The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

By Paulina Konkina

Over the past few decades the concept of The Political in different understandings and variations has been repeatedly discussed in the context of architecture by various people. I was introduced to this subject by accidentally picking up a book called ‘The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture’ written by Italian architect and theoretician Pier Vittorio Aureli. He teaches at Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and the Technical University of Delft and is a cofounder of the architectural practice DOGMA.

Aureli became wider known to readers of architectural theory in 2008, publishing ‘The Project of Autonomy, Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalism’. It offers an insightful look at the history of Autonomia Operaia, an Italian political movement particularly active in the 1970s and its effect on architectural theory and practice in Italy over that time, including the writing of Manfredo Tafuri and the practice of Aldo Rossi and Archizoom. The book initially descends from the theories of Italian philosopher Mario Tronti, whose concept was the interpretation of Marxist theory and the latter trend of a post-political activistthinking. Because of this, the reader is forced to rethink the formative period of the Autonomia movement, coming to the conclusion that the possibility of autonomy was not a “...generic claim of autonomy from, but rather a more audacious and radical claim for autonomy...,” thus constructing a source of alternative opposition to the hegemonic power relations maintained by capitalism.

‘The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture’ is a follow-up to his first publication, however, it can be read as a direct, though much more historic and architectural expansion on these original ideas.

The book was initially written as a reaction to a contemporary condition of urbanism in which architecture has become popular in recent years. Aureli is trying to actualise architectural form amid the current debate and to “address the unequivocal social and cultural power architecture possesses to produce representations of the world through exemplary forms of built reality.”

In the introduction, Aureli defines absolute architecture as an island within the city; separated but not completely free from the city. This sense of separation is emphasised in the book as a framework for opposition within the city through which architecture explicates its political and democratic dimension. Autonomous architecture thus fundamentally embodies agonism and through this unfolds its ultimate purpose: to accommodate and–at the same time–to govern differences. The main body of the book consists of four chapters that discuss the idea of the island, of the architectonic archipelago within the sea of urbanisation. Aureli analyses Andrea Palladio and the Project of an Anti-Ideal City, Piranesi’s Campo Marzio versus Nolli’s Nuova Pianta di Roma, Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Project for a Metropolis and finally Oswald Mathias Ungers, OMA and the Project of the City. The author deduces from all his examples different attributes of an “absolute architecture” and different ways architects reacted to historic developments in urbanism. It is an attitude that opposes architectural form as islands or archipelagos against an everexpanding, growth driven, capitalist urban matter.

I found it a little disappointing that there is no specific and continuous exploration of the historic development of capitalism in relation to the expansionist concept of urbanism. However, although these discussions may not always seem straight to the point, but nonetheless always inspiring, worthwhile and wonderful to read.