Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development

by Manfredo Tafuri, Barbara Luigia La Penta (Translator)

Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. Written from a neo-Marxist point of view by a prominent Italian architectural historian, Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. It discusses the Garden Cities movement and the suburban developments it generated, the German-Russian architectural experiments of the 1920s, the place of the avant-garde in the plastic arts, and the uses and pitfalls of seismological approaches to architecture, and assesses the prospects of socialist alternatives.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Theory, Art, Urbanism, History, Politics

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Manfredo Tafuri an Italian architect, historian, theoretician, critic and academic, was arguably the world's most important architectural historian of the second half of the 20th century.[1] He is noted for his pointed critiques of the partisan "operative criticism" of previous architectural historians and critics like Bruno Zevi and Siegfried Giedion and for challenging and overturning the idea that the Renaissance was a "golden age" as it had been characterised in the work of earlier authorities like Heinrich Wolfflin and Rudolf Wittkower.
For Tafuri, architectural history does not follow a teleological scheme in which one language succeeds another in linear sequence. Instead, it is a continuous struggle played out on critical, theoretical and ideological levels as well as through the multiple constraints placed on practice. Since this struggle continues in the present, architectural history is not a dead academic subject, but an open arena for debate. In his view, like other cultural domains, but even more so, due to the tension between its autonomous, artistic character and its technical and functional dimensions, architecture is a field defined and constituted by crisis.
During the 1970s, Tafuri published important essays in Oppositions, the journal directed by Peter Eisenman. Although he always had a strong interest in this area of research, in the last decade of his career he undertook a comprehensive reassessment of the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture, exploring its various social, intellectual and cultural contexts, while providing a broad understanding of uses of representation that shaped the entire era. His final work, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects, published in 1992, synthesizes the history of architectural ideas and projects through discussions of the great centres of architectural innovation in Italy (Florence, Rome, and Venice), key patrons from the middle of the fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century, and crucial figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Francesco di Giorgio, Lorenzo de' Medici, Bramante, Raphael, Baldassare Castiglione and Giulio Romano.
Tafuri held the position of chair of architectural history at the University Iuav of Venice.

Reviews

[Chuck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book from cover to cover but I wouldn't encourage anyone else to do the same. It's not very well done. It is marketed as an attempt to bring architecture, capitalism, and social theory into dialog with other one another—which of course is appealing—but Tafuri cannot pull it off. The text is full of enormous generalizations that he neither defends nor explains. For instance, to take a totally random example, he begins one chapter by saying: "The 'downfall of reason' was felt persistently in one specific area: that of the metropolis." Now, this statement might—or might not—be compelling, but he never explains what he means by the "downfall of reason," why he put the term in quotation marks, or who persistently felt the phenomenon. As a result, his sweeping assertion is just empty, and pompous. That is very typical of the entire book. I suspect that the translator bears some of the blame—it is pretty rough--but surely Tafuri is the main culprit. I found myself occasionally enjoying a flash of insight but, for the most part, feeling irritated and unenlightened by his posturing.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tafuri's writing style is strangely calming, but alas often not very easy to follow (especially if, like myself, you lack a wide-ranging knowledge of architectural history). That being said, the overarching argument of the text on the subsumption of architecture to capitalist planning is convincing.

"This truth is, just as there cannot exist a class political economy, but only a class criticism of political economy, so too there cannot be founded a class aesthetic, art, or architecture, but only a class criticism of the aesthetic, of art, of architecture, of the city itself."

[Qianye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The crisis of modern architecture is not the result of 'tiredness' or 'dissipation'. It is rather a crisis of the ideological function of architecture. The 'fall' of modern art is the final testimony of bourgeois ambiguity, torn between 'positive' objectives and the pitiless self-exploration of its own objective commercialization. No 'salvation' is any longer to be found within it: neither wandering restlessly in labyrinths of images so multivalent they end in muteness, nor enclosed in the stubborn silence of geometry content with its own perfection."

[NormaCenva · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading the book, it reminded me of another "Architecture of Fear" by Nan Ellin. I especially like the portions that were addressing the issues related to the Garden Cities. It is a very interesting perspective and showcases how architecture has a much deeper hold than just our surroundings. And how by employing architecture we can affect change in so many different ways. Currently, we are doing it in a Negative way - repressing, stopping, burdening... but how would our world look like if this would change to a Positive? Imagine!

[laïss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quatrième tentative de lecture, la plus fructueuse, j'ai réussi à comprendre quasiment la moitié. Plus grand livre de théorie de l'architecture de la seconde moitié du XXeme. L'année prochaine je réussirai à comprendre les deux tiers

[Pea Pod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores many angles on Tafuri's critique of capitalist development. It contains many beautiful ideas, more than I though possible from a short, unassuming text.

One theme that struck me was the idea that contemporary art conceals the process of capitalist society coming to terms with its contradictions, so an avant garde movement becomes a force for the erasure of collective trauma, and the erasure of the metropolitan subject which constitutes it as such. I'm gonna have to reread this one, since it's packed with references. Definitely a worthy read.

[Antonio Castillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, what I read, even beyond being dense, left way too much unexplained. I'm not sure whether that falls on Tafuri himself or the translator, but arguments are not easy to follow here. Someone else wrote in a review here that often times a reference will be made to make a point or a statement will be made followed by little to no elaboration, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. Idk if I'm just dumb or not well versed in theory and architectural history as I should be to be reading this, but I think that if you make a point and equate it to something, you should have to explain that relation (isn't that something you learn in high school English?).
Beyond my issues of how this book was written (which marred my experience of it quite a bit), I really do appreciate Tafuri's overall argument (or at least what I can make out of it). Him talking about architecture in terms of superstructure rather than base in relation to capitalist development was kind of confusing to me for 80% of the book, but what he was trying to draw out finally started to click for me when I got to the chapter on semiology. Peter Eisenman's architecture supposedly being radical and reflective of the ideas of Derrida is very obviously contradictory, and even though he doesn't use that example, the function of semiology in architectural ideology very obviously makes insignificant architecture that has no effect on capitalist development. This, along with the conclusion chapter, demonstrate perfectly why architecture, at least as it is currently viewed, practiced, and taught, is a completely useless tool when fighting capitalism.

[Alex Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

fundamental text on the relation of spatial production and power (a.k.a. Capital). A Must read!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me a long time to warm up to his material, but his late chapter on semiology was really interesting. It’s a challenging read that attempts to integrate history and architecture while apparently running interference at the same time.

[Marty · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly lucid analysis of the relationship between capitalist development and the avant-garde in the fields of art/architecture.

His thought runs concurrent with situationists and Henri Lefevbre's thoughts on urbanism without referencing them at all. My guess is Tafuri either doesn't read or like French thought since otherwise their insights would have been helpful to his arguments.

Architecture and Utopia is definitely a worthy entry into a critical architecture canon or whatever.

[Jasmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives an amazing explanation of how the enlightenment came to America through city planning and architecture. It also manages to hit on the desacralization of values through this process. Really helpful in digesting an otherwise "over my head" subject.

[Tom]

I probably won't finish it right now.

[danette · Rating 2 out of 5]

DIFFICULT!

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tafuri is intense

[Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't really get it the first time through. I think I need to read it again.