River Arno

This text traces a compelling historical and cultural narrative beginning with the catastrophic 1966 flood of the River Arno in Florence, which not only devastated the city but catalyzed a unique moment of global solidarity and radical thought in architectural and artistic practice. The rescue of the city’s damaged movable heritage—books, manuscripts, paintings—sparked the mobilization of thousands of volunteers, the angeli del fango, working in chaotic, communal, and quasi-festive conditions to salvage its cultural soul. This same year marked the emergence of Superstudio, a radical architectural collective from Florence that would go on to critique traditional notions of heritage and preservation through provocative, unbuildable proposals. Their photomontages—such as flooding Florence or freezing Graz in dry ice—juxtaposed disaster with speculative utopias to question the authority of institutions like Italia Nostra and the dominant narratives of national identity and history. This attitude finds an unexpected parallel in the work of Portuguese architects Barroso & Ramos, who in 1975 proposed covering Porto’s Avenida dos Aliados with sand to erase imposed urban order and reclaim space for spontaneity and individual freedom. Both groups (recently represented in the archives of Drawing Matter), despite never crossing paths, used collage and drawing as insurgent tools of critique, constructing dystopias that interrogated architecture’s complicity in power while celebrating alternative, ecological, and vernacular modes of life. Their shared refusal to accept the built environment as immutable or sacrosanct reveals a generational defiance, rooted in historical trauma but projected through poetic and political imagination.