Superstudio

Superstudio was founded in Florence in December 1966 by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. Its debut coincided with the exhibition Superarchitettura at Galleria Jolly 2 in Pistoia (4 to 17 December 1966), where pop culture already served as a polemical lens on consumption and its myths. The founders’ training was decisive. Natalini graduated in Architecture in Florence in 1966; Toraldo di Francia completed his studies in the academic year 1967 to 1968 and in 1968 published in Domus his thesis Holiday machine on the Calabrian coast. The group was joined by Roberto Magris (1967), Gian Piero Frassinelli (1968), and Alessandro Magris and Alessandro Poli (1970, until 1972). Their importance within the artistic and architectural landscape lies in having transformed design into critique: in place of the built object, a montage of images and narratives that exposes the ideologies of modernity. With Il Monumento Continuo (project, 1969) and the Istogrammi d’architettura (1969 to 1970), the modernist grid becomes a totality that reveals both order and constraint; Le dodici città ideali (1971) turns it into a dystopian atlas. Between 1971 and 1973 the Atti fondamentali (Life, Education, Ceremony, Love, Death) shift the question to the body and its rituals. Vita: Supersuperficie was included in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at MoMA in New York (26 May - 11 September 1972), and Cerimonia was realised for the 15th Triennale di Milano (1973). In design, Quaderna (project 1970) won the Gold Medal at the M I A International Exhibition (1971) and entered production with Zanotta (1972). From 1973 to 1975 the group co founded Global Tools; in 1978 it took part in the 38th Venice Biennale with La moglie di Lot (1978). Superstudio is generally considered active in Florence until 1978. Its critical legacy was consolidated in Superstudio 1966 to 1982. Storie, figure, architettura (Electa, Florence, May 1982) and Superstudio: Life without Objects (Skira, Milan, 2003), while a major retrospective, Superstudio 50, was held at MAXXI in Rome (21 April - 4 September 2016).