8/22/2019 01 Duval Superstudio

1/5

Superstudio: PaperArchitectureDAN IELLE DUVAL

The ascendancy of reproducible media,specifically photographic or flat-basedtechnology, has altered many establishedmethodologies of architectural practice.This shift in thinking has not only been aformal and stylistic one, but more impor-tantly metaphysical. Superstudio, foundedin Florence by a group of radical youngarchitects in 1966, imagined a thoroughlyoblique relationship between visualapproaches to building and their endresult. At the outset, buildings cannotcome to pass without first being mirroredin schematic designs or constructs, likethe storyboards used in advertising, film,TV, and publication. Bu t this also exposesan inherent technological bias: reproduc-tion has the potential to summon forthunforeseen or improbable futures thatare immediate and relevant becauseoperationally detached from direct actsof perception or construction. Superstudio(which abandoned working as a collectivein 1978) attempted to beat consumersociety's increasingly positivist drive at itsown game, while at the same time turningfunctionalist principles on their head.

Postwar Italian architecture, especiallyduring the period when Superstudiofounding members Adolfo Natalini,Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, the Magrisbrothers, and Piero Frassinelli werestudents, wa s dividedbetween an entrenched -7`7174modernist or neo-clas- Z %sical tradition and vari-ous university proj-ects. The universitiesbasically spearheadedpostwar reconstruc-tion by imitatingestablished methodsand styles, while oftenoverlooking nontradi-tional proposals fromprofessors and stu-dents.' Such an over-riding preoccupationwith the past pre-served historical con-ventions and privi-leged formalist structures of planningand construction. This static climate, onetotally oblivious to the potentially nega-tive environmental impact of modernarchitecture, tended to alienate youngerarchitects and forced them to developmethods of integration that were bettersuited to their changing circumstances.

Superstudio's view of architecture wasone attuned to an unstated equivalence(and equivocation) between the ideolog-ical and material phases of consumer pro-duction. Early product designs, like thegrid-patterned Quaderna furniture thatI. See Peter Lang, "S uicidal Desires" in Superstudio: Lifewithout Objects, ed. Peter Lang andWilliam Menking (Milan:Skira, 2003), 34,2. Quotes from Superstudio (1968), in Cristiano Toraldo diFrancia, "MemoriesofSuperstudio," Life without Objects, 66.3. Life Without Objects, 68 (translationmodified),

Zanotta began manufacturing in 19gave the group a crash course in followplanning through to completion stSensitized to the lived spaces inherecommercial design, they well understthe need to oppose "architect[uthat remains at the margin," one"provides solutions to rigidly stated plems." 2 (Fascist architecture, for instaglorified order in the name of histSuperstudio's insistence on reconfigtion and the radical transformationarchitectural ideals enabled the groumove away from strictures of theand address, at least symbolically, bpresent and future ones.

To their mind, the promise of modization did no t offer intellectual freedbut imposed yet another kindorder and schematization. Accordto Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, "Throthe Modern Movement, industry tto perform a great public, material,cultural service for humanity andurban environment: a logical, ratiworld, whose linguistic an d methodologsigns of unity architecture and dehelped to establish (or prefigure) fthe very beginning." 3 Superstuquestioned modernity's futurist-insp4. "... they propose that all the buildings n the historiccePisa] shouldbe made to lean, at the same timestraighteninpresent leaning tower, so as to provide a 'measure' of hetion ofother buildings .. so that touristscan,for afew houthat hey are living ina leaning world" Superstudio, "RestStudies," Architectural Design (October 1975), 592

(rNPa eonoa)MEMmesrSuPResinoo,970. S5uPRSUoIX,NTERPLANETARYRMeiTEcTURE,972, couwc, CASABELLA364APRIL9721, 8. SuPeeswsiwi,EAHiNGSEARSOWER ,46E,975. 24

8/22/2019 01 Duval Superstudio

2/5

artUS 10 OCTOBER NOVEMBER 2005

0

utopia, one realized through and incompliance with technological (andteleological) order. Instead, the groupinvoked disorder and the illogical toconjure possible futures for architecture,

ones that could be at once complex andirrational, provocative and visionary.In this context, "visions of the future"seems more appropriate terminology.Visions encompass multiple levels of see-

ing, thinking, and being, thus makingthese experiential categories entirelyamorphous. The work that Superstudiobegan in the late 1960s, like their grid-cloaked photo-collages of the Rocky

5UPER-O, FROMHEUPERSTUDlOATALOGUES:ISTOGRAMS,971, PHOTOGRAPHY RISTIANOORL DiFRAMIA,OMOS497 (APRI1971), 46. (ONSET)UPERSTUOIO,WELVEDEALITIES,972. 25

H E TH#RoD EGREE

8/22/2019 01 Duval Superstudio

3/5

Coast, Coketown and Manhattan, impart-ed a clearly dystopian slant to forwardplanning and its improbable investmentin progress. Continuous Monument(1969), depicting cityscapes engulfed ina totally urbanized grid of white cubes,and the group's 1972 plan to make all thebuildings in Pisa lean, except for thetower, overturned architecture's formerconceptual and physical limitations. 4 InFrassinelli's words, Continuous Monumentwas a "parable intended as critique,"5 amythic narrative comprised of texts,drawings, and collages in which anendless black-on-white grid graduallyextends itself across the earth's surface.Th e caption fo r one image showingManhattan clenched inultimate geometricembrace remarks that only "a bunchof ancient skyscrapers" will escape, "pre-served in memory of a time when citieswere built with no single plan."In he r introduction to Architecture-production (1988), Beatriz Colominadistinguishes between architecture andbuilding. She describes architecture asa discursive "critical act," meaning that itentails not only building per se bu t alsomodels, reproductions, and related docu-ments outlining intent and function.Today's wealth of architecture books,monographs, and magazines testifies tothe primacy of mass media incommuni-cating architectural concepts. The priori-tization of writing and visualization in

Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau's influen-tial S,M,L,XL (first edition, 1995) ismain-ly indebted to the critique of modernistarchitecture initiated in the 1960sand '70s by, among others, the Italian"Superarchitecture" faction and splintergroups like Archizoom and Superstudio.The latter's projects, informed by thetumult of the counterculture, realized asuperfluity of ideas and building projectsthrough images, however flighty orcontorted this impulse appears in today'sdeconstructivist masterworks.What has gone largely unchecked isthe image's ability to anticipate buildings,to "prefigure" or determine them, andultimately to replace them. The page orscreen remains the principal site of con-struction, aided and abetted by every con-ceivable electronic or digital device, inwhich fantastic projects are simultane-ously conceived, displayed, and "thrown"

out (like pottery). In fact, architectnow occurs in all facets of modernfrom art and fashion magazines to TVand movie lots. As forms of pure invtion, these efforts are not directly driby functional or rational necessity, wever theirties to the consumerist aestheAt a minimum, they allow architectthe space to envision fantastic, unpredented, yet entirely genuine spatial exriences. Indeed, concocting imagincures for urban congestion now seemore prevalent than actually creatbuildings where people can live or wo

In an essay on Gordon Matta-Clark,Graham describes the artist's "interseinto buildings as so many blows agaregimentation in conventional hodesign, "show[ing] how each individfamily has coped with the imposed stture of his container."6 Overly confinbox-like structures preserve aform ofst

SwPERSTuOIoTopan)RESTORATIONTUDIES:SA, 975, oLLA6E,RCHITEOURAESIEGNXLVOEoBwR975), 592 (RIGHT)ONTINUOUSONUMENT,OCKFELLERENTER(CITYERIEs1,969, COLLAGE. 26

8/22/2019 01 Duval Superstudio

4/5

artUS 10 OCTOBER NOVEMBER 2005

dardization chiefly controlled by agencieswhose interests lie in improved efficiencyand minimal upkeep, leaving scant roomfor imaginative or purely social experimen-tation. Ironically, buildings erected by roteand functionality usually don't survivebecause they lack the tractability that truehabitable space requires.

Contemporary architects like ZahaHadid, Bernard Tschumi an d NigelCoates have proposed novel twists onthis old theme, though sharply angledceilings and blob-like exteriors seemmore like afterimages of the surroundingcity gridlock. Nowadays, most attemptsat architectural critique rarely transpireoutside the confines of Photoshop, 3-D5. PieroFrassinelli, Journey o the End of Architecture," LifeWithout Objects, 80.6. Da n Graham, Rock My Religion: Writings and Projects,1965-1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).7. Beatriz Colomina, "Introduction: On Architecture,

modeling, or virtual participation (as invideo games, webcams, art installations,etc.). Yet Superstudio didn't believe invirtual inspiration. In the film Ceremonyprojected above a series of white mod-ules in The Histograms, or The Architect'sTombs (1969), otherwise earnest exer-cises in energy efficiency, the group isseen picnicking on top of one of them.Their 1972 proposal to flood Florence bydamming the Arno, leaving only thecathedral dome above water, was a directsnub at the conservative Save theHistoric Centers campaign. Parody andcontradiction were the group's mostenduring qualities (compare their self-destructing mirror-glass dam for NiagaraProduction and Reproduction" in Architectu reproduction(New York: PrincetonArchitecturalPress, 1988), 15.8. See Superstudio, "Description of the Micro-Event andMicro-Environment" in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape,ed. E.Ambasz (1972), 242-51.

Falls), prioritizing nomadic wanderingand deviation over possession and settle-ment. Reminiscent of Boull6e's architec-ture parlanteor Le Corbusier's cinematicleanings (mass media as "another contexof production," as Colomina notes 7), theaim of Superstudio was nothing less thanthe de-objectification of consumer society"The objects we will need will be onlyflagsor talismans (...) objects that can easily becarried about if we should becomenomads, or heavy and immovable if wedecide to stay in on e place forever."8

As "other contexts," mass mediaimages provide spatial alternatives wherebyarchitecture can juggle its precepts andprocedures. This is where architecturecomes into its own. Remaining opento random gestures of exaggeration ocollision, architecture is technically ableto set new standards for how peopleinhabit this world. The goal of interjectionis what architecture should constantlystrive after, nurturing itself in multi-dimensional elaboration. It is this constanunfolding of physical and imaginary spacethat has continued to offer refuge fromthe operational strictures of architectureas fill in the gaps throughout the postmodern or postwar era.DANIELLE DUVAL teaches Panicand Evacuation Dynamicat the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and isrenowned authority n multiple personalitydisorder.Thwriter is afrequentvisitor o Los Angeles.

SURERSTUDI,LEFT)NITERPLAETARYRCHITECTUE, 972, tC1LA6F,A5ABELLA364 (APRIL1972)18. ( T)CONTINUOUSONUMENT,OCKYOASTNATUREERIES),969, COLAGE. 27

THE THIRD) DEGREE

8/22/2019 01 Duval Superstudio

5/5

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: The Third Degree: Superstudio: Paper Architecture

SOURCE: ArtUS no10 O/N 2005

WN: 0527409629015

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it

is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in

violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:

http://www.oup.co.uk

Copyright 1982-2005 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.