The “brutality” of exposed concrete constituted the predominant image of international architectural expression in the 1960s. Alongside this, however, there was also an approach oriented toward utopia – Archigram, Metabolist and Superstudio – that explored the theme of the city as machine: technological and temporary with no history or context.
The project for the Italian pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, exemplifies the second school of experimentation. In terms of form, structure and materials, it constitutes the first “linguistic” experiment of Italian high tech, unquestionably marking a stage of architectural, structural and spatial development in the work of the Studio Valle. The temporary character of the work was thus used to justify experimentation with the gradual abandonment of the traditional post and lintel conception of structure and space.
