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    Utopii

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    Utopii

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    9 views18 pages

    Text Superstudio Archizoom

    Uploaded by

    Marilena Brastaviceanu
    Utopii

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 18
    CRITIQUE OF PURE STRUCTURE: THE UTOPIAS OF ARCHIZOOM AND SUPERSTUDIO Marie Theres Stauffer extending in endless lines over the ho- Smooth, uniform bodies oliths or distrib Tizon, towering over their surroundings like mon wa landscape: these few words can be used to describe two utopian projects that emerged in Florence at the tad of the 19608, far from the hot spots of the international ar~ Shitecture scene. 1! Monumento Continuo from the Superstudio group and No-Stop City from the group Archizoom were devel- Ged in several versions between 1969 and 1972 and published in srchitectura journals both in tly and internationally, Photomon- installations, anid manifestos served as means iy. By the time oftheir first uted serially ser0s tages, drawings, fof communicating their message visual Mion in 1369, both projects were headlined “Discorsi per Pamaginy” which i tral translated as “discourse through im nr This concept designates 8 particular kind of project con ceived not 28 a design that will actualy be built but rather a8 @ theoretical statement. Accordingly, both of those utopian cities were “realized” in the appropriate media~in the printed pages seine magazine and in exhibitions. The two utopias should thus orto understood es visions anticipating the future, but rether as Tetical theories of the built and imaginary archi Sin society, The storia figure applied in this erique is irony. @ form thet can be employed—depending on where the emphasis ploved~to identity problematic elements and athe sare time to Petr what is considered worthy of being maintsined. Of particular importance tothe concept of this “discourse of im- ages" were the intense debates in Italian semiotics thet took place attne University of Florence during the 1260s, with such protago- rate as Umberto Eco and Giovanni Klaus Koenig.” Inthe context tr these discussions, a linguistic analogy between architecture sha tent emerged which made reference to buildings themselves ot sleo to diverse forms of project presentation and thus to vis tal ilustrtion. Archizoom and Superstudio not only conceived us a specific form of discourse, but also incorporated Pit ' nto their manifestos, On the one atic graphic publica ages. ctures of mod images torial qualities in various ways hand, their publications were laid out in an idiosyner gos of text simultaneously appear as 225° the Florentine architects employed age thet showed a structural style, such that the pa thetic objects. On the other, their notation of writing as assembl similarity to collage. “The Model for Total Urbanization HH itonamento Continuo was designed as an exhibition entry for the Biennale Tigan thet 120K place in Graz in she fll of 1968, The media of representation for this first version were photomon- {ages as well 95 @ manifesto, while an advanced version of the weet trom 1971 employed 8 mixture of comic strip and film story doard. The ilustrations of the “continual monument” show ove sized, abstract fr occupy a territory as geometric obje surfaces itustrations and details that w of the structure pplans, no elevations, and no sections." ‘The accompanying manifestos explain that form of “architecture unico, a design issued from a single ges snere and is suitec to the production of an infinite, Tecture.‘This principle, es pragmatic as its flexible it possible to effidently develop the earth to accom inereasingly imp most suitable regiens of tha earth would be: and the rest For Superstudio,this extremely educot fred more than just @ pragmatic justification. Beyond fecilita an efficient, flexible, and thu the Monumento Continuo manifested a symbolic ‘well. The architac's ‘ment that has been “homogenized” find all the inevitable imperialism” to become a uniformly structured context.* Beyond these furetionalist foundations, Superstudio panization with the history of architecture. In 8 580 ‘Monumento Contin ashlee that extend infinitely as linear structure cts. Their smooth white eee rendered as 2 grid of as a monochrome. Yat visual (ould offer insight into the interior ‘entirely lacking, just as there are no ground this totally reductive is based on the concept of the disegno sture, Itcan be used any- uniform archi ‘would make imodate an joverished and expanding population. Only the chosen forthis project ‘ould remain protected from human intervantion.® .d and homogeneous shape ting j3 economical form of construction, dimension 38 Clalmes thot the project reflected an environ- ‘through “technology, culture niversal and 1, demographic, and (culturel-Ipolitcal substantiated their Mode! for Total Ur ‘ond version of uo the Florentine architects tied in examples Of historic monumental architecture that are conceived, based oh their composition, as material expressions of different con- opts of order. Correspondingly, the frst two rows of the story: beard quote sysems of order that form a short—and seemingly itary history of ideas on the subject from the ancient to the modern” ‘The bosic principle of all systems of order, eccording to Supersti- ules geometry. Consequently, Johannas Kepler's cosmic model, 4596 is cited in the frst vignette: vi ‘tional relationships between sic geo- Machine mundi artifcais, ignettes two, four, and five depict ne Romanity and geometry; and vignette thres presents bas netic principles of disposition and proportion.” The fourth vir Grette follows sp these Western conceptions of order with the srendela, an Asian model of the cosmos.’ Vignettes seven and ont conclude with a drawing by Robert Fludd dating from Be- fone 1617 that ilustrotes analogical relationships between the mi Gro- and macrecosm. Inthe subsequent eight vignettes, Superstudio presents examples tore that are sean to constitute these var tured onthe basis fof monumanta architect tus concepts of order insofar as they were struct RVTOERREINENSTRUCTUR: ARCHIZDOM UND SUPERSTUDIOH ‘of everything from geometry end rules of proportion to cosmic tionships, which are eventually represented by the architec- ture itself. Without clarifying the connection between the concep. tual assertions and concrete examples, Superstudio nemed a first category of monuments based on elementary geometric forms, including the site of Stonehenge, the pyramids at Giz, ideal cities bbased on square, circular, or star-shaped plans, the Keaba, and the Vertical Assembly Building.” A second estegory comprised eer structures, monumenti contiui, which ineluded the Great Wall of China, aqueducts and superhighways, but also dams and large-scale technical structures, which, ifstretched out across the surface of the Earth, would encircle it completely. All these arti- facts—the abstract systems of order as well as the monuments ‘themselves—express the same will to signify and to measure, All of these “signs” offer a means of “grasping” the world— in the sense of both comprehending and taking possession aft.” Superstugio offers @ sovial-anthropological explanation for the way human beings gain access to the world by cresting systems ‘of order, arguing that the creation of monuments arises from & universal and unchanging human “need for monuments." Itis within the context of this conceptual foundation that the au- thors situste the emergence of modern architecture, Within this framework, they consider the so-called revolution architectur that emerged around 1800 the starting point in an evolution that culminated in the rationalism of the 1920s and became codified In the International Style of the postwar period, » genealogy ex- ‘emplifed on the visual level by Etienne-Louis Boullée's Newton- Cénotaphe, Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, Le Corbusier's Ville Contemporaine,” and anonymous Zeilenbau st by alas, In view of the wide-ranging sources and references for the Monu: ‘mento Continuo, its certainly remarkable that Superstudio paid ‘slmost no attention to contemporery megastructures. Exceptions tothis were the superhighway end the Vertical Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral, both structures with no connection to any of the high-profile utopian ofthe 1960s. Instead, the group credited historical monuments and building groups as ther role models This had two consequences: firs, it constructedor reconstruct. kind of prehistory of the megastructure, an aspect thet until then had been largely neglected given the euphori belief in prog- /ess prevailing in that periog. Second, with this emphasis, Super studio had illuminated a central moment of the megastructure ‘that of pathos. ‘The Infnita city Archizoom, too, constructed an elaborately conceived context af reasoning for No-Stop City without making explicit reference to the large-scale utopias of the time. The theoretical starting point ‘oftheir project consisted in the premise that the modern city is, in every respect, a product of industrial capitalism. Archizoom thus:

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