Archizoom Associati was founded in Florence in 1966 by Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello and Massimo Morozzi, and in 1968 Dario and Lucia Bartolini also became involved.
The group was one of the founding elements of the Florentine Radical movement and one of the most authoritative voices in the entire movement of Radical Architecture. Together with Superstudio, in December 1966, they organized the exhibition Superarchitettura, in which the objects and furniture prototypes were strongly influenced by the iconography of English pop culture. In 1968, the group participated in the 14th Triennal (Milan) with the project “Centro di Cospirazione Eclettica”; in 1972 they participated in “Italy: the new domestic landscape” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York with the environment “Abitare è facile”; in 1973 they founded “Global Tools”, together with the main exponents of the Radical movement.
From 1966 to 1973, they created various pieces of provocative and innovative furniture for Poltronova, which inaugurated the era of “new design”: Dream beds-1967, Superonda and Safari sofas-1966/67, Mies armchair-1969.
In 1968they created the Gazebo series, published in the first issue of Ettore Sottsass’s “Pianeta Fresco” magazine, in which their pop sensibility was abandoned in order to allow space for “elementary compositional operations” thus initiating an essentially theoretical process of rethinking architecture as a discipline and also in terms of its cultural role in relation to reality.
While their experimental work in design progressed, Archizoom also carried out parallel research into the city, the environment and mass culture, which culminated in No-Stop City.
This was a large-scale project involving a global urbanization model: the symbolic representation of the condition of decay of the modern city, in which design becomes a fundamental planning tool in improving the quality of life and of the territory itself.
The group’s project entitled Dressing Design (1971-73) was also part of this more general trend: the project involved the creation of garments of clothing as an experience of urban design. The theoretical research work of Archizoom group was highly influential in establishing and giving direction to many of the themes espoused by the Radical movement.
Worthy of particular mention are the essays and Radical Notes written by Branzi in “Casabella” magazine, which remain fundamental for an understanding of thr polemics and experiences of those years. The group disbanded in 1974.
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