CALABRIA HOLIDAY MACHINE

In 1967, one of the founders of the radical architecture collective Superstudio, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, completed his thesis project at the University of Florence. Titled "Macchina per le vacanza" (Holiday Machine), the project theorized solutions to a diverse set of problems, design of facilities for mass tourism associated with the notion of traditional Italian summer holiday, and the historic issue of coastal erosion in Southern Italy, specifically in the Tropea region of Calabria.

Illustrated through beautifully detailed drawings and photomontages, the Tropea Holiday Machine was widely published and exhibited, and provided to be a vanguard for future Superstudio publications.

As a theoretical example of industrialized architecture, the Tropea Holiday Machine provides many glimpses of the design through process and machine aesthetics of that age, and serves as a starting point for my study of Calabria Holiday Machine at 50.