Never tire of searching
a cura di Nadine Curanz and Olena Corzetto
We were surrounded by a world we believed was outdated and we sought renewal, most of all social justice. This is how the first student movements came about; they were, at least in Florence, also Catholic in nature (see “Lettere ad una professoressa” by Don Milani 1967). The first student movements started in 1963 within the Literature and Architecture departments and were not violent, but sought primarily for universities to adapt to the contemporary world and consent to group and team work. We were not “against” lecturers but were working towards overcoming social classes in everyday life and work. Then the 1968 movement exploded, which took us by surprise and with which our generation had nothing to do.
It’s a mixture of phenomena I find hard to define and perhaps I am actually not sure how to define clearly. I think that unfortunately the world of advertising and commerce, magnified by the means that are available nowadays, has embroiled and entangled this problem further. It is hard nowadays, at least as far as I’m concerned, to understand who is against and who isn’t. I think that in creating culture one is never against but one tries to make people understand, in a democratic way, where others are wrong. You can never think that you are 100% right: this is not culture but ideology, religion, regime in other words.
There is a lot of evidence and it is often found in ordinary and obvious things, precisely those which upset people. Let’s not forget that the word “super”, which we widely used in the Super Architecture manifesto, was used at the time to advertise all products, from petrol to supermarkets. We used it not without irony.
Perhaps there has been too much talking about it and it has become an affectation, precisely by those who took no part in it at all. “When there are too many of us at the forefront, it’s time to get out”, said Andrea Branzi one day.
Because it let us see the world from a different perspective, I am not sure whether it was the best one, but it was the least conventional one.
Most of all the projects dating back to the Archizoom period. Some worked out better, others less so, but all of them were carried out on the basis of the indications I stated above. Then, once I entered the professional sphere, I tried to keep up the initial attitude although it proved more difficult. Did I succeed? It’s up to you to answer this question.
It started off as seating for night clubs, which were very popular then, it was the era of the various Piper clubs, without forgetting the Gaudì experience in Barcelona though (we always kept an eye out for history) and our restlessness with rationalism, which had become a banal and compulsory habit in the architecture of the time. It was made of plywood nailed down on a wooden frame and painted in stripes. The idea of making it by cutting a single piece of polyurethane came to our first client, Prof. Cammilli of Poltronova. As you can see, you never quite know where good ideas can come from.
It’s hard to have seen everything just as it’s hard to define what super is. There is definitely someone somewhere in the world who’s still creating counterculture and it will always be so.
I think so. But certainly, the topic should be demystified.
Never tire of seeking and learning and don’t let false prophets, or those who claim to have worked it all out, take you for a ride.
I wouldn’t know, I feel like saying that none of what is around us should be underrated. Counterculture is also found in the ordinary actions that we carry out every day.
Perhaps the desire to prevail on others. But who says it has been killed?