homes—from ceramics featuring artwork by Fornasetti, to Emilio Pucci’s Art Deco silks, to Olivetti typewriters designed by acclaimed designers Ettore Sottsass and Mario Bellini, in 1969 and 1972, respectively. These objects and so many others would influence the world, paving the way for a modern redefining of the concept known as “Good Design”—home goods that were simple, refined, and, most importantly, practical. The Italian design movement led the way, so much so that their products became highly sought after symbols of luxury and status.
Towards the late ‘60s, a counter-movement rose in defiance of what was considered by some to be designs that acted as grotesque focal points of bourgeois consumerism. “Anti-Design”, also referred to as the Radical Design period, embraced various exaggerated and expressive qualities to undermine the purely functional value of the conventionally designed object. Since Italian design of the period was seen as the pinnacle of elegance, they wished to question these concepts of taste and ‘good design’.
Beginning in 1966 with the manifesto and exhibition Superarchitettura in Pistoia, the Radical Design period culminated roughly in 1972 with the seminal show Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Within those six years dozens of studios and independent designers such as Archizoom, Superstudio, and Studio 65 produced era-defining architecture, furnishing, and products. Many such projects pushed the limits of material and form to create new standards (for instance, Vico Magistretti’s Selene Stacking Chair (1968) made from reinforced polyester was the first stackable chair, a design we today perceive as very common), while other projects, like that of Superstudio, tested the limits of design critique and theory.
Founded in Florence by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Superstudio was more of a high-voltage think-tank than a commercial agency. Peter Lang, co-editor of the exhibition catalog Superstudio: Life Without Objects (Skira Publishing) put it well when he described them as a “strange combination of professional practice and theoretical insurrectionism.”
Using collages and illustrated storyboards to artistically communicate their own particular hybrid notion of the historical, environmental, cultural and technological, the Superstudio designers were intent on creating a “skinless architecture”—an architecture that doesn’t intrude in the evolution of nature and yet is the invisible institution of evolution for the civilization of man; an architecture of super-efficiency, satisfying every need and desire of its populous with calculated efficacy.
The wild and insightful visions of Superstudio and their peers in the creative community represented an overt break from the austerity that characterized the immediate post war years in Italy. The products and speculations that emerged from Italy’s ‘Good Design” and “Anti-Design” movements in the ’60s and ’70s continue to provoke as they speak to new generations of artists, architects and designers dealing with issues of globalization and environmental sustainability as they question the very nature of how products might look and work in the cities of the future.
WRITTEN BY Andrew Pogany
#RESERVE