Dog

The presence of animals in the narrative and iconography of the florentine architecture group Superstudio is one element of its multiform metaphoric language. From this point of view, animals for Superstudio are tout court representations of Nature—that is, the representation of what architecture is destined to embrace and, literally, comprehend. Although initially cows, horses, dogs, or monkeys appear simply as sparring partners in Superstudio’s architectural collages, by being living things placed in opposition to the abstract monumental background (or foreground) of squared architectural volumes, they progressively become active characters of tales tuned as parables. In those narratives, animals are not just living things but agents of living nature, a wide, symbolic, and cultural sphere read as the counterpart of rationality. In such a category—which ends up including humans too—architecture is not represented in abstract monumental forms anymore but is investigated as an anthropological fact through which modernity is questioned about its real functioning as a system, its purpose, and its forms of life.