How far off were the radical architects of the 1960s?

2018-12-31T12:53:00-05:00

The 1960s, a time when possibilities and technologies in many areas — artistic, political, scientific — seemed broader than ever, remain a seductive decade. Fifty years on from the first moon landing we need to remember that the most striking image from space (and the one that had the most real impact) were not those of the dusty, dead surface of the moon but those of our own planet, glimpsed as something delicate, whole and beautiful.

The future used to look brighter.

This may be the feeling gained when looking back at some of the most radical visions from familiar names in architecture. Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom and Cedric Price each took their shot at a future based on post-war rhetoric, and we continue to marvel at the gap between their expectations and our reality.

Walking City, by Archigram

But this gap may be wider and more troublesome than anyone could have imaged at the time of these images of the imagined future were produced, according to Financial Times writer Edwin Heathcote. Looking back at the future of the 1960's from the 2010's might, in fact, be our way of coping with our precarious future, Heathcote argues. "All this is an escapist fantasy," he writes, "a way of sublimating our awareness of catastrophic climate change and our guilt at participating in the economies that fuel it."

No Stop City, by Archizoom

Heathcote ends his compelling article with a warning against the provocation of ...

SALT releases "Global Tools 1973-1975"

2015-07-03T13:09:00-04:00

I am so pleased to announce that Global Tools is now out. Edited by Valerio Borgonuovo and Silvia Franceschini, contributions by Manola Antonioli, Valerio Borgonuovo, Alison J. Clarke, Beatriz Colomina, Silvia Franceschini, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco Raggi, Simon Sadler, and Alessandro Vicari. If Graham Foundation wants to "like" it, there is a facebook page -Vasif Kortun, SALT

GLOBAL TOOLS 1973-1975

In January 1973, a gathering took place in Milan at the editorial office of the magazine ‘Casabella,’ involving, among others, the architects and designers Ettore Sottsass Jr., Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Riccardo Dalisi, Remo Buti, Ugo La Pietra, Franco Raggi, Davide Mosconi, and members of the groups Archizoom, 9999, Superstudio, UFO and Zziggurat. Together with the conceptual artists and intellectuals Franco Vaccari, Giuseppe Chiari, Luciano Fabro and Germano Celant, they founded Global Tools - a system of workshops that would last until 1975.

For the first time in the forty years that have passed since its formation, the experience of the Global Tools counter-school has been brought together in book form by SALT, uniting the images and archive documents that were produced over the few short years of its existence. This volume is compiled to chronicle and evaluate the three years of seminar activity that took place between Florence, Milan and Naples i...

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How far off were the radical architects of the 1960s?

SALT releases "Global Tools 1973-1975"