Archizoom & Folding Enclosures

In 1968 Italian designer Andrea Branzi and a group of radical designers in Florence, Italy decided to take the ideology of architectural modernism to its absurd limit. They headed a group in Italy that became known as Radical design. With No Stop City they proposed an endless stamping of circuit board buildings stretching as far as they eye could see. The group he formed with Gilberto Corretti (b 1941), Paolo Deganello (b 1940) and Massimo Morozzi and joined by Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini as it became known as Archizoom split up in 1974.

Archizoom led to the Anti-design movement in Italy, whereby as Free thinkers in order to get away from Tradition, they stated, "...men must overturn conventions and exalt everything kitsch as a statement of aesthetic and ideological challenge." The gravitational center of anti-design shifted from Florence to Milano.

In the 1980s, a group led by Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis Group (allegedly inspired by Bob Dylan's lyric "stuck inside a mobile with the Memphis Blues again..") with the purpose of reviving the radical design movement with Branzi as one of its members.


Branzi has currently exhibiting Open Enclosures at the Cartier Fondation in Paris through June 22nd. This project involves a surrreal piece of folding furniture of metal, glass, and organic matter that unfolds to form walls, a bed, personal workspace and shelf.