Pierre Vittorio Aureli is an Italian architect and theorist. In 2006, he and his partner at Dogma, Martino Tattara, became the first laureates of the. Yakov Chernikhova "Challenge of Time". In the fresh, 35th issue of Project International, the first chapter from Aureli's book "The Possibility of Absolute Architecture" (2011) has been published.
Pierre-Vittorio Aureli came to Moscow to give a lecture at the Strelka Institute, which plans to publish his next book as part of its publishing program.
Archi.ru: I would like to talk with you about writing: not only about architectural criticism, but also about the literary process as an instrument of the professional activity of an architect. There are writing architects and you are one of them. What is writing to you and does it affect your architectural practice?
Pierre-Vittorio Aureli: The literary process for me is a very important thing, because historically architecture was created with the help of literature. I consider writing not a secondary function in relation to architectural practice, but a primary one. Writing is an architectural practice, it is wrong to think that first you write something, and then you try to apply it to an architectural project - this is too limited a view. Writing is something broader, something that goes beyond the boundaries of architectural techniques or style, and I think that literary activity does not need to be applied to practice as evidence of its value, since it is an absolutely independent thing.
Archi.ru: Why are architects writing less and less nowadays?
P. A.: Architects strive to design and build as much as possible, which is why they see writing as a waste of time that does not bring them projects and orders. My standard in this respect is Le Corbusier, who wrote constantly and for whom writing was a laboratory of ideas.
Archi.ru: The tumultuous architectural debates of the 20th century emanated from pronounced oppositions: modernism / traditional architecture, postmodernism / modernism, and so on. Perhaps now we do not have such opposite views, so there is nothing to argue about?
P. A.: We do not have such opposite views, because we do not have architects who would put forward and defend these views. The architectural culture at the moment is much more prolific in the sense that a huge number of things are produced, but everything is so fragmented that it is difficult to find something with its own special position.
I think it's a matter of having a project. A project is not something that you can come up with overnight, it is a lifelong thing. That is, I would not say that few architects write, but that only a few architects have their own project - it does not matter whether it is successful or not. Having a project means: everything you do corresponds to your ideas, and not to what surrounds you. The rest are good architects and build good buildings. In general, most of those who have their own project are not the best builders. But this is because architecture includes more than just construction. Bramante, the most influential architect of the Renaissance, was not a very good builder, his buildings were falling apart.
Archi.ru: Maybe there are no more ideas, so there are no lifelong projects either?
P. A.: The last twenty years have been completely depoliticized. For me, being politicized means creating a certain view of things that is critical in relation to the current moment. An architect needs context to create his own vision. We are in a situation where the environment functions in accordance with the realities of capitalism, and this creates a context where everything will fit. In addition, we live in a situation of endless competition, when everyone - a potential competitor, even friends and colleagues - is the spirit of the times.
Archi.ru: But the modernists also competed.
P. A.: Then everything was different: there was no such pressure to which we are exposed at the moment. For example, if you take Mies and Le Corbusier: they are not that they would compete, since they operated inside closed markets and therefore did not bother each other much. Now we are all inside the same market, and this creates competition. For example, there was no competition between Ginzburg and Le Corbusier, because Ginzburg worked in the Soviet Union, and Corbusier worked in capitalist countries.
Archi.ru: However, there was an exchange of ideas.
P. A.: Of course. The exchange of ideas was possible precisely because they were not competitors. Corbusier came to the USSR and even built something, but he was not going to colonize everything here with his architecture.
Archi.ru: He would not have been allowed.
P. A.: Because there was a rigid political framework, not a market economy.
Archi.ru: Returning to literature, writing often stems from the research process. For example, the famous book Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas is based on research, and at the same time, the author's view is extremely subjective. How do objectivity and subjectivity get along in one work?
P. A.: I do not believe in the existence of anything objective. This is the biggest trap in the research process, when people begin to believe that there is some indestructible objective reality, and we begin to interpret it somehow. Of course, you have to rely on certain facts, but to believe that objectivity is something like Newton's binomial is a fundamental mistake. Research has always been an ideology far removed from objectivity. And at the same time, I do not believe that disbelief in objectivity implies some kind of fantasy, because I believe that everything we do is subjective. Even what looks absolutely objective always carries an aspect of subjectivity.
Archi.ru: It is believed that the presentation of data in the project makes the position of the author more convincing.
P. A.: Usually this data is used in an extremely manipulative way. Statistics hide reality, and data acts as a Trojan horse for highly ideological observation. I think it's not fair to believe in the objectivity of these things.
Archi.ru: What, then, makes research powerful?
P. A.: If it convinces people. Not necessarily many. When an idea affects more than one person, it is strong enough for me to have consequences. If an idea starts to circulate, people support it or reject it - for me this idea is legitimate. We know from history that the scientific / non-scientific categories can be aimed at debunking something, but I absolutely do not accept this way of thinking.
Archi.ru: What role does architectural criticism play during the book crisis?
P. A.: Since my birth, people have been talking about the book crisis all the time, but at the same time I see more and more people writing and publishing, so I don't understand what the problem is. Of course, this crisis affects reputable magazines that come out in large circulation: they are dying out. People now get all information from the Internet, and it is difficult to blame them for not buying expensive magazines: you can find much more interesting information on the Internet. Sometimes I come across blogs that are more interesting than articles in magazines, and they are also free.
But this is exactly the same crisis that was when old forms of book publishing died out and new ones were born, so this is an ongoing process. And I see here the possibility of [emerging] new types of interaction with architecture. I think we should abandon the idea of an authoritative critic: this romantic idea belongs to the 19th century, and the figure of the critic may soon die out if he is not able to create something interesting. Criticism is a process. It's the way that you dig up what you want to say and you find the opportunity to say it - in a book or in a blog. I don’t understand the concern about the format, I don’t care about the format at all.
For example, Casabella was a very good magazine, I read it monthly, but if you take the latest issues, projects are published there that were on the Internet five years ago. Of course, if you publish such a magazine, it will die because it is useless. We need to stop worrying about the format and go back to the content. This discussion should be secondary to the more important discussion about what exactly we want to say and what our position is.
Archi.ru: In your lecture, you called Richard Florida's book on the creative class very bad. What did you mean?
P. A.: This is a very bad and extremely ideological book. Florida believes in the market economy, and for me the market economy is an ideology, not a real thing. It is as much an ideology as socialism, as a monarchy, and we all believe in this ideology.
Archi.ru: Believe it or not, we have to operate on this system.
P. A.: Of course, in the same way as under a dictatorial regime: you can be a dissident, but you cannot log out of the system. The creative class is the most important concept, but the way Florida operates with this concept is absolutely caricatured. He paints an idealized image where everything is very nice, but he does not say that the creative class consists of people who are underpaid, who live on odd jobs, without social security, and therefore are often in a rather difficult situation. There is not even a hint of conflict in the book, while in Europe everything is very difficult. Many of my students are unable to find work and are forced to take low-paid jobs. People are stuck in debt to pay for their studies, their life is completely unpredictable: you cannot start a family or even a permanent relationship, you have no place to live: this is even worse than the life of a worker in a factory. At the same time, they do not have a trade union or any other organization that protects their rights.
Archi.ru: Do hipsters play an important role in the life of society?
P. A.: The whole hipster mythology is a very successful way of hiding certain things. These people play an important role in the economy of cities, because if they hang out in a particular place, the value of land there rises. However, they get nothing from it and in fact lead a rather dull lifestyle. So there is also a dark side to hipsterism.
People are forced to rethink their lives because they cannot afford what the middle class could previously afford. Capitalism widens the gap between the poor and the rich, the middle class disappears, and most people move to the bottom rung. For example, in America, if you want to find a good job, you need to get an Ivy League degree, and if you are not from a wealthy family, you will have to take out a bank loan. And this means that in the next 30 years you will have to repay this loan, so you will be working in a purely commercial company. It is unlikely that you will be able to become an artist, unless you suddenly become famous. And the situation is only getting worse, since there are fewer and fewer opportunities to find a job: there is a market for unpaid work, various internships, and finding a normally paid job is difficult. In London, many young people earn their education by working in a bar.
Europeans like to complain about the Russian "political style", we say: Putin is too tough, human rights, blah blah blah … But at the same time, in Europe, where there are all kinds of human rights and civil liberties, the political system is so weak that in the last twenty For years, the market has been the only ruling force here. Russia also has a market economy, but strong political governance.
Archi.ru: However, this management is not directed at people.
P. A.: But at least it is not as weak as in the European Union, where it is not aimed at anything: neither at people, nor at anything that can bring the economy out of the crisis … And none of the political leaders there opposes the dictates of the market.
