Space Electronic and Radical Disco
Exhibitions bringing together Rossi’s curatorial and text-based research into Radical Design nightclubs in Italy.
- Submitting institution
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Kingston University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-97-0000
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, U.K.
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- June
- Year of first exhibition
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Nightclubs have been largely overlooked in both architecture and design histories, despite their significance as vital spaces of design experimentation and innovation since the 1960s onwards. This absence is particularly notable in terms of Radical Design: there is little research on how nightclubs were key spaces for the Italian movement in the 1960s and ‘70s. Largely associated with the refusal to design built architecture, Rossi’s research has exposed how there was one type of space the Radicals did create: the nightclub.
This body of work brings together Rossi’s design history research into Radical Design nightclubs through both curatorial and publication outputs. Her research initially focused on Space Electronic, a venue designed and co-run in Florence in 1969 by lesser-known Radical Design collective Gruppo 9999, which was a site of multimedia and multidisciplinary experimental in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Rossi first investigated Space Electronic through the curation of Space Electronic: Then and Now for the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale (2014): this was the first-ever exhibition about the nightclub. She subsequently developed this research into a journal article for AA Files (2014) about the venue and expanded it through the co-curation with Sumitra Upham of Radical Disco: Architecture and Nightlife in Italy, 1965 –1975 at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (2015–2016). Radical Disco was the first exhibition outside Italy about this phenomenon. This research exposed how other Radicals also designed nightclubs, including Gruppo UFO, Gruppo Strum and Superstudio. It showed their interest in nightclubs as a new spatial typology for an exploration of, and through architecture; thus, expanding both our knowledge and understanding of Italian design history and the design history of nightclubs. Rossi’s research was based on primary research material and methods, including interviews, archival research, object research, and informed both the design and content of the Biennale and ICA exhibitions.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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