Radical Architecture

A cohort of Italian architects and designers active from the late 1960s through the 1970s. They placed themselves in opposition to the rationalism and functionalism of 20th-century modernism and formed during a tumultuous period characterized by political violence and extremism, student uprisings, and social unrest. Working in collectives including Archizoom, Superstudio, and Studio Alchimia, they produced experimental, anti-establishment architectural and interior designs, furnishings, and objects. A spirit of playfulness undergirded an approach that had serious aims. Their eccentric output—ranging from speculative monuments meant to foster worldwide order to lounge chairs shaped like an oversized patch of grass—broke from what they saw as the prescriptive thinking of the past to shape a future free of war, inequality, materialism, and other human ills.