Archizoom / Deganello, AeO for Cassina, reassemble for packing box, 1973.
by Guido Molinari
Paolo Deganello lives and works in Milan. After graduating in Architecture from the University of Florence in 1966, he opened, along with Branzi, Corretti, and Morozzi, the radical architecture studio Archizoom Associati (see “Archizoom Associati, 1966-1974” by Roberto Gargiani, Milan: Electa, 2007). Urban planner (PRG for Calenzano); architect (restoration of Orsanmichele in Florence, home on Lake Iseo, Winery Can Rafols at Avinyonet, Spain); interior designer (Shoner Whonen shop in Zurich, nine Stefanel stores in Florence and other cities, ArtDec shop in Verona); industrial designer (for Poltronova, Cassina, Driade, Venini, Zanotta, Vitra Edition, Stefanel, Italcementi, La Murrina, Steelcase, Greggio). He is also active as a writer for Casabella, Lotus, CasaAmica, Experimenta (Spain), Domus, Pli (Portugal), and Lib21. He has taught Biodesign at ISIA in Florence, Product Design at the University of Alghero, and currently teaches Interior Architecture and Sustainable Architecture at ESAD in Matosinhos (Portugal). His oeuvre up to 2008 was published in “As rasoe de meu projecto Radical” by ESAD in 2009 (Characters with spaces 1054).
Guido Molinari: In your design approach, but also in the arguments you put forth in some lessons, I noticed the profound attention you pay to artistic research. What cultural milieu did you grow up in? Where does this precise attention of yours for contemporary art come from?
PAOLO DEGANELLO: I enrolled at the School of Architecture after having been a rather clumsy student. I had attended a classical studies high school, and flunked early on. I come from a small town, Este, near Padua, and that’s where I studied for four years, to catch up and try to pass the final exam in art studies. I studied on my own in the studio of two artists of great quality from Padua: Professors Carlo Travaglia and Dolores Grigolon, who co-founded Gruppo N in Padua. One of my classmates was Gaetano Pesce, another student who flunked out big time. Back then my passion for politics was born. In my small town, when I was sixteen, I put together a group of extreme socialists, along with a barber, a tailor, and the head of the tax office, Dr. Masi. Maybe none of us knew what this word meant, but we saw each other often and talked about politics. I passed the final exams when I was seventeen and then I entered my last year of high school, in Florence. I found some great teachers there, too, like the poet and critic Bigongiari, the art historian and critic Masciotta, and the painter Peyron. I’m telling you these things because it’s amazing to see the difference in teacher quality today. Back then, high school was still a context of evolved intellectualism.
These studies before university were very important for me. So since high school, starting with my fascination for philosophy and politics, I came into contact with the art world. After my last year in high school, I enrolled in the School of Architecture in Florence, which back then, along with Humanities, were the courses of study in Italy that paid the most attention to the slow but inevitable growth of political protest. All those critical considerations that brought Catholic culture into close contact with Marxist culture took place here, positively.
Paolo Deganello, Città operaia per 70.000 abitanti, sulle Cascine di Firenze, 1963.
GM: The milieu you experienced at the School of Architecture was decisive, but in the works of Archizoom there emerges powerfully a confrontation with what constituted the most pertinent innovation in the field of visual arts back then. What were the sources of inspiration that directed this confrontation?
PD: My pre-university training, which made me encounter art, led me to establish a dialogue also with the students at the Fine Arts Academy, seeing that back then the School of Architecture was in Piazza San Marco, just like the Academy. At the 1964 Venice Biennale, American pop art exploded, and then a huge exhibition on pop art was also held at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence. I remember the ”F-111”, a work by James Rosenquist, an environment made up of hanging transparent plastic canvases, with impressive flying F-111s, which visitors, by moving the canvases, could destroy, and the indestructible F-111s would incredibly materialize again. Naturally, many other pop works greatly influenced and contributed to shaping radical culture. What comes to mind is Rauschenberg’s stuffed chicken. Pop art was able to keep together art and political involvement. Why was pop art so fascinating? Because it allowed us to think that there could be a project space able to dialogue with popular culture, against elite culture. This brought us to think that, for example, vulgarity—kitsch—could be redeemed. That “bad taste” was an everyday obsession for rationalist designers, I mean, illuminists like Enzo Mari, for whom kitsch meant vulgarity and ignorance. For us, instead, faux leopard fur used to upholster safari sofas was the statement for which popular taste, pop taste, was liberating and opposite to the dominating taste built upon that material truth that sustained modern design. Pop art was experienced like that new imaginary that could free us from the limits of modernity. For us, the “F-111” represented a refusal of the war, but also a way of making art for politics, giving value to the predominance of the image over reality, to communicate and give beauty to revolutionary ideals.
Archizoom, No Stop City, flipper, 1970.
GM: What was the first opportunity to show your works that gave exposure to your investigations?
PD: The Radical groups came out in the open at the Galleria Jolly 2 in Pistoia thanks to the artist Adolfo Natalini, who invited me, and then I invited the group, which at that time was taking shape. Adolfo told me: “Let’s have an exhibition. Bring your group and I’ll bring mine,” but he still had to put his together. That is, he had a group of artists from Pistoia, the Barni-Ruffi- Natalini trio, which showed their work at the Jolly 2. He still didn’t have a group of architects, but he created one right at the time, especially with Cristiano Toraldo. We already had four architects: Branzi, Corretti, Deganello and Morozzi, even with a small studio, just two rooms without heating, at Villa Strozzi. We lived this very exciting heroic dimension, allowing us to overcome any difficulty. In order to be economically self-sufficient, I gave art history and math lessons. I would even help write theses for foreign students. We were able to manage our own survival, and everything was pretty easy. We were able to put some money together even though we still weren’t professionals.
Paolo Deganello, progetto Duets For Manoel de Oliveira, Paredes, Portugal, 2012. PHOTO: Ines D’orey
GM: The fact that, as architects, it’s interesting and significant that you began your careers by showing your work at an art gallery.
PD: Indeed. We presented, at this gallery, our first exhibition, la Superarchitettura”, and the manifesto we signed with Adolfo.
GM: Some criticized Archigram because their projects, their approach, did not include a sufficient amount of attention to the “inhabitability” of the object and its potential use. Besides this, what else was different from your initial intentions? How did confrontation with Archigram develop?
PD: A theme was, unquestionably, object and architecture inhabitability. There was an interesting conference in Turin (1969) called “Utopia e\o rivoluzione”. Archigram and Archizoom also took part. In particular, I and Andrea Branzi represented our group, with a talk that expressed these positions. As opposed to the revolutionary perspective we were attached to—maybe with scotch tape!—Archigram believed in technological revolution. For us, this was the limit to Archigram’s project. Archizoom was called this because they became aware of Archigram in 1964 and had the idea of being better. So “zoom,” that is, faster…that’s the reason behind the electrical charge symbol. But the fundamental difference lies in our political culture. I also took part in the debates at the Architecture Association with its director Nicholas Boyarsky, and the Archigram group was quite active in that context. During the Summer Sections they would invite Italians to compare their architecture culture. You know, I was the one who, more than the others I the group, faked being able to speak English. I would take part with the most brazenness, despite the fact I knew the language very, very little. It all amused me. The Summer Sections offered a chance to confront Italian culture tied to political experiences. I remember once that Piero Derossi with Gruppo Strum took part, there was Peppino Ortoleva who was a militant for Lotta Continua, Cristian de Portzamparc and his group, Natalini, Binazzi and so forth. There I also met Bernhard Tchumi who later invited me to give lessons at his “A.A.” courses.
Archizoom / Deganello, AeO for Cassina, 1973.
GM: I would like to know, now that some time has passed, what in your opinion constitutes the most significant aspect of the Radical experience, and in what way this aspect, this core, can relate to today. Also, I would like to know what you may consider the limits of this experience.
PD: The most vital core of the Radical experience lies precisely in this ability to bring into the project not only social strife but also the need for an architecture that can go beyond its own disciplinary statutes, beyond the Modern Movement, attempting to include the new living culture that the ’68 movements and feminism had created. In my opinion, the great limit of the Radical experience is not having understood the inevitable perspective of sustainable projects. In other words, our intervention is not sensitive to the environment, to ecology, because the group at that time did not consider it a fundamental issue. For me this is a great limit, or at least, that’s what I think today. I deeply believe that ecological inhabitability, as opposed to artificial technological building, leads to great innovation. This is something I and many others are working on today. During the 2011 –2012 academic year I promoted a one-year specialization course at ESAD in Portugal, where I teach, called “Arquitectura e habitar sustentavel.” The only form of living that makes any sense today is sustainable living. Back then, we didn’t put all this at the center of our architecture projects. On the one hand, our interiors invite chickens, curtains, and motorcycles, that is, tools of popular living, and certainly not of noble architecture.
Then we also include mountains, pieces of nature, but these proposals aren’t able to hook up with whatat that time was being born. The project’s position must free itself of the great trust in the unlimited power of technology, in the illusion that with these tools all of humanity’s problems can be resolved. See our protest of Archigram. So we need to understand that the planet is a finite resource and that the design problem is destined to promote consumption of more and more limited resources. Let’s start by saying we’ve over-built. Much of what we’ve built is empty and design today has the task, the priority, of reusing what already exists. Consequentially this means shifting all existing technological innovation to reassessing what already has been built. All this lies at the core of the work I feel I’m involved in now, both as a professor and a designer.
Archizoom, Italian Pavillion, Expo Osaka, Japan , 1969.