By Drawing Matter

The Continuous Monument, developed by the Italian collective Superstudio during summer 1969, is one of the most well-known visionary projects within the history of architecture. In sketchbooks Number 11 and 12, dated over a few months between May and November 1969, much of the story of the Continuous Monument emerges – as it were, fully-fledged – from its first conception as a belt around Florence, and its later ambitious circumnavigation of the globe, to its diffident public manifestation – at the scale of a gallery – for the first of the two exhibitions in Graz in 1969. The drawings became the basis of the now better-known Superstudio collages.

This publication chronicles a four-part conversation, in which Natalini talks through his love of drawing and sketching; one of the first manifestations of the Continuous Monument in the Grazerzimmer for the 1969 Trigon Biennale; the evolution of the Continuous Monument, from sketchbooks Numbers 7 and 11 to sketchbook Number 12, and the more general history behind Superstudio. The commentary sits alongside a compendium of sketches.