16/09/2026
✱ BEFORE RADICAL DESIGN HAD A NAME, THERE WAS SUPERARCHITETTURA.
On December 4, 1966, in Pistoia, Tuscany, Superarchitettura brought together the young architects who would define Archizoom Associati and Superstudio, opening a new chapter in Italian design culture.
Born from the extraordinary experimental climate surrounding the Faculty of Architecture in Florence in the mid-1960s, Superarchitettura challenged the idea that architecture and design should simply provide elegant solutions. Colour, stripes, waves, flowers, oversized geometries and deliberately artificial landscapes transformed space into something provocative, ironic and spectacular.
Against the conventions of the bourgeois interior, objects became arguments and interiors became manifestos. Pop culture, mass consumption, artificial landscapes and consumer imagery were turned into tools for questioning the domestic environment and the society producing it. Its manifesto spoke of the architecture of “superproduction” and “superconsumption”: an exaggerated language for an increasingly exaggerated world.
What would later be identified with Italian Radical Architecture was beginning to find its visual language.
And Superarchitettura was not only an exhibition.
Some of the experiments conceived for that environment would later evolve into objects produced by Poltronova. The form that became Superonda by Archizoom Associati developed from a prototype presented at Superarchitettura: two waves that abandoned the conventional furniture frame and proposed a freer, mutable way of sitting, lying and inhabiting domestic space. Today Superonda remains one of Poltronova’s defining designs, still challenging the conventional idea of what a sofa should be.
Passiflora by Superstudio also originated from a painted cardboard prototype created for the 1966 exhibition. Through Poltronova, cardboard was replaced by a light-permeable material, transforming that experimental form into a luminous column whose distorted silhouette oscillates between the natural and the artificial.
Exhibition, prototype, object: the experiment entered everyday life.
Almost sixty years later, the imagery of Superarchitettura continues to reappear, be reconstructed, exhibited and reinterpreted across generations.
Today, its extraordinary visual universe returns to Milan as part of “Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. Continuous Present” at Triennale Milano, reconnecting the radical experiments of the 1960s with the continuing legacy of Andrea Branzi.
❋ On view at Triennale Milano until October 4, 2026.
Almost sixty years after that first explosion of colour, irony and provocation, Superarchitettura still asks a remarkably contemporary question:
what if design did not simply furnish the world as it is — but helped us imagine the world differently?
✱ Andrea Branzi by Toyo Ito. A Continuous Present
☞ Triennale Milano, Viale Alemagna 6
〜 March 19 — October 4, 2026
Produced by Triennale Milano and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Concept and exhibition design: Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
Curated by Nina Bassoli and Michela Alessandrini
In collaboration with Lorenza Branzi and Nicoletta Morozzi
Installation view: Triennale Milano, 2026
Superarchitettura, Archizoom Associati, Superstudio, Andrea Branzi, Poltronova, Italian Radical Design, Radical Architecture, Superonda sofa, Passiflora lamp, Pistoia 1966, Florence design, Triennale Milano, Milan Italy, Italian design history, 1960s design.
