“The only architecture will be our life” – or the tale of it. Narrative issues in the production of Superstudio.

Abstract

This essay investigates the use of narrative in the production of Superstudio, considering the projects in which this aspect emerges the most. The use of narrative seems to increase during the development of the group’s career: designs tend to look more and more like novels, until they become proper ones at the end after renouncing any possible idea of shape of the design itself, which in turn is dissolved into an architecture made of events and rituals, perfect subjects for a wide number of possible tales. After fifty years, the subject of narrative is surfacing again in the field of architecture: is it possible to recognize a continuity between contemporary storytelling and the one of Supertudio? Otherwise, are we facing a different scenario, even an opposite one?

Keywords

• superstudio
• narrazione
• utopia critica