In Prato, a survey of the experiences of Radical Architecture collected by the Pecci Center is staged in comparison with contemporary art works

Spazio Radicale / Radical Space continues and deepens the survey on the experiences of Radical Architecture collected at Centro Pecci di Prato started with the concise presentation of Urban Trilogy dedicated to films, projects originals and archival documents by anarchitetto Gianni Pettena and the Florentine groups Superstudio and UFO.

Set up until April 30, 2022, the new exhibition proposes various projects, including works from the museum collection together with materials from the CID / Visual Arts, in particular of the Lara-Vinca Masini Archive, to broaden the context of research 'radicals' between the second half of the sixties and the seventies of the twentieth century and offer comparisons unprecedented between these and contemporary art.

Superstudio, Supersuperficie, 1971-2011. Collezione del Centro Pecci orizz
Superstudio, Supersuperficie, 1971-2011. Reconstruction of the original microenvironment created for the Italy: The New Domestic Lanscape exhibition at the MoMA in New York (1972). Supervision and construction management: Cristiano Toraldo di Francia; Lighting Engineering: Alessandro Sauli. Collection of the Centro Pecci

Explorations of space proposed by radical architects

The exhibition is conceived as a new opportunity to enhance the heritage of research through images, objects and ideas that make up the various collections today in the archives of the Pecci Center. In an articulated and full of suggestions way, the itinerary presents the patrols of the 'space' proposed by architects 'radicals' and contemporary artists: the one imagined, conceived and the one taken from life; the possible place and its opposite, the improbable ’; the ’a shared, lived or contested, fought one; the analytical exploration and metaphorical transfiguration.

Superstudio, Niagara o l’architettura riflessa, 1970
Superstudio, Niagara o l'architettura riflessa, 1970. Edizione del fotomontaggio a colori con prospetti e testo, es. III/XV. Comodato della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Prato

The chronological and exhibition itinerary

Chronologically the exhibition opens with the work Esse by the visual poet Luigi Tola which anticipates linguistically the Superarchitecture of Archizoom and Superstudio, germinal event of the Radical Architecture fiorentina , born in December 1966, just after the ' flood in Florence). Subsequently, the seductive habitats and the Dressing Design of Archizoom stand out, the pop icons of the Superonda sofa and the Sanremo lamp produced by Archizoom themselves for Poltronova.

Stephen Shore, Yuma, Arizona, September 23, 1974, 1974 (2003)
Stephen Shore, Yuma, Arizona, September 23, 1974, 1974 (2003). Comodato dalla Collezione di Alessandro Grassi

Focus and all-out investigations

In the Global Tool s [Global Tools] is compacted around the magazine Casabella, directed in the early seventies by Alessandro Mendini, an entire training of architects and designers interested in investigating the 'extra-urban material culture', as some members of Superstudio do, or to denounce 'the architecture of the bureaucracy' as the UFO, rather than retracing the iconography of the Radicals as happens in the table set by Remo Buti. The reflected architecture of Superstudio, on the other hand, hybridizes architecture with nature and anticipates the Supersuperficie where is prefigured ' an alternative model of life ' by means of the network of services and communications.

Paolo Carnevali, Home Sweet Home, 2002-2010
Paolo Carnevali, Home Sweet Home, 2002-2010

A personal look

The exhibition is concluded by the ' reticular and modular abstraction of the Istogrammi d’architettura and the intense core of images of Superstudio-backstage 1966-1978 interpreted by Cristiano Toraldo di Francia like a personal gaze, a ' works a posteriori on the work of the group of which it was one of the protagonists.

Archizoom – Superstoodio, Superarchitettura, 1966 (2002) ©Centro Pecci – Prato_02
Archizoom - Superstudio, Superarchitettura, 1966 (2002). Modello in scala della mostra alla Galleria Jolly 2 di Pistoia. Acquisto del Centro Pecci e della Città di Prato

Radical artists and architects on display

Vito Acconci, Karin Arink, Archizoom Associati, Andrea Branzi, Remo Buti, Paolo Canevari, Gilberto Corretti, Valie Export, Lucio Fontana, Neil Jenny, Andrey Kuzkin, Mario Mariotti, Alessandro Mendini, Gianni Pettena, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stephen Shore, Ettore Sottsass jr, Superstudio, Luigi Tola, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, UFO.

Superstudio, Niagara o l’architettura riflessa, 1970
Niagara or l'architettura riflessa (reflected architecture), 1970. Edition of the photomontage in color with elevations and text, eg. III / XV. Loan from the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation
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