The "radical period" of Italian design of the late 1960s saw a major transformation in avant-garde style. The student-led movement began as response to the political establishment and social climate. The movement brought together many dynamic and creative thinkers across Italy.
These young designers rejected the established norms in design and aesthetics to produce unique art and architecture that shifted away from the austere, consumerism focused, post-war Italian design and embraced a bold, iconic, and playful style that took subversive aim at the political establishment.
They questioned the grand visions of modernists and embraced an “anti-architecture”, "anti-design" or “radical design” approach, utilizing their design medium as tools for political, social, and cultural critique. The designers created performance art, drafted manifestos, experimented with music, furniture, graphic design, zines, installations, events, and exhibitions to establish a remarkable era of design that embodied Pop Art, Surrealism, play, and futurism.
"In the US they'd put Pop Art on the wall, in Italy they put it on the floor and live with it."Jim Walrod, Design Collector
The resulting Radical Design movement brought into question the way we think about our cities and all the objects around us. The architects became critical and speculative about existing methods of planning, what cities may become in the future and what it means to design for these future cities. The designers' processes were confrontational and mysterious, producing objects that were unconventional, innovative and sometimes even distasteful. The bold ideas and experiments from these designers introduced a new utopia, combining the conceptual avant-garde of art with the pragmatism of design.
The Radical Design movement was also responsible for influencing Studio Alchimia and the Memphis Group in Italy, Archigram in the UK, as well as the emblematic radical group Haus-Rucker-Co in Vienna.
Notable results of the Italian Avant-Garde have been documented in the installation named "Superarchitettura" taking place in Pistoia in 1966 and at "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" exhibition at MoMA in 1972.
https://www.are.na/macumba-collective/radical-design
Five poetic and philosophical acts of the Italian Radical Design MovementCatalina Dib Link
Collectives like Archizoom, Superstudio and Cavart used design as a way of comment and protest about the kind of society they were living and the utopic or dystopic visions they had for the future.
They strongly opposed the consumerism and more corporta eview of industrial design and tried to create a much more interesting view.