Tag Archives: Italian architecture

RIP Vittorio Gregotti (1927 – 2020)

And the first covid-19 victims start to come in.

Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste (1968)

Vittorio Gregotti was an Italian architect. He contributed the essay “Kitsch and Architecture” to Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste (1968) by Gillo Dorfles.

While the essay references Googie architecture and the kitsch of the roadside attraction, it fails to cite God’s Own Junkyard (1964).

It also fails to foreshadow the positive view of kitsch in Learning from Las Vegas (1972).

RIP Adolfo Natalini (1941 – 2020)

Adolfo Natalini was an Italian architect, known for his involvement in the radical architecture collective Superstudio.

Here is the short film Supersurface: an Alternative Model for Life on the Earth (1972), Superstudio’s contribution to the MoMA exhibition: Italy. The New Domestic Landscape.

At the same time as reporting Natalini’s death, we need to report the death of co-founder Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (1941 – 2019) who apparently died over the summer.