Poveri radicali: istanze comportamentali ed esperienze intermediali nel New Domestic Landscape italiano

The paper explores some behavioral instances and intermedia practices featured in the 1972 exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” curated by Emilio Ambasz at MoMA in New York. Starting from Superstudio, Ugo La Pietra, and Gruppo Strum projects presented on that occasion, the paper highlights various key features of the new avant-garde and interdisciplinary movement known as Radical Architecture. It underlines the collective dimension and anti-authoritarian nature of such radical designers – in line with the Counterculture that spread since the late 1960s – as well as their ambiguous relationship, between fascination and skepticism, towards media and technology. This represents the counterpart of the economic boom, in line with a new, conceptual, and more political idea of Made in Italy that emerged at that time.