ANTI DESIGN

Anti-Design was a design flow and style art movement originating in Italy and lasting from the years 1966 - 1980. The movement emphasized striking colours, scale distortion (ie. giant chairs that make you look small), and used irony and kitsh. The function of the object was to subvert the way you thought about the object. In architecture this was also known as the Radical Design period.

The design movement was a reaction against what many avant-garde designers at the time saw as the perfectionist aesthetics of Modernism. The Modernist designers placed emphasis was on style and the aesthetics of good form by many leading manufacturers and celebrated designers (some of whom were being paid big bucks in the process).This sense of dissatisfaction with the increasingly lack of the social relevance of design for the sake of greed led Italian designers to stage a revolt. These design rebels increasingly aired their grievances during the late 1950s and into the 1960s. However Anti Design didn't officially start as an art movement until 1966.

Ettore Sottsass Jr. was a key spokesman of the Anti-Design movement once it took off and grew in popularity, as were the Radical Design groups Archigram (a British architecture magazine which emphasized alternative thinking and futurist architecture) and Superstudio (an architecture firm founded in 1966 in Florence, Italy). They were all expressing their ideas by producing furniture prototypes, exhibition pieces, and publication of manifestos full of ideas that are still considered revolutionary even today. The Anti-Design movement sought to harness power of design to create objects and living quarters that were unique rather than embracing style, mass production, consumerism, sales and greed. Their designs were meant to be functional, not necessarily beautiful. 

Where Modernism followed the idea of objects should be permanent, Anti Design rebels felt objects should be temporary, as quick to throw away and be replaced by something new and more functional.

This would certainly mean consumerism and profits if people keep coming back for more, but the message was very different. Anti Designers wanted people to THINK about the objects they were buying, even if they ultimately threw those objects away.

The Modernist palette was generally blacks, whites and greys, simplicity and materials were chosen for their durability. In contrast the Anti-Design rebels explored the rich variety of colours, decorative elements and materials.

Lastly, where Modernism believed in the adage ‘form follows function’, Anti Design used the expressive potential of kitsch, irony, and distortion of scale... These characteristics would later become the hallmarks of Postmodern design and influence Memphis design.

The Anti Design Studios

Superstudio

• Founded in Florence in 1966 by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia.

• Disillusioned with Modernism, which had dominated architecture and design since the 1920s.

• Torelado di Francia wrote: "It is the designer who must attempt to re-evaluate his role in the nightmare he has helped to conceive."

• Natalini: "In 1969 we started designing negative utopias like Il Monumento Continuo, images warning of the horrors architecture had in store with its scientific methods for perpetuating standard models worldwide. Of course, we were also having fun.

Archizoom (Association)

• Founded 1966 in Florence by Andrea Branzi.

• In 1972, they declared the "right to go against a reality that lacks meaning . . . to act, modify, form, and destroy the surrounding environment."

• Branzi: "The real revolution in radical architecture is the revolution of kitsch: mass cultural consumption, pop art, an industrial-commercial language. There is the idea of radicalizing the industrial component of modern architecture to the extreme."

Studio Alchymia

• Founded by Alessandro Guerriero in 1976.

• ‘Alchymia’ means alchemy, the pseudo-scientific practice that tried to turn base metal into gold. The name suggests that the group was turning the banal, everyday objects of mass culture into design.

• Meligete cabinet, designed by Alessandro Mendini (1984).

• Atomaria lamp by Mendini (1984).

Memphis

• Founded by Ettore Sottsass in 1981.

• The name is a reference to Memphis, Tennessee (home of Elvis Presley) and the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis – simultaneously referring to modern popular culture and to ancient/classical culture. It was also said to be inspired by the Bob Dylan song Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again.

• Published Memphis, The New International Style in 1981 – the title was a riposte to Modernism.

• Drew inspiration from Art Deco, Pop Art and 50s kitsch.

• Memphis embraced the ephemeral nature of fashion: “We are all sure that Memphis furniture will soon go out of style.”

• Sottsass: “It is no coincidence that the people who work for Memphis don’t pursue a metaphysic aesthetic idea or an absolute of any kind, much less eternity . . . Today everything one does is consumed. It is dedicated to life, not to eternity.”