This is a 50-page essay, almost a manifesto: a manifesto of minimalism, understood not as an element of a respectable bourgeois interior, but implying a semi-monastic attitude towards life, however, without a religious component. Aureli endows this ascetic minimalism with the power of resistance to reality - and therefore resistance to the power of modern capitalism. The author sees in asceticism the potential for changes in counterbalance to the imposed culture of non-stop consumption - both material objects and information flows. In the field of architecture, the culture of consumption was reflected in the desire to spend more and more funds on iconic, "iconic" objects, as a result of which a special subspecies of architects, the "starchitect" (starchitect = star + architect), even emerged. Starhitektors successfully realized their customers' fantasies until the 2008 crisis broke out - a turning point that marked the transition from unrestrained architectural pretzels towards an ethical approach to business. From now on, modesty and forced ingenuity are a trait of the time.
Aureli's recent presentation of the Pritzker Prize confirms Aureli's observations of humility and the importance of ethics. This year, the award went to Shigeru Ban, renowned for volunteering for the disadvantaged in disaster-affected regions. The awarding of the award was accompanied by the wording “for innovative design and humanitarian work”, which caused a mixed reaction in the architectural environment. So, it is interesting to review this event from the representative of the group of "starhitectors", Zaha Hadid's partner in the Bureau, Patrick Schumacher. On his Facebook page, he asks the following question: "Does this mean that anyone wanting to win Pritzker - or the Nobel Prize in physics - should now include charitable work in their activities?" And further: "I fear that if there is a shift towards political correctness, iconoclastic innovators such as Wolf Prix and Peter Eisenman will lose their chance of recognition." It is symptomatic that for Schumacher, activities aimed at general well-being are defined as political correctness, that is, something forced. It turns out that iconoclasts must avoid humanitarian work, otherwise they will have no time (and funds) for iconoclasm. In general, Patrick's fears are understandable, since they are directly related to the commercial interests of the "stars": if from now on all ambitious architects are forced to be socially responsible, what will happen to the "star-architectural" bureaus? Apparently nothing good.
Taking this position, the architect signs that he cannot create anything of value within the framework of the new post-crisis paradigm. And its values are not entirely clear. Innovation without a social aspect is just a mechanism for pumping money out of the consumer. Iconoclast innovators were afraid of the social component - can they be blamed for this? Or is the system to blame, with which architects have long been resigned and more or less successfully coexist, and the fear of the social is a consequence of the current status quo, which not everyone is ready to change?
Returning to Aureli's manifesto, it is important for the author to separate the true asceticism from the false. Aureli, as an observant person, unmistakably tracks "deserters" who cynically rushed from aesthetics to ethics as soon as the latter was in demand. He exposes false asceticism in the form of stylized simplicity with huge investments, false asceticism in the form of austerity in times of crisis, formal asceticism as a marketing strategy. True asceticism, according to Aureli, is only one that leads to self-organization and implies a voluntary abandonment of everything superfluous in order to focus on one's life. In architecture, this means a return to the principles of early modernism, but without moralizing on the topic "less is more", and with the invention of our own rules of the game.
With the kind permission of Strelka Press, we are publishing the fifth chapter from Pierre-Vittorio Aureli's book “Less is enough: about architecture and asceticism” (Moscow: Strelka Press, 2014) about “cozy” and “ascetic” interiors, Walter Benjamin and Hannes Meyer.
