After the Revolution. Actions and protagonists of Italian Radical Architecture upgrade

The protest, Italy 1968

The presentation isn’t in any strict chronological order as I criss-cross over time and space using multi-media:words, videos, images and conceptual maps; in order to better explain the variety of sources which influenced the Radicals.

My research began in 2005 and continued to 2008 when I made, with my publisher, plug_in named after plug_in city of Archigram, the dvd with 11 video interviews of radical architects. Two of these are Bruno Orlandoni, an historian who wrote the book “Architettura radicale” with Paola Navone, and Brunetto De Batté, today a professor in the School of Architecture in Genova; an architectural student in Florence in the sixties. The thing which interested me was the interaction within public spaces in the city, in particular the town square or in Italian “piazza”. Another aspect of radical architecture is the political thought which they express through the occupation of public space with happenings, site specific art, environmental art, performance etc...


My objective is to thoroughly research the radicals in their studios and to learn directly from the horses mouth. No radical influenced my opinion about himself. I learned a lot of things and in order to elaborate my theory, through the interviews using them as a critical instrument. I wrote a new history of radical architecture.
The aim of my research was to ask topic specific questions related to: context, the origins of architectural groups, the importance of nightclub to express the creativity (piper in Rome, Florence and Turin)..

If we listen to Branzi, La Pietra, UFO, Pettena every one of them was the founding father of radical architecture...which is both true and false at once.
To understand the Italian radical architecture it's necessary and indispensable to understand the political context regarding the protests between labourers and factory owners, the role of “Quaderni Rossi” by Mario Tronti about relationship between Capitalism and Work, the role of the Communist party, the revolution in Italy and beyond.




Marcatrè 50/55 published the abstract of the meeting

One of the most important meeting was organized in Turin in april 1969 by Pietro Derossi called “Utopia and or Revolution”. There is an edition of Marcatré, the magazine founded by the literary group '63 (Nanni Balestrini, Umberto Eco, Edoardo Sanguineti...) about this event. The report includes the essays of participants: Noam Chomsky, Paolo Soleri, Architecture principe, Archizoom, Yona Friedman, Archigram, James Agee...
Let's get back to the grassroots.