GRUPPO 9999

Gruppo 9999 was a group of radical architects founded in Florence in 1968 by Giorgio Birelli, Carlo Caldini, Fabrizio Fiumi and Paolo Galli. And later joined by Paolo Coggiola, Andrea Gigli, Mario Preti and Giovanni Sani . It remained active until 1972.

The movement, first known as anti-design or counter-design, then defined as radical architecture by Germano Celant, had its driving force in Florence in the sixties, thanks to the presence of numerous groups and avant-garde, utopian and visionary architects such as Superstudio, Archizoom, Ufo, Remo Buti, Gianni Pettena and Zziggurat. Many of them pupils of Leonardo Ricci and Leonardo Savioli, teachers who together with Giovanni Klaus Koenig and Umberto Eco, supported the wave of generational change. The subversive movement later spread to Milan, Turin, Rome and Naples, and contributed to reformulate the architectural language and revolution the idea of ​​architecture linked to monumentality and an old design methodology, disconnected from the modern world.

The 9999 Group condemned the misuse of the mass media and the false goals of the economic-political run-up attentive only to the logic of the market and consumption, promoting an ecological movement where each of their design activities contained an ethical message. They launched a proclamation which, in addition to highlight the group’s philosophy, aimed to outline a specific life model and to spread it.