Superarchitecture: Experimental Architectural Practices in Italy 1963--1973

This dissertation considers 'Superarchitecture,' a term that has variously been used by scholars to refer to a wide range of architectural experimentation that took place across Italy between 1963 and 1973. The "Superarchitettura" exhibitions, staged in Pistoia and Modena between 1966 and 1967, opened a progression of seismic shifts in Italian architecture. In them, Archizoom and Superstudio showcased new prototypes for furniture and consumer products. This dissertation examines the transformation of these early products into a spectrum of design tactics, designed objects, and critical languages.;The geographical locations that produced these experiments---Florence and Turin--- provide the framework for this study. Section 1 examines the chief collectives that developed a Florentine milieu active through the early seventies. Umberto Eco framed their work in Appunti per una semiologia delle comunicazioni visive, a pamphlet that accompanied the course that he taught at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence. While others, such as Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini developed much of the design, production, and marketing strategies that came to characterize Superarchitecture, it was Eco who joined architecture to a structuralist position derived from Roland Barthes, to first expand Modernist understanding of function and fuel Florentine antidesign agitators.;Archizoom provides a particularly productive site for exploring the development of Superarchitecture's political culture. Section 2 narrates Archizoom's dynamic ideology by examining Claudio Greppi's political linkages and input to the group, as well as the movement's ideological expressions in specialized architectural periodicals such as Casabella, Design Quarterly, and In.;Simultaneously, Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, Riccardo Rosso, and others examined similar issues in Turin. Critical of their particular social and political environments, the Turinese architects radicalized their disciplinary milieus and broadened the movement's initial scope by borrowing in equal parts from Olivetti's latest advances in automated fabrication, an international cast of visiting experimentalists that included Archigram, and the tumultuous Turin of 1969.