Monumento Continuo is one of the most representative projects of Radical design. It shows, through exaggeration and utopia, real phenomena such as the artificial nature of the landscape and the domination of market laws. It consists of a potentially infinite square modular architecture, represented by photomontages, expanding over various capitals and places around the world, merging nature and city. It is an “architectural model of global urbanization”, but at the same time, it is anti-architectural. In the famous “New York Redevelopment. Extension of Central Park”, the grid is articulated to coexist with Manhattan’s skyscrapers. In its subsequent evolution, “Supersurface”, the grid instead creates a boundless plain, a new landscape in which man leads a life devoid of architecture and sustained only by technology and objects. The project questions the formal structures of society as well as technological and cultural homologation.

The Archizoom group approached spatial issues not with the traditional methods of urban planning but with images that highlight the almost total urbanisation of a globe, in which the opposition between artifice and nature, between city and countryside, disappears. The design consists of a repeatable homogeneous system that makes the normal urban articulations in streets, squares, blocks, etc. obsolete, and in which the empty space between buildings and the city is filled with furniture. It is therefore the designer, and not the architect or town planner, who designs the environment through a system of open objects that give freedom to the user. The “No-Stop-City” is represented in the drawings as a neutral grid covering the space, interrupted only at the horizon by natural landscapes. The photographs, on the other hand, depict infinite spaces in which people live in a total lack of town planning and architecture, in a world populated only by objects such as electrical appliances and motorbikes.

Il Commutatore, a project that Ugo La Pietra developed as part of his research on urban space, consists of two wooden boards joined at an angle. By leaning on one of the two panels with an adjustable angle, the user shifts their centre of gravity and thus experiences new perceptions that lead them to observe the world “from a different angle”. The project, which aims to allow the user to symbolically re-appropriate urban spaces, has been defined by La Pietra as a “model of understanding”, a “tool for deciphering and proposing” that alone sums up all his research on urban space.

Taking inspiration from a photograph of tourists sitting on broken columns in the Athenian Acropolis, with the Capitello chair Studio 65 transforms both the function and symbolism of the Ionic column into a democratic operation that steals it from the elite and gives it to the masses in the form of a polyurethane foam seat. Studio 65’s work is characterised by a postmodern style, with ironic products that draw on neo-classicism and Pop Art. The group was among the most effective pioneers in favouring imagination and message over function, and this project is a classic example of Radical Design’s rejection of the dogmas of modernism.

Created by Mendini, Lassù, designed by Mendini, is a key piece of Radical Design. It belongs to the series of “objects for spiritual use”, which question the function of the object, emancipating it from the idea of use that is intrinsic to its nature. The protagonist of the project is in fact an idealised chair placed on a pedestal and thus deprived of its function as a seat. In addition, the work is set on fire during a performance of symbolic and ritual value that leaves traces on the object, evoking the idea of its death and thus giving it a human dimension that encourages reflection on the transitory nature that links things and humans. The project has been realised in several versions, the most famous of which is a photographic image of the Bracciodiferro product line for Cassina, in which Mendini burns a version of a Lassù chair with steps.

Chest of drawers – You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory by Tejo Remy, who together with Hella Jongerius and Marcel Wanders was one of the first members of Droog, is one of the group’s most iconic artworks, exhibited in major museums such as MoMA. It is made up of a series of old drawers collected by the designer and bound together with a leather beòt to create a “new” chest of drawers, which defamiliarises an object made up of traditional components and materials to create a product that never repeats itself in the same shape and colour, as the drawers are always different, and can be removed and rearranged freely. Clearly, the ultimate goal of the product is not industrial production, but rather promoting a critique of consumer culture and overproduction through the poetic use of old objects and their intrinsic nostalgia.

Faraday Chair, the first Critical Design project presented by Dunne and Raby, is a piece of furniture that protects you against the electromagnetic fields that invade homes. It appears as a kind of daybed that forces the user to lie in a fetal position, although the designers describe it as a “chair”, to emphasise that when electromagnetism enters the field, our conception of objects can be altered. The design was photographed rather than videotaped, because, according to the authors, representations of single, fixed moments would allow for greater emphasis on the user’s vulnerability, while also giving them greater freedom of imagination. The Faraday Chair aims to draw attention to the electromagnetic world, invisible but extraordinarily populated, stimulating reflection on the implications of the constant presence of radiation.

The Vice/Virtue Glass series was initially produced for the “Glassmanifest” in Leerdam, Holland, and subsequently exhibited at MoMA, at the exhibition “Design and Violence” curated by Paola Antonelli in 2013. The series aims to explore, through dark humour, the cultural contradictions of our behaviour towards addiction and drugs, and is composed of glasses redesigned to satisfy needs related to health and hedonism. These glasses include, for example, the Dispensary, in blown glass and with a specially designed compartment for Prozac, the Exhaust, also in blown glass and with a compartment for cigarettes, and the Fountain, whose design incorporates a hypodermic needle.

This project was developed by Studio Nucleo, a Turin-based collective directed by Piergiorgio Robino operating in the fields of design, contemporary art and architecture. It aims to highlight how the evolution of production processes generates “alien” products that are less and less comprehensible to the common user. According to the authors, the best way to understand an object and become intimate with it is to participate in its construction. Terra! consists of the cardboard frame of a seat, which will then be completed by the user by covering it with soil and seeds. When grass grows from the seeds, the structure will in fact become part of the landscape. A variety of materials, be they natural or artificial, such as cement or snow, can be used for the covering, depending on the landscape in which the product will be placed.

The Smoke series was created in 2002 as a DAE graduation project, and then put into production by the Dutch brand Moooi in 2003. Baas transforms second-hand wooden furniture objects, making them his own with a particular technique – the objects are burnt with a blowtorch, and their fragile charred surfaces are preserved by applying multiple layers of transparent epoxy resin, and coating or repairing, if necessary, the pieces to maintain their original function. The project emphasises the customisation of existing furniture objects rather than creating them from scratch, thus emphasising their history and the human intervention in the production process and highlighting their difference from industrial objects, which are flawless and identical by definition.

Cow Bench by Julia Lohmann, a German designer and researcher who graduated from the RCA, investigates the contradictions in the relationship between humans and animals by exploring “the threshold between animal and material”. The project, defined by the author as a bovine “Memento mori”, consists of a series of upholstered and leather-covered seats, the shape of which represents the very cow that provided the leather, thus conceptually linking the material to the animal that is its origin. Head and legs are not present as they are the first parts of the animal removed at slaughter, while the internal structure recalls the ribs and spine. Each seat is covered with the skin of a single cow that is placed exactly as it was on the animal and used in its entirety, without removing any wrinkles, scars or imperfections. Just as we don’t want food to remind us of the animal that provided it, it bothers us that a material reminds us of its origin.

Fossili moderni is a project involving the creation of furniture using containers and recycled objects, transformed into compartments of different shape, size, colour and orientation. The randomness that comes from the available recycled materials, therefore, plays a fundamental role in the production process. It is the element that determines the design of the object and makes it a unique piece. The concept of recycling on which the system devised by this project is based addresses the issue of extending the life of objects, giving them more meanings other than their original ones, modifying their aesthetic and functional appearance, and improving and enhancing their formal qualities. The ecological reflection on sustainability is also supported in a critical key by the project’s name: fossils are the only manifestation we have left of past civilisations and therefore, looking at a modern fossil, we have to ask ourselves what we will leave to our posterity.

In order to make “100 chairs in 100 days”, Martino Gamper, an Italian designer who studied at the RCA, collected old chairs from the streets of London and from the homes of friends, to disassemble and reassemble the structural and aesthetic elements of existing products and give life to new chairs with alienating, poetic and ironic shapes. The project, apparently of unlimited creativity, is actually subject to the severe restrictions imposed by materials, workmanship and timing. Combining formal and functional aspects with sociological and semiotic aspects, it aims to question the idea of the intrinsic superiority of the unique piece and demonstrate the difficulty of objectively judging design. In this project, for example, the value of the histories of the old chairs incorporated in the new product has the same dignity as style and function.

Design for an Overpopulated Planet, No. 1, Foragers, one of the most representative projects of Speculative Design, draws its inspiration from a UN study on the need to drastically increase food production to meet the needs of the global population over the next 40 years. It consists of a representation of a “possible future” in which, given the failure of institutions and industry to solve the problem of lack of food, people will have to find a solution themselves, with the knowledge they have. The objects that make up the project are gastrointestinal tracts outside the body that, using synthetic biology and taking inspiration from the animal world, extract non-edible nutrients from the environment and digest them. With a bottom-up approach, these devices are designed and used by groups of people to maximise the nutritional values available in the urban environment.

In United Micro Kingdoms, Dunne and Raby explore the impact that different ideological systems have on our daily lives. They identify four scenarios corresponding to four micro kingdoms of a hypothetical future England, inhabited by as many populations with different ideologies (Digitarians, Anarcho-evolutionists, Communo-nuclearists, Bioliberals). Each scenario is represented by a means of transport that embodies the ideology, values and priorities of each micro-kingdom and through which the authors demonstrate how different political and value conformations generate different solutions for the same need. For example, the Digitarians’ Digicars drive themselves along routes calculated by algorithms, and the Anarcho-evolutionists are themselves vehicles, as through DIY biohacking techniques they modify their own bodies and the surrounding nature, moving by means of human power or genetically modified animals.

Resulting from the collaboration between anthropologist and curator Ewa Klekot and ceramist Arkadiusz Szwed on the theme of the relationship between artificial intelligence and human labour, the project aims to reaffirm the role of humans, their experience and intuition, in the dynamics of industrialisation. It consists of a porcelain tableware collection on whose components were imprinted the fingerprints of the craftsmen who made them, left on the clay with gloves dipped in a solution of cobalt blue salts. Thanks to this mineral, the imprints turn dark blue after firing, creating random and abstract patterns. The project aims to celebrate the role of craftsmen’s hands in the production process, emphasising the “endangered” human presence. The project People From The Porcelain Factory, made in the oldest porcelain factory in Poland, is complemented by other media, including photographs of the workers, a short film and some texts.

The project, commissioned by the NGV Triennal in Melbourne and presented at the XXII Milan Triennale, consists of research on waste recycling developed by Italian duo Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Faresin, both DAE graduates). At the centre is the problem of electronic waste, which is sent to developing countries where conditions do not allow for proper disposal. The installation employs different media. It features physical elements, such as office objects created from pieces of electronic product shells, inviting us to reflect on the issue of surface extraction and the role of design in transforming natural resources into desirable products. The video part, on the other hand, aims to provide global strategies for a design that takes the issue of recycling into greater consideration, alternating interviews with professionals in the sector with design indications aimed at improving the repair and recycling process.

The project, presented at DAE’s Graduate Show in 2018, addresses the issue of global warming and its correlation with rapidly rising waters through a wooden chair raised on blocks to allow one to sit above the sea level. The first version was calibrated for Rotterdam, the author’s hometown, which is 90 percent below sea level. The use of the blocks allows the height of the chair to be adjusted according to the different heights of the water, allowing us to directly and tangibly visualise the consequences of climate change. The aesthetic appearance and placement of the blocks were conceived by the designer to give the idea of the panic with which the chair is being adapted to the rising tides. On one of the legs, moreover, is fixed a brass indicator that recalls the plaques placed on Dutch buildings to mark the difference between the height of the ground and the sea level.

Smogware is a collection of ceramics aimed at raising awareness of the problem of pollution in our cities, making the poor quality of the air we breathe visible. The decoration of the ceramics is in fact a glaze made from common air pollution particles, collected from different surfaces in the city and transformed into glaze without using additives or dyes. The first glaze was made from dust collected in Rotterdam, while other collections reflect pollution from cities such as London, Milan, Beijing and Jakarta. The colours and opacity of the glazes vary depending on the chemical composition and amount of air pollutants in different places and times of collection, and are a concrete visualisation of the deterioration of the air we breathe.