The ‘becoming-complex’ of architecture

Gianni Pettena (1940) has been described as an ‘architect by training and artist by protest’, and an ‘architect actively on strike’. Both a member of the Florentine branch of the Architettura Radicale and a selfproclaimed outsider – as insinuated by his contribution to the iconic Global Tools portrait, in which he holds up a sign: Io sono la spia, or ‘I am a spy’ – Pettena’s work was unique among the group in its deep affinities with the land art and the American countercultural movement, as an extension of earlier, anti-capitalist ideas pursued in Italy that explored the decoupling of function from form in architecture.