As a manifesto-like project of radical architecture, “Continuous Monument” was shown for the first time at the exhibition Trigon in Graz in 1969. Conceived as a model of global urbanization, this three-dimensional grid runs over the Earth’s surface, negotiating megalopolises, mountains and oceans. Developed by Superstudio up until 1971, in the form of dozens of drawings, photomontages and storyboards offering spectacular visions (a Roman aqueduct spanning the Colorado river, a ring encircling the Acropolis in Athens, or New York City, etc.), the project presents situations for what the Histograms had defined at a theoretical level: architecture reduced to the state of absolute neutrality. In absorbing everything as it passes, transcending any notion of scale and location, and reducing the Earth to a unitary and infrastructural landscape, the “continuous monument” offers an unchanging and unalterable image, with neither beginning nor end. Fashioning these “dystopian” projections on the intuitive and realistic nature of an age, Superstudio constructed the synthetic and critical representation of a humanity which had entered the era of imagery, networks and total communications.
Aurélien Vernant
