Superstudio, the Italian architecture and design collective active from 1966 to 1986, radically reconceived architecture as a conceptual tool for deconstructing modernist utopias. Gian Piero Frassinelli (born 1939) joined Superstudio in 1968 and became the archivist of its legacy after the group disbanded. Though trained as an architect, Frassinelli’s primary contributions to Superstudio included writings and drawings that explored the intersections of architecture and anthropology. His work from the 1960s to the present takes the form of dystopian essays, literary fictions, and retrofuturistic scenarios. The book brings together sixteen texts written during the Superstudio years and more recently, focusing on the inherent connection between radical thought and dystopia. Against the backdrop of historical radical and political thought, the texts reveal a coherent through line of nonacademic architectural thinking about people, spaces, and objects in times of profound crisis. Superstudio—founded amid the student movement and the disastrous flooding of the Arno in Florence in 1966—introduced anthropological considerations into architecture that today might be described as Anthropocene-oriented. Projects such as The Twelve Ideal Cities (1972) and Gli atti fondamentali (1971–73) offered a profound critique of urban rationalism, reflecting instead on life, education, love, ceremony, and death. This intellectual framework gives Superstudio’s work enduring relevance today.

Angelika Stepken is a curator, author, and researcher. She has published many reviews, catalogue texts, and books on contemporary art. Among her publications are Lara Vinca-Masini, Scritti scelti 1961–2019: Arte Architettura Design Arti applicate (Gli Ori, 2020); Giuseppe Chiari - Maria Gloria Bicocchi, Giancarlo Cardini, Alvin Curran, Gian Piero Frassinelli, Daniele Lombardi, Paolo Masi, Lara-Vinca Masini, Gianni Pettena, Renato Ranaldi parlano di / sprechen über Giuseppe Chiari (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2017); Ketty La Rocca: You - works and writings 1964–1976 (Revolver Verlag, 2017); and Unmapping the Renaissance (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2016). From 2006 to 2022 she was the director of Villa Romana, a German run artists’ residency and center for contemporary art in Florence. From 1998 to 2006 she was director of Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe. She works as a freelance consultant in Germany and Italy.