Italian architect and co-founder of radical design collective Superstudio, Adolfo Natalini, has passed away at the age of 78.
Natalini, who together with the late Cristiano Toraldo di Francia started Superstudio in 1966, has been remembered as an inspiration for his radical vision.
Superstudio designed a range of minimal furniture. Photo by Zanotta
Superstudio rejected post-war modernist architecture and its focus on consumerism, producing illustrations of an anti-architecture that served people's needs over capitalism.
"If design is merely an inducement to consume, then we must reject design; if architecture is merely the codifying of bourgeois model of ownership and society, then we must reject architecture; if architecture and town planning is merely the formalisation of present unjust social divisions, then we must reject town planning and its cities," Natalini wrote in 1971. "Until all design activities are aimed towards meeting primary needs. Until then, design must disappear. We can live without architecture," he continued.
Natalini illustrated Superstudio's provocative dystopian visions to generate discussion on alternative ways of living in the world.
Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanisation was one such concept, imagining a huge grid that could envelop the earth and turn it into a homogenised urban landscape that subordinates nature.

The provocative vision of Continuous Monument wrapped the world into an endless nurtu...