Florence and Milan, 1966 to 1980: design as argument, with the manifesto printed on the object and the object shaped like a joke
Record 037-RI - when it works, who it is for, what it looks like
Where this aesthetic shows up in the real world · ↗ opens the source site
1966–1980 · Florence and Milan, in the architecture schools and the furniture factories around them
Radical Design began in Florence in 1966, when two groups of architecture students, Superstudio and Archizoom Associati, exhibited together under the title Superarchitettura. Italy was at the peak of its economic miracle and its design industry was the envy of the world, which was exactly the problem: the young architects thought good design had become a way of selling more things. Archizoom's Superonda (1966) was a sofa cut from a single block of foam in a wave; their Safari (1968) was a fibreglass pit lined with leopard print; their No-Stop City (1969) imagined a city as an infinite supermarket. Superstudio's Continuous Monument (1969) was a white grid laid across the whole planet, and their Quaderna table (1970) put the same grid on a laminate you could buy.
The factories played along. Gufram in Piedmont produced Studio 65's Bocca sofa (1970), a pair of red lips, and Piero Gilardi's Pratone (1971), a giant tuft of polyurethane grass; Gaetano Pesce's UP5 chair for C&B Italia (1969) was a woman's body with a ball chained to it, and it was shipped compressed in a box that expanded when opened. Ettore Sottsass's Valentine typewriter for Olivetti (1969, with Perry King) was a red plastic machine designed to be used in a park. In 1972 the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz, and the movement became the story of Italian design abroad.
The second phase was theoretical and exhausted. Global Tools (1973) was a counter-school that never quite ran; Alessandro Mendini's Casabella turned the magazine into a manifesto; Studio Alchimia (1976) redesigned famous chairs with banal decoration. When Sottsass founded Memphis in 1981, Radical Design ended by succeeding: its jokes became a style, and the style sold. What remains for design now is the method, not the look: make the object say what you think about objects.
The visual DNA: what makes it recognisable
8-channel console with the fingerprint on its display. Save the card, or share the page
The definitive color scheme for this aesthetic
How to shoot this aesthetic
"One absurd object, one printed statement, released together"
Shot list
Lighting
Catalogue flash or flat daylight, so the object reads as a product photograph even when it is absurd. For the montages, match the light of the landscape exactly.
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Italian Radical Design of 1966 to 1980, anti-design furniture as argument, sofa shaped like lips, coat rack shaped like a cactus, glossy polyurethane foam in saturated primary colour, endless white grid laminate, photomontage of a monumental object dropped into a landscape, Superstudio and Archizoom and Gufram register, catalogue lighting on a seamless ground, manifesto typography in Helvetica
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Join the waitlistRadical Italian Design is most effective when its visual decisions do useful work. Florence and Milan, 1966 to 1980: design as argument, with the manifesto printed on the object and the object shaped like a joke
Gufram and B&B Italia still produce the icons; the montage is cheap.
The object has to make an argument, not just a joke.
Catalogue photography and photomontage are simple; the deadpan is not.
The objects are still in production, which makes this one of the easier historical languages to stage authentically. The hard part is the pairing: a provocative object released with a printed statement that means something, because the object alone is a mascot. Photograph it like a catalogue and keep the room empty. Write the manifesto before the shoot, and set it in Helvetica.
The joke kept and the argument lost: a cactus coat rack as a lobby mascot.
Design fairs and galleries return to it whenever they want to look critical.
Its objects are still made and its critique of overproduction is more relevant, not less.
Icons are still in production; the manifesto costs thought, not money.
Right for institutions, fairs and brands prepared to be provocative about consumption and taste, and for objects that need to be a statement before they are a product. The format is the lesson: a ridiculous object and a serious printed position, released together. Wrong for anything that needs to feel safe or luxurious. Without the argument it collapses into Memphis, which is fine, but is a different style with a different page.
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Where it stands now, and what it costs you to use it
Radical Italian Design is the movement design fairs return to whenever they want to look like they are asking questions. Gufram still makes the Cactus and the Bocca, Superstudio's grid is on every second exhibition wall, and the No-Stop City reads as a prophecy of the fulfilment centre.
The imitation keeps the joke and loses the argument. A cactus coat rack in a lobby is a mascot. The originals were made by people who thought furniture was a political problem, and the objects carried the whole position.
It is being reread now through the climate question, because Radical Design was the first movement to attack overproduction from inside a design industry, and through the return of the manifesto as a format. The usable lesson is the pairing: a provocative object and a printed statement, released together.
Mix Radical Italian Design with any of the library's 170+ styles
Radical Italian Design 50%Memphis 50%Merged palette
#E4002B
#FFFFFF
#111111
#FF3366
#FFCC00
Leads expressive, maximal, chaotic
Typography · from Radical Italian Design
Space Grotesk over Inter
Materials
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Italian Radical Design of 1966 to 1980, anti-design furniture as argument, sofa shaped like lips, coat rack shaped like a cactus, glossy polyurethane foam in saturated primary colour, endless white grid laminate, photomontage of a monumental object dropped into a landscape, Superstudio and Archizoom and Gufram register, catalogue lighting on a seamless ground, manifesto typography in Helvetica (50%), infused with Memphis Design Group aesthetic with bold geometric patterns, clashing color, squiggles and zigzags, terrazzo texture, Ettore Sottsass-inspired irreverence, postmodern playfulness, color palette strictly #E4002B #FFFFFF #111111 #FF3366 #FFCC00, overall character: expressive, maximal, chaotic
Radical Design, or Anti-Design, was a movement in Italian architecture and design from 1966 to about 1980, centred on Florence and Milan. Groups such as Superstudio and Archizoom, and designers such as Ettore Sottsass and Gaetano Pesce, made objects, images and manifestos that criticised consumer design from inside it: a sofa shaped like lips, a table printed with an endless grid, a city imagined as a supermarket.
Memphis, founded by Sottsass in 1981, is what Radical Design turned into when it stopped arguing: the same appetite for colour, pattern and absurd form, without the political programme. Radical Design made objects to make a point; Memphis made objects to sell a look. Many of the same people worked in both.
Archizoom's Superonda sofa (1966) and Safari (1968), Superstudio's Quaderna table (1970) and Continuous Monument images (1969), Studio 65's Bocca sofa for Gufram (1970), Gaetano Pesce's UP5 chair (1969), Piero Gilardi's Pratone (1971), the Gufram Cactus (1972) and Sottsass's Valentine typewriter for Olivetti (1969).
It was the first design movement to attack overproduction from inside the industry, which makes it the obvious reference for design that wants to address consumption and climate. Its format, a provocative object released with a printed statement, is also the model for most of what design fairs now call critical design.
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