In this book, Pier Vittorio Aureli reconsiders architectural form in light of a unitary idea of architecture and the city, proposing a heightened formal awareness in architecture as a prerequisite for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. In this study, the author opposes the forces of limitless urbanization, proposing the idea of absolute architecture as a confrontation with the forces of global capital—a generational call to reclaim the concept of the city, as well as the reality of its narratives, as the foundation for rethinking the possibilities of architecture.
Aureli revisits the work of architects who advanced the construction of architectural forms concerned with the city as a whole—such as Cerdà, Palladio, Piranesi, Boullée, Mies van der Rohe, Hilberseimer, Ungers, Archizoom, and OMA—whose work addresses the transformations of the modern city and its urban implications through the development of specific, strategic architectural forms. Their projects for the city do not take the form of a master plan, but are instead expressed as an “archipelago” of site-specific interventions. The possibility of an absolute architecture is, therefore, the possibility of both constructing the city and understanding it—along with its opposing force, urbanization—through the finite nature of architectural form.
Introduction
