"Less is enough" lecture note

Strelka Institute . Lecture notes.

03.09.2013

Less is Enough. Pier Vitorio Aureli Less is more. Mies interview after seagram building end of construction. Harshness: резкость Richard Florida - The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent Ambivalence of ascetisism Амбивале́нтность (от лат. ambo — «оба» и лат. valentia — «сила») — двойственность отношения к чему-либо Ascetisism: exercise and practise Ancient philosophers applied theory to their lifes. Taught themselves what to do.

Max Weber - Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism Two types: innerweltliche and ausserweltliche asceticism "Inner or Other- worldly" asceticism is practised by people who withdraw from the world to live an ascetic life (this includes monks who live communally in monasteries, as well as hermits who live alone).

"Worldly" asceticism refers to people who live ascetic lives but do not withdraw from the world.

Monks first expirienced richness of life alone. First individuals. Constant TRAINING and FOCUS Pray & work. Monastery- place for production, built according functionality:

Convent of Saint Gallen 1

Strelka Institute . Lecture notes.

03.09.2013

Sebastiano Serlio - I sette libri dell'architettura ("Seven Books of Architecture") Styding architecture not only by great monuments POVERTY is a new STATUS QUO

Le Corbuiser - Maison Dom-Ino 1914 Polykatoikia (Greek: Πολυκατοικία) : The Block of Flats

Enactment: принятие закона Tension: напряжение Walter Benjamin - Moskauer Tagebuch Sigfried Giedion - Space, Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command Idea of bourgeois interiors is to give autentity to the space VS tabula rasa interior

Le Corbusier, «The House of the man»1942

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Strelka Institute . Lecture notes.

03.09.2013

HANNES MEYER .Co-op. Interieur 1926 Idea of existence minimum, but with some entertaiment LESS IS NOT MORE LESS IS JUST ENOUGHT Charles Pierre Baudelaire - Fleurs du Mal Poetry of Charles Pierre Baudelaire^ not only poetry but living outside the house

To be representation of your theory Hash : мешанина Resistance: сопротивление

Steve Jobs: like an abbath, Apple like a monastery. Dark side of ascetism. To clog: засорять Design through your life. ASCETISISM IS FULL CONTOL

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"Less is enough" lecture note

Published on Sep 4, 2013

Alexander Tkachenko

Pier Vittorio Aureli lecture in Strelka Institute. “Less is more” goes the modernist dictum. But is it? In an age when we are endlessly urged to do “more with less”, can we still romanticise the pretensions of minimalism? For Pier Vittorio Aureli, the return of “austerity chic” is a perversion of what ought to be a meaningful way of life. Charting the rise of asceticism in early Christianity and its institutionalisation with the medieval monasteries, Aureli examines how the basic unit of the reclusive life – the monk’s cell – becomes the foundation of private property. And from there, he argues, it all starts to go wrong. By late capitalism, asceticism has been utterly aestheticised. It manifests itself as monasteries inspired by Calvin Klein stores, in the monkish lifestyle of Steve Jobs and Apple’s aura of restraint. Amid all the hypocrisy, it must still be possible to reprise the idea of “less” as a radical alternative, as the first step to living the life examined.