The Radical Italians

Throughout history, design has helped define taste and served as a bellwether, much like the art people collect. The objects we live with not only have a story to tell but also reflect societal trends. That sentiment was one of the defining traits of the Italian cultural landscape in the mid 1960s. A period of turmoil and revolution around the world manifested in Italy in objects and ideas that helped change architecture and design forever. It was a short but powerful moment that continues to influence artists, architects, and designers worldwide over half a century later.

 The Italian Radical Design movement was born within the architecture schools of universities in Torino and Florence. The young students had had enough of their rationalist teachers and their curriculum of classical architecture. Conservatism had taken over the departments, which was at stark odds with what was happening in the world around them. Civil unrest was building and countercultural thinking was rising, with JFK and MLK’s assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights protests, Woodstock, and the hippie movement as just some of the events taking place at the time. These Italian students, like many students in the United States, were fed up with government and rules within the academic structure. They began with protests and walkouts, and eventually these young architecture students incentivized a national takeover of the arts that brought together some of the most dynamic and avant-garde thinkers and makers of the time. They shared a mission with the intent to change the world—not through politics or war—but through architecture and design. These so-called “Radicals” expressed their new vision of freedom by synthesizing architecture with art, music, fashion, photography, performance, and anthropology in an attempt to subvert what they saw as the regressive culture of their milieu.