Gianni Pettena

Along with Archizoom, Superstudio and UFO, Gianni Pettena was part of the original core of Italy’s radical architecture movement, which had a considerable impact on the practices of architecture and design.

By introducing a broadened view of architecture, Gianni Pettena uses conceptual art and political rhetoric to analyse the transformation of public spaces. He established his place in the fields of Italian architecture and design in the 1960s, when still a student of architecture in Florence. Shortly after graduating, he was invited to the United States as an artist in residence, first at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, then at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His deep involvement in the development of thought on art, architecture and design led him to teach at various institutions, including the Architecture Association in London and the California State University Architecture Programme in Florence. He published his views in a manifesto entitled L’Anarchitetto: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Architect (1973, Guaraldi Rimini), which influenced several generations of artists and architects. In it, the author rejects boundaries between disciplines, and defines himself as an “anarchitect”: someone who, when he speaks of architecture, is designating a creative condition that is intended to produce architecture, but ends up being an art of living.

Gianni Pettena is represented by Salle Principale, Paris (France).