The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture,

Aureli, Pier Vittorio,

ISBN 10: 0262515792 / ISBN 13: 9780262515795

Published by Cambridge, MIT Press (= Reihe: 'Writing Architecture Series'), 2011,, 2011

About this Item

XIV, 251 S., mit zahlreichen s/w-Abbildungen, Text: englisch, original Klappenbroschur, sehr schönes, sauberes Exemplar ohne Anstreichungen, ohne Vorbesitzvermerke, ohne Eckknicke etc. Sprache: Englisch.

Seller Inventory # 16742BB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture,
• Publisher: Cambridge, MIT Press (= Reihe: 'Writing Architecture Series'), 2011,
• Publication Date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0262515792
• ISBN 13: 9780262515795
• Seller catalogs:
  • Architektur

About this title

Synopsis

Architectural form reconsidered in light of a unitary conception of architecture and the city.

In The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Pier Vittorio Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. Aureli uses the term absolute not in the conventional sense of “pure,” but to denote something that is resolutely itself after being separated from its other. In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organization, and its government. Politics is agonism through separation and confrontation; the very condition of architectural form is to separate and be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form: the city as the composition of (separate) parts. Aureli revisits the work of four architects whose projects were advanced through the making of architectural form but whose concern was the city at large: Andrea Palladio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Étienne Louis-Boullée, and Oswald Mathias Ungers. The work of these architects, Aureli argues, addressed the transformations of the modern city and its urban implications through the elaboration of specific and strategic architectural forms. Their projects for the city do not take the form of an overall plan but are expressed as an “archipelago” of site-specific interventions.

About the Author

Pier Vittorio Aureli, an architect and educator, teaches at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and the Technical University of Delft. He is the author of The Project of Autonomy and other books.