Monuments of architecture and creators of the transcendence - Realms of the idealist. Archizoom (Part 2)

(Images: mondo-blogo.blogspot.com)

We live in time that is very connected to its hyper consumer culture, despite moments of activism via the digital template, the manifestation of all of its idealisms lie contained within the landscape of consumption.  The electronic commerce or e-commerce is so prolifically entrenched, it can only be seen as an acceptable momentum of its purpose – that, borrowing from the late philosopher Jean Baudrillard is to deliver a "hyper real" world.  But this occurrence of 21st Century information and technology with its accelerated rate of exchange, began when nuclear power became widespread after 1945 and more importantly when the computer chip was invented in 1961.  Ensuring the decades that followed and its impact on cities became an evident habitue, as society embraced newer technologies at a feverish rate.  So, before the onset on the computerized interconnected world, the pace of expanding cities, the building of shopping malls was a constant in its development. Architecture during the 1960s, was to complement this rapid expansion of growth and consumption and it was the architect whose mandate was to build upward and outward, committing to the iconic fixture of the skyscraper or the urban sprawl. 

The so called “Radicals” of 60's Italian architecture and design, Archizoom Associati  in similarity to their colleagues at the time Superstudio, took it upon themselves to devise an idealist concept of experimental architectural design, that wasn't within the realms, particularly at the time in Italian and Europe, of postmodern thought or even Marxist rhetoric.  It was purely to give, in a conceptualized way, what the consumer wanted, the endless supply of the prefabricated and garish creations that lined shopping malls and retail strips.  Could be under Archizoom refined as an exclusivity, yet inundated within its presentation.  They wanted to flood the world with the insatiable, feed the consumer to the point of bursting.  To which they believed would allow, in the end, from overindulging to redesign the product themselves, no longer beholdant to feverish consumption and eventually turning the consumer inward.  After trying all the products of hype and all its fabricated desire of materialism.  To point they eventually see everything as the same, a desire to reconfigure the possibilities from overconsuming would rise.  Archizoom didn't believe in the rejection of reality, rather, they encouraged from a visual medium, that all should be sampled and seen in its potentiality.  From the unappealing urban sprawl to the poorly designed skyscraper, when a society embraced the idealisms of a productive middle class and from their feigned aspirations, to be rewarded that via its work ethics and in turn consumption; They become illusions of wealth.  Archizoom wanted to break this down, feed it, then allow it to ponder its excesses. 

They achieved this in true Italian finesse.