The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Writing Architecture) PDF
Preview The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Writing Architecture)
The PossibiliTy of an absoluTe archiTecTure Writing Architecture series A project of the Anyone Corporation; Cynthia Davidson, editor Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories Bernard Cache, 1995 Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money Kojin Karatani, 1995 Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture Ignasi de Solà-Morales, 1996 Constructions John Rajchman, 1997 Such Places as Memory John Hejduk, 1998 Welcome to The Hotel Architecture Roger Connah, 1998 Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy Luis Fernández-Galiano, 2000 A Landscape of Events Paul Virilio, 2000 Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space Elizabeth Grosz, 2001 Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts Giuliana Bruno, 2007 Strange Details Michael Cadwell, 2007 Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism Anthony Vidler, 2008 Drawing for Architecture Leon Krier, 2009 Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde K. Michael Hays, 2010 The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture Pier Vittorio Aureli, 2011 The Alphabet and the Algorithm Mario Carpo, 2011 The MIT Press CaMbrIdge, MassaChuseTTs London, engLand The PossibiliTy of an absoluTe archiTecTure Pier Vittorio Aureli © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Filosofia and Trade Gothic by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The possibility of an absolute architecture / Pier Vittorio Aureli. p. cm. — (Writing architecture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-51579-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Architecture. 2. Cities and towns. I. Title. NA2540.A97 2011 720.1—dc22 2010030741 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents Acknowledgments vii IntroductIon ix 1. Toward The archiPelago 1 Defining the Political and the Formal in Architecture 2. The geoPoliTics of The ideal Villa 47 Andrea Palladio and the Project of an Anti-Ideal City 3. InstauratIo urbIs 85 Piranesi’s Campo Marzio versus Nolli’s Nuova Pianta di Roma 4. archiTecTure as a sTaTe of excePTion 141 Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Project for a Metropolis 5. The ciTy wiThin The ciTy 177 Oswald Mathias Ungers, OMA, and the Project of the City as Archipelago notes 229 Index 247 Ac knowledgments I offer deep thanks to Cynthia Davidson for her continuous sup- port, critical help, and editorial work on the manuscript of this book. Without her strong encouragement and patience the book would not exist. Thanks also to Matthew Abbate and the MIT Press. The following people have been important in shaping the con- tent of the book in different ways, consciously or unconsciously: Wiel Arets, Marco Biraghi, Cesare Birignani, Alice Bulla, Luca Galofaro, Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, Elias Guenoun, Ariane Lourie Harrison, Rolf Jenni, Gabriele Mastrigli, Vedran Mimica, Philippe Morell, Joan Ockman, Manuel Orazi, Bernardo Secchi, Lukasz Stanek, Brett Steele, Roemer van Toorn, Thomas Weaver, Alejandro Zaera Polo, and Guido Zuliani. The Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and the Architectural Association in London have been welcoming platforms for the development of the ideas expressed in this book. Fundamental discussions with Umberto Barbieri, Andrea Branzi, Peter Eisenman, Gabriele Mastrigli, Martino Tattara, Mario Tronti, and Elia Zenghelis have directly influenced the writing. I dedicate this book to my parents and my sister. In troductIon This book proposes to reconsider architectural form in light of a unitary interpretation of architecture and the city. This uni- tary interpretation is put forward via the paradox of a unilateral synthesis: a unitary interpretation made from within projects on architectural form itself. This unilateral synthesis addresses the possibility of interpreting architectural form as the index for the constitution of an idea of the city. In order to highlight the constitutive paradox implied in such a thesis, I have defined the object of this book as absolute architecture. The term absolute is intended to stress, as much as possible, the individuality of the architectural form when this form is confronted with the environment in which it is conceived and constructed. I use absolute not in the conventional sense of “pu- rity” but in its original meaning as something being resolutely itself after being “separated” from its other.1 In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organization, and its government. In the course of history, certain architects have articulated the autonomy of form through a radical and systematic confrontation with the city in which they have operated. If politics is agonism through separation and confrontation, it is precisely in the pro- cess of separation inherent in the making of architectural form that the political in architecture lies, and thus the possibility of understanding the agonistic relationship between architecture and its context. The very condition of architectural form is to separate and to be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the
Description:The list of books you might like
