“Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology”:
‘Having Corpses in our Mouths’
A thesis submitted in fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Architecture
Emre Özyetiş
B.Arch.
School of Architecture and Design
Design and Social Context Portfolio
RMIT University
March 2013
In this thesis I
revisit Manfredo Tafuri’s 1969 article “Per una critica dell’ideologia
architettonica” (Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology) within the
political context ofItaly in the 1960s. I address the research question: what
is the contemporary relevance of the essay read in this context?
I suggest that
testing the arguments in Tafuri’s 1969 essay against his complete oeuvre and
his subsequent career as a critic or a historian obfuscates and misconstrues
the context
and the essay.
I argue that the
essay was published in a moment when operaisti protagonists were processing the
implications of the operaisti discourse they constructed in relation to the
intensification of
the social
conflict in Italy in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
This provides a
convincing context for Tafuri’s application of this discourse as a total
rejection of the possibility of the existence of an architectural profession
outside participation in capitalist
development.
I conclude that, located with precision within
the context of the journal Contropiano, where his essay was first
published,“Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology” is more likely to
agitate intellectuals and architects than it has previously.
It is important
for the generation who has not yet acquired professional autonomy, such as
architectural students or interns, to be reminded of Tafuri’s critique within
its context as they assume their social vocation.
Thus this is my target readership for this
thesis. It is particularly important to revisit Tafuri and his 1969 essay at a
time when there is a growing discussion around a social vocation or discourse
on sustainability, participatory design, radical architecture and such.
The social agenda
still makes the art and the profession of architecture resilient to
transforming political, economic and social structures. In this light, it is
not only necessary but also relevant to revisit the nature of the social
vocation of architects as it had been criticized in Tafuri’s 1969 essay within
the intellectual debates Italian operaisti project initiated.
Intellectuals and
architects writing following Tafuri’s death point to the past misinterpretation
of the radical threads they attribute to Tafuri in Progetto e utopia. Since
then, and predominantly in the twenty-first century, a group of writers such as
Asor Rosa, Ghirardo, Day, Aureli and Leach identify this admission of past
misappropriation of Tafuri’s project. Among these architectural historians and
theoreticians, Asor Rosa, Day and Ghirardo have shown that Tafuri’s arguments
have frequently been too hastily dismissed for being too apocalyptic and/or too
nihilistic: an interpretation that they do not accept.
I argue that to counter this interpretation
they have also obfuscated the arguments in Tafuri’s essay by making reference
to his other works in order to prove that he was not really attacking
architectural practice and theory. Similar to works that overlook the political
context of Tafuri’s essay, the recent attempts to include it also fail to
confront the arguments raised in the essay.
In twenty-first
century architectural discourse, Aureli and Day are arguably the authors who
pay most attention to the political framework for Tafuri’s essay. They look for
the relevance of the political projects initiated by operaismo and autonomia to
contemporary architectural discourse. They return to the context for one of two
objectives. Aureli returns to the historical political context in order to
dismiss the relevance of the autonomist arguments to today. Day returns to the
context to neutralize both the context and the arguments by writing a defense
from the perspective of the intellectual and the architect who is criticized in
Tafuri’s article.
These contemporary attempts that do re-visit
Tafuri within the economic, political and social context of 1960s and 1970s
Italy fail to move beyond certain post-1960s rhetoric that justifies the apathy
of intellectuals and an impasse in relation to social conflicts. This is
encapsulated in the mood: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The arguments
present in the 1969 essay were expanded and elaborated by Tafuri in 1973.The
affinity between the 1969 essay and the 1973 volume in which the impact of the
1968 political agenda was less extreme, eases architects, intellectuals and
Tafuri scholars into a position where they do not need to confront the
implications of the essay and its political framework.
In response to
the research question I address, I conclude that if we can approach “Toward a
Critique of Architectural Ideology” in the precise moment it occupies within
the context of Italy in the 1960s and the ongoing debates amongst operaisti –
affiliated intellectuals, we can embrace
the essay as a
critique of the limits of intellectuals and professionals in social conflicts, that is indeed nihilistic
and apocalyptic for those who insist on their role as architects or academics.
I find this a relevant and important gesture as it may make us more open to be
agitated, for us to question our own participation in capitalist development in
order to confront the post 1960s as well as contemporary architectural
discourse and practice.
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