Architect: Superstudio
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review
30 January 2023
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review30 January 2023
This carefully curated and beautifully displayed exhibition brings together 150 drawings with numerous publications and films to display a wave of rebellion and research by architects across the European continent, with a focus on the east, over three decades. The abundance of visionary thinking that followed the boom of post-war reconstruction… Read More
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine
26 September 2022
Superstudio’s Collage Chest: A Chance Machine26 September 2022
In 1968 Adolfo Natalini’s partner, Frances Brunton, returned to Florence from London with their newborn daughter and a small wooden chest with five drawers. On three sides of the chest, Natalini hand painted sky-blue flowers on an orange background. The chest of drawers was then taken to the Superstudio-studio in… Read More
Exhibition Design: Charging the Void
9 March 2022
Exhibition Design: Charging the Void9 March 2022
Last year at Cornell University, five students in Alessandra Cianchetta’s design studio Global Artscapes worked on designs for a gallery in the valley at Shatwell. For this, they used photographs and videos in default of a site visit. The brief was for an exhibition space to accommodate the display of… Read More
Montage-Entourage; Or The Politics Of The Seam
24 January 2022
Montage-Entourage; Or The Politics Of The Seam24 January 2022
The following text is a version of chapter three from Reality Modeled After Images: Architecture and Aesthetics after the Digital Image by Michael Young, published by Routledge © 2021. Available from Routledge. Portions of this chapter were initially developed in the essay ‘The Aesthetic Recycling of Cultural Refuse’ published in Writing Architectures: Ficto-Critical Approaches… Read More
Drawing Powers 2: the object in the drawing
2 November 2021
Drawing Powers 2: the object in the drawing2 November 2021
This text is the second in a series of five in which Fernando Poeiras (ESAD.CR/LIDA), explores the different powers of drawing within architectural design projects. Each text is illustrated with examples from the Drawing Matter Collection. Find the introduction to the series here. First, I consider drawing as an adequate medium… Read More
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum
4 October 2021
Twelve Thousand Seven Hundred Forty-Two KM of Continuum4 October 2021
There is a handwritten phrase in red ink at the bottom of this sketch, which reads in Italian: ‘for the continuous monument (genesis)’. This drawing is from one of Adolfo Natalini’s sketchbooks and depicts a series of studies about the earth. In the same sketchbook, he drew multiple sequences of… Read More
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)
16 September 2021
An Overwhelming Concern with Shelter! (1966)16 September 2021
The International Dialogue on Experimental Architecture (IDEA) was held at New Metropole Arts Centre in Folkestone, Kent, 10–11 June 1966. The symposium was organised by Archigram and included contributions from Hans Hollein, Joe Weber, Yona Friedman, Cedric Price, Arthur Quarmsby, Anthony G. William and Reyner Banham. The following text is… Read More
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon
12 August 2021
Superstudio: Finding the Horizon12 August 2021
Until not too long ago, I would be asked to explain to youngsters accustomed to digital graphics how I used to make montages. I felt like an archaeologist, explaining how, in the Palaeolithic era, Neanderthals used to make their tools. Across several workshops, I have realised that the techniques today… Read More
Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal
24 May 2021
Superstudio & Piranesi: Zeno is Immortal24 May 2021
It’s 1777 in the Italian region of Salerno, a man is resting on a massive Doric column, watching his two cows from the ruin of a temple where the weeds grow. This building was, a long time ago, considered as the house of Juno, goddess of fertility and the vital… Read More
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique
4 March 2021
Tradition and Modernity, Continuity and Critique4 March 2021
The following text is excerpted from Rebecca Siefert’s recent book Into the Light, the first comprehensive study of the work of Lauretta Vinciarelli. The book is available to purchase here. The grid has served as ‘the image of an absolute beginning’, as Rosalind Krauss affirmed in 1986 in ‘The Originality of… Read More
Superstudio: Another Mirror Image
17 February 2021
Superstudio: Another Mirror Image17 February 2021
Superstudio’s Campo di Mais is a hybrid of the group’s concepts and a treasure trove of unintended (and unforeseeable) references. As such, it is a quite perfect Superstudio collage – another mirror image inviting the observer to reflect their own coordinates of understanding the world through the group’s ambiguous visual… Read More
Geography of Hope: Adolfo Natalini and Superstudio
18 January 2023
Geography of Hope: Adolfo Natalini and Superstudio18 January 2023
– Nicholas Olsberg
This is the first of four extracts taken from an article first published in issue 40 on nonsite.org, dedicated to ‘New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century’. As we descended into a World War that threatened the obliteration of decency and history, the poet Archibald Macleish, then Librarian of Congress,… Read More
landscape land