From Superstudio to Archizoom, These Radical Italian Architects Will Change Your Ideas About Cities

For a brief period in the late 1960s, the future of architecture was located in Florence. The Renaissance city was home to some of the most radical architectural collectives in the world, bearing futuristic names such as Superstudio and Zziggurat, Archizoom and UFO. None of them had clients, which was probably for the best. While each boasted a distinctive style and original ideas, the structures proposed in their most interesting plans were essentially uninhabitable. In the words of Archizoom co-founder Andrea Branzi, they were designing critical utopias: ideal cities that made fun of their own idealism. Alessandro Poli (Superstudio), Architettura Interplanetaria. Autostrada terra luna, 1970-1971.... [+] After half a century, the Tuscan architects' ironic urban planning is back, on view at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and also documented in an important book published by Quodlibet. Seen in a contemporary context, their schemes are remarkably prescient. The young radicals anticipate

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• Elizabeth Dorman