Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism

by Pier Vittorio Aureli

In the reborn cities of the Middle Ages, owning private property was a precondition for citizenship. In this way, individual ownership became the foundation of modern political institutions. The house was no longer just a shelter, or the ancient oikos, the private household clearly separated from public space. It was now both a space of inhabitation and the economic and legal apparatus through which the rising modern state governed citizens by defining their most intimate conditions, that is their habits, customs and social and economic relationships. From the vantage point of governing institutions, property in the form of housing serves a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, it binds the individual to a place and thus reduces the risks of social deviance. On the other, it allows subjects to use their minimum possession as an economic asset, with the capacity for investment. This is why housing became a fundamental project for modern architecture, a project focused not only on sheltering individuals but on making household management productive.