A01=Pier Vittorio Aureli
aesthetics
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
architect
architect gifts
architecture
architecture book
architecture books
architecture coffee table books
architecture gifts
art
art deco
art history
arts
Author_Pier Vittorio Aureli
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AM
classic
coffee table books
coffee table decor
collection
COP=United States
culture
Delivery_Pre-order
design
economics
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
essay
essays
european history
frank lloyd wright
history
history books
history of architecture
language
Language_English
marxism
mid century
mid century modern
modern architecture
modern home
modern retro home
modernism
PA=Temporarily unavailable
philosophy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
psychology
society
sociology
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780262545235
- Dimensions: 137 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 07 Nov 2023
- Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A landmark study of abstraction in architectural history, theory, and practice that challenges our assumptions about the meaning of abstract forms.
In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, this book presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries.
These divisions were anticipated by the architecture of antiquity, which established a distinction between manual and intellectual labor, and placed the former in service to the latter. Further abstractions arose as geometry, used for measuring territories, became the intermediary between land and money and eventually produced the logic of the grid. In our own time, architectural abstraction serves the logic of capitalism and embraces the premise that all things can be exchanged—even experience itself is a commodity. To resist this turn, Aureli seeks a critique of architecture that begins not by scaling philosophical heights, but by standing at the ground level of material practice.
In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, this book presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries.
These divisions were anticipated by the architecture of antiquity, which established a distinction between manual and intellectual labor, and placed the former in service to the latter. Further abstractions arose as geometry, used for measuring territories, became the intermediary between land and money and eventually produced the logic of the grid. In our own time, architectural abstraction serves the logic of capitalism and embraces the premise that all things can be exchanged—even experience itself is a commodity. To resist this turn, Aureli seeks a critique of architecture that begins not by scaling philosophical heights, but by standing at the ground level of material practice.
Pier Vittorio Aureli teaches at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is the cofounder of the architectural office, Dogma. He is the author of The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (MIT Press, 2011) and The Project of Autonomy, and the coauthor of Living and Working (MIT Press, 2022).
