Chapter 1 of 24
Adolfo Natalini
I started working_in Florence with a group of friends called Superstudio in
1966, which is the same year in which Florence has been flooded. Since then
we have been working in various fields like industrial design, architectural
design, and let's say architectural theory.
Our first work was supposed to be a sort of architectural criticism using
projects instead of words and essays. In fact we tried to produce a sort of
3-D criticism. Many of the first projects, which now can be labelled as
Utopian projects and now are regarded as part of an Italian avant garde move-
ment of the 'arquittetura radicale' - which means something like 'radical
architecture' - were not meant to be utopian at all. But, on the contrary,
they were using some rhetorical devices as negative utopias using 'demos-
tratio per absurdum' or logical extrapolation. That is, we tried to push
every idea to its extreme consequences in order to demonstrate the falsity
and immorality of its starting point.