Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape”, MoMA 1972 / S AM Basel

The exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated in 1972 by Emilio Ambasz at the MoMA in New York was a huge success. The show featured a selection of work, theory and historical background of twelve Italian designers and architects at a peak of the Italian radical design movement of the 1960s, early 1970s: Archizoom, Gae Aulenti, Mario Bellini, Joe Colombo, Ugo La Pietra, 9999, Gaetano Pesce, Alberto Rosselli, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Gruppo Strum, Superstudio, Marco Zanuso / Richard Sapper. The exhibition was curated by Emilio Ambasz, who from 1970 to 1976 was curator of design for MoMA in New York.

The current show at the Swiss Architecture Museum S AM in Basel, Switzerland, is an exhibition about an exhibition. It was presented last year in New York at Columbia University’s Buell Center at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). “Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’, MoMA 1972” brings together for the first time since 1972 the entire set of films produced for the original exhibition. The related design documents show a range of attitudes toward the conception and theoretical imperatives of the environments themselves and in this respect the current exhibition encounters again medias and environments and their potential for thinking anew the boundaries of architecture, domestic spaces, their conditions and territories. The show has been curated by Peter Lang, Luca Molinari and Mark Wasiuta.

VernissageTV covered the Preview of the exhibition and produced interviews with two of the curators of the show, Peter Lang and Luca Molinari. The interviews with Peter Lang and Luca Molinari are available after the jump (Interviewer: Linda Cassens Stoian, MA (S AM Tours).

Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape”, MoMA 1972 / S AM Basel. Preview, March 27, 2010.

> Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

Luca Molinari in conversation with Linda Cassens Stoian, MA (S AM Tours):

Peter Lang in conversation with Linda Cassens Stoian, MA (S AM Tours):

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