Architecture and Abstraction is the first theoretical study of its kind to locate the origins of architectural abstraction not in aesthetic choice but in the material conditions of building production and the social divisions of labour that shape them.
About This Book
Pier Vittorio Aureli's central argument is deceptively simple and far-reaching: abstraction in architecture is not a formal tendency architects consciously elect, but an expression of how labour is organised and how value is produced. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, and Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Aureli traces this history from antiquity — where the division between manual and intellectual labour was first architecturally codified — through the geometrisation of land and money that produced the logic of the grid, and into the present, where architectural abstraction serves the exchange logic of capitalism. For architects, theorists, and students engaged with architectural theory and the politics of design, this book reframes the very ground on which formal decisions are made.
Key Features
- 320 pages of theoretical analysis drawing on architectural history, social theory, and political economy
- Author: Pier Vittorio Aureli
- Published by The MIT Press
What You'll Discover
- Why the division between manual and intellectual labour — established in antiquity — is the foundational act of architectural abstraction
- How geometry's role in measuring and commodifying land gave rise to the grid as an expression of economic logic rather than formal preference
- How contemporary architectural abstraction is implicated in capitalism's premise that all things — including experience — are exchangeable commodities
- A method of critique that begins at the ground level of material practice rather than in philosophical abstraction, proposing resistance from within the conditions of production itself
About the Author
Pier Vittorio Aureli is an architectural theorist whose work engages the intersections of architectural form, political thought, and the history of ideas. His scholarship is informed by a close reading of social theorists including Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, and Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and he is recognised as one of the leading critical voices in contemporary architectural discourse.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 203 x 136 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780262545235
- Publisher: The MIT Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, architectural theorists, and students of architectural history and critical theory seeking to understand how the politics of labour and capital are inscribed in built form.