with Matthias Arauco
In the ‘60s and ‘70s in Florence, one group of six young architects abstained from architecture to reveal its contaminations. We share Superstudio’s interest in challenging uncontested notions of what is considered natural, normal, given. For Superstudio this meant exaggerating, making ugly and aggravating in order to expose capitalist ideals behind collective conceptions. For us this requires introspection and agitation of our own ideals in order to bring to light the problems with the contemporary condition.
The political, social and cultural modernization that had occurred in the 1930s in the U.S. was occurring at an expedited rate in the ‘50s and ‘60s in Italy. Welfare state capitalism, which aimed to balance production and consumption, created a correlation for workers between increased consumption and increased productivity. A rapidly growing need for consumption resulted in an urban labor force which was unskilled and detached from their work. In order to closer tie workers to their work, progressive organizations developed social programs to create emotional ties between workers and production, blurring the line between life and labor and therefore exacerbating the capitalist reach into private life. With the flood of low-income workers to urban centers, there was a heightened need for housing in northern Italian cities. However, developers took over nearly all of the housing projects, leaving architects to decide between working for developers (if architects weren’t disregarded altogether) or extremely wealthy clients. As a result, radical architecture groups such as Superstudio and Archizoom were founded on the belief that their contributions could exist outside of operational practice, evident in their fantastical projects ‘Continuous Monument’ and ‘No-Stop City,’ respectively.
Superstudio was interested in disrupting apathy toward capitalist norms. They aimed to produce such disruptive objects as to “always find ourselves tripping over them till we get to the point of kicking them and throwing them out,” according to the group. “It will not in any way be possible to ignore them. They will exorcise our indifference.” This exorcism was intended to wake users up to their environment that formerly went entirely unnoticed. According to Aureli, Archizoom and Superstudio both exaggerated “per absurdum” the “urban condition by pushing to the extreme its inclusive and totalizing logic.”[1] Archizoom similarly stated that “urbanization’s extreme intensification would trigger workers to progressively detach themselves from the logic of wage.”[2] The group pursued what they referred to as “a state of permanent confusion, and therefore a collapse of the entire system.” According to Peter Lang in Life Without Objects, “each stage of [Superstudio’s] work is meant to peel back another layer of social paralysis, of futile dreams and debilitating social infrastructures.”[3]
Another radical architecture group of the same time period, UFO Group, dropped gigantic balloons in the middle of Florentine streets during rush hour in order to “force spectators to...reconsider their habitual uses of the city.”[4]Superstudio in particular employed a critical method of designing utopias to expose societal flaws. The group exacerbates and exaggerates utopian ideals in order to expose their dystopian qualities and embedded capitalist infections. Their now famous histograms, for example, were referred to by Superstudio as “tombstones of architecture,” meant to enact the “deliberate suicide of architecture in the face of its complete absorption by capital.”[5] We are meant to recognize ourselves through the actions we make upon these unprogrammed histograms.[6] By designing objects, the group intended to remove the necessity for objects altogether. Superstudio’s disruptive objects and cities exorcise indifference toward norms that typically go unnoticed, just as UFO Group’s balloons disrupted public apathy toward embedded capitalism in the most mundane aspects of daily routine.
Superstudio’s “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas,” published in Architectural Design magazine in 1971, outlines twelve distinct utopian urban visions, presented as an ironic parody and criticism of capitalism and social structure of the era. Each city presents prevailing societal values of the time period, such as: consumerism, exploitation of nature, hierarchical social systems, dominance of technology, unbounded power of capital, reduction of humanity, emphasis on functionality and capacity of the machine. These societal ideals are amplified at the scale of the city to challenge their inherent ideal-ness. Following the sarcastic explanation of each city, the group speaks directly to the reader, asking them to consider how many of the cities they themselves would like to live in. If the reader’s answer is all of the above, the group calls the reader “an empty shell, a dark, humid cavity into which the system has penetrated like tendrils of pumpkin plants into earthy crevices.” On the other end of the scale, if the reader responds that they would not like to live in any of the cities, Superstudio retorts, “You are an idiot.”[7]
The group’s true utopian vision is evident in their project, “Zeno’s Conscience,” part of a study they called “Extra-Urban Material Culture.” Superstudio took interest in Zeno Fiaschi, an entirely self-sufficient farmer in rural Tuscany, surveying his complete autonomy. They investigated the objects Zeno built and used, due to their purely functional nature of serving Zeno and his needs. Zeno’s life, likely a utopian one separated from capitalist toxicity in their view, was surveyed in order to develop design strategies which encourage the “technical destruction of the object.”[8] This destruction was intended to free humans from their limiting and conditioning culture.[9]
A contemporary equivalent of capitalism’s invasion of culture in the ‘50s and ‘60s in Italy is sustainability’s infiltration to society. Sustainable practice is fetishized and encourages the shaming of those who do not comply at a certain standard. Rather than an opposing force, sustainability is often a continuation, a supporter, an exacerbator of capitalism. Sustainability is used as yet another means to an end of vanity and self-promotion. The contemporary equivalent of the “socially engaged architects,” whom Tafuri attempted to demystify,[10] are those who design to certain building standards, such as LEED or WELL, in order to check a box and earn a plaque.
We further Superstudio’s polemic by commenting upon contemporary society, satirically positioning sustainability as an exaggerated means of existence. We challenge the dichotomy of utopia and dystopia by presenting the near opposite of many of the original twelve cities in terms of exploitation of nature. In the seventh city, named “Continuous production conveyor belt city,” “the Grand factory exploits the land and the underground materials of the territory it crosses...The Grand factory devours shreds of useless nature and unformed minerals.”[11]
However, our proposed Thirteenth city presents a future set in a time after human trash, compost and excrement has sedimented and accumulated enough to coat the earth’s surface, forming a new earthen layer above the crust. The city is centered around the broadest heap of waste “naturally” accumulated over centuries, dubbed by the citizens, “The Great Mound.” This version of future presupposes that social status is determined by degree of carbon impact. This degree of impact is displayed directly to other members of the community through proximity to the Great Mound and height of waste built up around each settlement. The city inherently shames those who consume more than their share and rewards those who maintain a closed-loop system.
Presented and designed mimicking the style of Superstudio, we specify exact dimensions of the city, from the scale of a section through the earth to that of the city and a detailed component within a unit. This urban organization of collective living in a closed-loop system, typically considered to be utopian in current-day society, turns out to be just as dystopian as any of the original twelve cautionary tales. The city, first presented as a waste-free oasis where everyone is equal, turns out to be yet another production of capitalism. The utopian idea of a closed-loop society is revealed to be a thirteenth dystopia, where the ultimate goal of the city is to put an end to the human race. The Thirteenth City embraces the idea that in order to move beyond the Anthropocene, the “anthro” must be removed altogether. Not only is the goal of every generation of the city to be the last, but it is also to be seen as the most ethical, moral and righteous. Every individual desires to be recognized as the most sustainable, contributing most to the cause.
Forgive us for being as blunt as Superstudio in concluding this polemic. But if you thought sustainability was any alternative to capitalism you were wrong. If you felt that your vain attempts at buying a facade of sustainable morality would go unnoticed you were mistaken. Hopefully the aforementioned thoughts and provocations inconvenienced you and got in your way. Hopefully you tripped over them, stumbled, got disoriented at times. To reiterate Adolfo Natalini’s words, we hope to have disrupted norms by exorcising indifference toward the currently uncontested ideas of utopia. This giant balloon in the middle of the street should allow you to see.
[1] Aureli, Pier Vittorio. “Manfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, Superstudio, and the Critique of Architectural Ideology.”
[2] Ibid.
[3] Lang, Peter. “Superstudio: Life Without Objects.”
[4] Elfline, Ross K. “Superstudio and the ‘Refusal to Work.’”
[5] Aureli, Pier Vittorio.
[6] Elfline, Ross K.
[7] Superstudio. “Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas.”
[8] Chidoni, Matteo. “‘La Coscienza Di Zeno’: Notes on a Work by Superstudio.”
[9] Ibid.
[10] Aureli, Pier Vittorio.
[11] Superstudio.