Superstudio

views updated

Superstudio. Italian group founded by Adolfo Natalini (1941– ) and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (1941– ), with others, in 1966 to produce experimental architecture, but dissolved in 1978. Among projects were the ‘Continuous Monument’ (Il Monumento Continuo), an endless framework structure to cover the world's entire surface (1969), cities built in space, conveyor-belt cities, and other extravagant ideas, including permanently flooding Florence leaving only the Cathedral dome partly above water, and therefore cocking a snook at the conservation movement. Its work has been seen as an ‘alternative’ or ‘conceptual’ architecture with a radical programme antipathetic to capitalist system, and has been categorized as part of Supersensualism.

Bibliography

Pettena (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996);
J. Walker (1992)