Archizoom (Associati)

Italian architectural and design partnership formed in 1966 by Andrea Branzi (b 1939), Gilberto Corretti (b 1941), Paolo Deganello (b 1940) and Massimo Morozzi. These were joined by Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini in 1968. They were based in Florence and were influenced initially by the utopian visions of the English architectural group Archigram. They achieved international prominence following appearances at the Superarchitettura exhibitions of radical architecture held at Pistoia (1966) and Modena (1967) and organized with the SUPERSTUDIO group. Numerous projects and essays reflected the group's search for a new, highly flexible and technology-based approach to urban design, and in the late 1960s exhibition and product design began to form a significant part of their work. The Superonda and Safari sofas, designed for the Poltronova company, combine modular flexibility with kitsch-inspired shiny plastic and leopard-skin finishes. Their central aim of stimulating individual creativity and fantasy was the focus of installations such as the Centre for Electric Conspiracy, with its closed, perfumed meditation areas housing exotic objects from different cultures, and the empty grey room presented at Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, an exhibition held at MOMA, New York, in 1972. In the latter a girl's voice describes the light and colour of a beautiful house that is left to the listener to imagine. Dress is the theme of the two films (Vestirsi ? facile and Come ? fatto il capotto di Gogol ) that the group made shortly before disbanding in 1974 to follow separate careers.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

This Italian avant-garde design studio was founded in 1966 in Florence, Italy, by four architects—Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi— and two designers—Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini. Very much part of the Italian Anti-Design or Radical Design movement, they worked on exhibition installations and architecture, also designing interiors and products. At a time of vigorous debate about the meaning and purpose of design Archizoom was vociferous and challenging in terms of theory and practice, drawing on a wide range of sources including Pop and Kitsch as a means of undermining the elegant lines and forms for which mainstream Italian design had established an international reputation. Well-known examples of their outlook at that time included the Dream Beds series of 1967. In 1968, at the Milan Triennale, it organized the ‘Centre for Eclectic Conspiracy’. Four years later, its members declared the ‘right to go against a reality that lacks “meaning”…to act, modify, form, and destroy the surrounding environment’. The elastic-seated Mies chair (1969) for Poltronova, with its ironic commentary on the apparent properties of functionalism, is a well-known example of their work. Other key projects included No-Stop City (1970) and the group's work featured in the seminal 1972 exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1972-  Italy, the New Domestic Landscape.

(Studio Archizoom Associati). Group of Florentine architects, founded in 1966, devoted to anti-Functionalism, and employing elements from popular ‘culture’ and even from Kitsch. It was associated with Supersensualism, anti-design, and so-called ‘banal’ design, and was promoted in Casabella, Domus, and Architectural Design. See also alchimia.

Bibliography

• Branzi (1984)
• Hays (ed.) (1998)
• Pettena (1996)
• J. Walker (1992)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

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