THE POLITICS OF DANCING: THE RADICAL ERA IN ITALY

Felicori, Bianca [UCL]

Conference held at IED Rome, Italy, 22 October 2022. After the Second World War Following the economic boom in Europe and America, a new idea of leisure architecture was born to reply to the emerging needs of a society that distinguished labour time from leisure time. Free time was an “exclusive privilege of the West”, as wrote the French critic Pierre Restany in 1980 on “Domus“. It was the time we take away from work, duty and any kind of daily toil whatsoever. In this particular cultural context architects started to design discos transcended the simple idea that a space should just serve a purpose. Indeed, clubs were designed and used as fertile ground for freedom and creativity. Clubs were multifunctional places with flexible rooms, where people organised concerts, parties, performances, happenings and occasionally exhibitions and new architecture classes. This would happen within a non-stop interplay between the people and the place itself, whereon the user could operate by changing its aspect and defining its sense. It all started with the piper club in Rome, designed by Manlio Cavalli and Francesco and Giancarlo Capolei with a pop aesthetic, leading figures from the Italian beat scene and emerging international groups performed here, the club was attended by artists such as Andy Warhol and Piero Manzoni.