The Seventies were years of transition and rethinking, but also of visionary utopia which revolutionised parameters, thinking, styles and perspectives. With it's story, Quaderna represents the utopia of those years. The radical movement attempts to "gobeyond the disciplinary aspect of design, that is to say the re-composition of contradictions at formal level, destroying... the usual image of the product"1.

The result is a vanguard style which provokes, on the one hand, and creates stimuli for the contemporary world, on the other. “Radical design” openly confuted not just the status of design, but the entire social context in which designers worked. An explicit criticism of the rigid and dogmatic functionalism of the academy, against which the movement wished to be seen as a liberating vision of life and design.

BRAND HIGHLIGHT

When Aurelio Zanotta opened the doors to his eponymous label in 1954, its initial focus was on the production of sofas and armchairs which, at the time, were overwhelmingly the domain of upholstery workshops. But Zanotta’s vision far exceeded the largely utilitarian scope of local upholsterers. Beyond its surface functionality, he recognizedin furniture design a new form of cultural expression—a venerable creative outlet worthy of the same respect afforded to traditional artistic exploits like painting and sculpture.

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Superstudio

The group was set up in Florence in 1966, contributing with theories and designs to the radical architecture movement. In 1972 it set an environment for the show "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" at the M.o.M.A. in New York. Between 1973 and 1975 Superstudio joined the “Global Tools”, participating in several Triennale shows and in 1978 it set a personal exhibition at the National Institute of Architecture in Rome. Since 1973 its members have been teaching at the Faculty of Architecture in Florence. In 1982 the Israel Museum in Jerusalem set a complete retrospective show of Superstudio’s works.

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