Tafuri Architecture and Utopia Design and Capitalist Development Review Summary

I bought my copy of Architecture and Utopia in 1991 or 1992 so I've been carrying this little book around for about 20 years. I mean literally carrying it around – I tend to pick it upwards two or iii times a year to dip into. I often have information technology on holidays or on long train rides. For those of yous who know the book you may not think much of my holidays now. It is pocket-size – both in dimension and full pages – and I always have the impression that I will read it all the style through and understand information technology all. I fail each fourth dimension. But that is the beauty of this little book. This is a book that withal has scholars and theorists scratching their heads. Then it is worth warning you that y'all need a fair scrap of knowledge of architectural history to brand sense of this book. The reason for this is non that it written in philosophical or theoretical speak simply considering it is virtually the history of architecture over the last 250 years. More than than that, it is a challenge to that history is mostly written. Specifically it addresses the relationship betwixt architecture and capitalist evolution (every bit suggested by its subtitle 'Design and Capitalist Evolution'). It is, as such, a political critique, and a harsh i at that. Tafuri has been accused of having written the well-nigh pessimistic analysis of architecture ever put on paper, but it'southward not considering he especially wants it to be that way. When you starting time to understand this history, and specifically the ineffectiveness of avant-garde approaches, you are not left with much hope. This critique has been of import to me because I have argued that architecture is de facto a utopian human activity. That is, to design is to project into the future. Y'all always build with the intention of resolving something or bettering a state of affairs. I don't think any architect would admit to wanting to make things worse or even leaving things equally they are. Tafuri's articulation of how architectural product is caught up in political economy shows how every attempt to break through the grip of contemporary credo only acts to reinforce it. I do not necessarily disagree with this thought. Information technology is of import to be aware of what is actually achievable rather than exist nether whatsoever romantic illusion that architecture tin transform or even critique society, political or economic reality. This doesn't hateful that what one does is futile; a sober approach to what is possible means you don't waste energy with unrealistic goals. Although Tafuri'due south critique is quite disarming there are other ways in which compages contributes – through an date with everyday practices, for case – and which make compages a positive and worthwhile activity.

Rather than be put off by Tafuri's 'closure', his critique allows me to see how supposedly avant-garde work is fictive. And so it is with scepticism that I approach anything by Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, OMA, or the emerging piece of work based around parametric pattern. Information technology is maybe worth noting that Tafuri's critique didn't modify my manner of thinking merely only confirmed suspicions I had virtually work challenge to be critical or advanced during the 1980s and early 1990s. In particular, Peter Eisenman's work, backed upward past sophisticated theory, always seemed to me to be explainable via the prevailing means of production. The basics and bolts of his work – steel frame construction, plasterboard on metallic studs, suspended ceilings, window and doors details, and such – are exactly the same as the most conservative and corporate work. The only affair that differentiated an Eisenman building from one by SOM was its outward advent. Having skilful in the US I understood very well the limitations on architecture imposed by the way information technology was financed, by local regulations, health and safety laws and zoning guidelines. It was this realisation, first experienced in practice, which got me started request questions and somewhen led me to Tafuri and others. Ask yourself if you ever had crusade in your education to discuss the relationship between real estate and architecture. Were y'all ever asked to qualify if the land your project was on was privately endemic or publicly held? And if and so, did your tutors discuss how that would affect the possibilities of what you could design?

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One of the clearer and more easily digestible points made by Tafuri is the relationship betwixt the urban center and architecture (understood as a single edifice work). Before the backer transformation in how state is managed (bought, sold and endemic as a commodity) the relationship between these two was intimate. Buildings adamant the space and graphic symbol of cities and a city's grapheme was determined by its architecture. The treatment of the urban territory as commodity means that larger structural relationships become a hindrance to the exploitation of individual plots to their maximum. What architecture loses its connection and ability to class and contribute to the actual functioning structure of the city each human action of building becomes an isolated incident and an individual expression. Hence, yous get a building equally sophisticated as OMA Seattle Public Library – in terms of its internal programming and spatial system – sitting and expressing itself as a completely alienated object in the cityscape. What Tafuri allows us to encounter is that this is not OMA's fault, information technology is simply the simply possible outcome given the underlying weather. This is not to say that OMA could not have tried to mediate their building to its surroundings (the streetscape, its blueprint, the surrounding buildings and their grapheme). Yet, whatsoever attempt would be zippo more than nostalgia and doomed to neglect. Given that option, OMA volition never choose the cornball option, and in a way they accept done what is well-nigh honest. Does that make it alright? Does it brand the specific resolution a good one?

"Thus urban planning and architecture are finally separated." P.38

What OMA has done in that particular instance is what Tafuri would call 'pure architecture' or Class without Utopia. No utopia because OMA are too clever to recollect that they can affect the underlying capitalist atmospheric condition that make up one's mind the city's structure (physically and bureaucratically, not to mention politically).

"In order to "sustain" the metropolitan space, architecture seems obliged to get a spectre of itself." P.145

 Architecture and Utopia was written in 1973 and translated into English in 1976. The last few times I've dipped into the book I have begun to feel that the book is starting to historic period. That is, nosotros are now in the midst of an economic situation that Tafuri could not have foreseen, at least not in its specific manifestations. Tafuri is writing well-nigh the way that capitalist evolution upwards to the early 1970s affects architectural production. The book remains relevant because Tafuri'due south argument is conceptual enough not to exist stock-still to the specifics of the 1880s, 1920s or 1970s. It nevertheless made sense in the 1980s, 1990s. The fact that perhaps nosotros are experiencing something that may go beyond his conceptual analysis doesn't negate what he has done. Where ever nosotros stand today, it is on the shoulders of what has come before. That said, parts of the book seem similar they could have been written yesterday. During my outset readings in the early 1990s I thought about how the piece of work of Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, Aldo Rossi, and others fit the design then perfectly. Reading it today it seems to explain why each of MVRDV's buildings are utterly dissimilar, why the idea of 'starchitects' is now an accustomed phenomenon, and why iconographic buildings are snapped upwardly by every metropolis vying for a position on the global stage.

 Grim reading indeed. Yet I believe in the concept of utopia and the idea of projective architecture (see my entry on Mondrian when it appears). It is not that I, or anyone, should ignore Tafuri'due south argument. My view is that the conceptual framework does not describe how everything works at every level, hence my involvement in the everyday (come across my entries on Lefebvre and de Certeau when they announced). The volume is a kind of inoculation against naivety. I believe that we should all be enlightened of the larger conceptual frameworks inside which we be – similar them or not. Tafuri did non believe that architecture had the ability to be revolutionary (any longer) but he did allow that individuals still had the potential.

Notes: I re-read chapters and skimmed the whole book looking at underlined passages for useful quotes and nuggets I could put into this entry. Nonetheless, the volume and fifty-fifty its parts, indeed individual sentences, resist like shooting fish in a barrel summary. Little tidbits seemed to crave extensive discussions and I thought that would make things wearisome. So as always, if this interests y'all, read it for yourself and meet how yous go on. In whatever case, this was a difficult volume to discuss, but an essential one. I will probably refine and edit this entry from time to time – probably each time I pick it up and discover that I run across something different in it, yet again.

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Source: https://thesleepofrigour.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/tafuri-architecture-and-utopia/

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