The great architect, designer and artist was born in 1938: in 1966, with Archizoom Associati, he forever marked Italian design by bringing radical thought to the fore in design culture

Andrea Branzi - one of the undisputed fathers of Italian design, internationally renowned architect and artist - died today, at the age of 85.

In 1966, Andrea Branzi founded, with Massimo Morozzi, Paolo Deganello and Gilberto Corretti, one of the most fruitful and influential phenomena of contemporary design thinking: Archizoom Associati.

The studio was the hotbed of radical design thinking: from here was born the idea of considering architecture and design as tools for a critical elaboration of society and its consumerist tendencies.

Read also: What remains of radical design 50 years after the exhibition at MoMA

The Archizoom thought, which influenced entire generations of designers as well as the entire poetics of the very first Italian Design (the one that Emilio Ambasz described in the exhibition The New Domestic Landscape at MoMA in 1972), took shape in the highly celebrated No Stop City, </ em>a project-manifesto of a city aware of the new modernity where it is natural to question and question the dogmas of urban modernity.

Read also: Nicoletta Morozzi comments on the film Mostra in prose form, on Andrea Branzi

A highly refined thinker and artist, Andrea Branzi was also among the founders of Domus Academy and trained entire generations of designers at the Polytechnic of Milan (his belief, regarding teaching, was that "you teach to learn").

Until November 30th, at the Antonia Jannone gallery in Milan, the exhibition "Architecture belongs to the theatre" on the work of Andrea Branzi

In 1987 he obtained the Compasso d'Oro for Lifetime Achievement.

Always a valued collaborator of Interni, Andrea Branzi also recently expressed himself in our newspaper, describing the experience of radical design and the fundamental role that that thought still has today.

Al new Radical Design, Interni has dedicated an issue, read here

When, in an interview, Gianluigi Ricuperti asks him about the relationship between religion and art, Andrea Branzi responds by quoting a passage taken from an article published in Interni.

«After centuries during which the figures of the saints and the scenes of the New Testament were proposed as models of virtue to achieve salvation in another life, Andy Warhol, Vik Muniz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Joel-Peter Witkin, Luigi Ontani, Ottonella Mocellin, Nicola Pellegrini and many others empty the theological dimension, the sacred scenes, like tableaux vivants immersed in this earthly life. As if to say that the new religion is here, among humans, among the dying, and the artist is its new priest. It cannot be ruled out that this trend will soon have an impact on the design culture too, today wandering and devoid of a spiritual dimension, committed to an obsessive professionalism that is emptying its ability to create less superficial and spaces with a strong anthropological charge".

Read all reviews of Andrea Branzi's exhibitions published on internamagazine.it

From Wednesday 11 October the entrance to the Museum of Italian Design of the Triennale will host a homage to Andrea Branzi by exhibiting a selection of his projects, part of the permanent collection of the Triennale.
On Friday 13 October, from 6.00 pm, there will be a public screening of Andrea Branzi. Exhibition in prose form (read the review by Nicoletta Morozzi published on Interni).

Updates will follow

Ph. cover image Kai Juenemann