If only Superstudio was still active today, we might be treated to such wonderful designs as the Quaderna furniture collection. The good news is that the collection is still in production courtesy of Zanotta. Superstudio was an Italian “anti-design” and architecture firm formed in 1966 in Florence by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, later joined by Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro and Roberto Magris, and Alessandro Poli.

They began with the ‘constant monument’ idea, which wrapped up everything such as a squared magma, continued with the ‘histogram of architecture’, which generated without any effort furniture and ambiences whose “Super-surface was a mental attitude model,” and then finally arrived at the ‘Super-idea’, which beats time with a constant regularity, deliberately written in black and white, conceptually revealed and theoretically closed, eventually generating the Quaderna collection, the most architectural items ever seen in the long history of furniture, which Aurelio Zanotta was ready to turn into a myth.

A family of unique and timeless furniture takes shape, an icon based on regular geometric shapes covered with squared white laminate and characterised by strict volumes; simple and perfect. A real “artificial landscape” extensible as you wish, neutral and strong at the same time: a single squared top “with legs” that becomes a table and space, as well as a chair, bed, bench, cabinet, stool.

Superstudio abandoned working as a collective in 1978, but its members continued to develop their ideas independently through their writings, via education, architectural practice and other design projects.

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