Aureli combines the images of the academic scholar and the radical left: his first book, Project for Autonomy, focuses on operaism, the Italian Marxist movement, and its impact on the architectural discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, Pierre-Vittorio appears in the rare role of a writing architect for today, whose last representative was Rem Koolhaas in the 1970s and 1990s. In addition to two fundamental books, he penned numerous essays published in architectural periodicals.
The Possibility of Absolute Architecture (2014, original edition - 2011; an excerpt from it can be read here) - Aureli's second program book - was written while working on a dissertation at the Berlage Institute, in the atmosphere of "post-Kolhassian Holland", when it became fashionable denial of the importance of the role of architecture. The concept of the book opposes the tendency to refer exclusively to the phenomenon of urbanization and to view architecture as an insignificant "character" on the sidelines of global processes. Aureli, with his characteristic independence of thought, takes a polar opposite point of view: it is architecture that is in deep crisis and bogged down in the "sea of merciless urbanization" that he sees as a potential, moreover, the only instrument for future changes.
The main thesis of the book is the following: since architecture contains the possibility of an author's message, it makes possible a critical statement in relation to the metamorphoses taking place in the city. To illustrate this thesis, the concept of "absolute architecture" is introduced, which refers not to something utopian or ideal in a modernist way, but to the initial independence of the architectural form from the environment in which it is conceived and embodied. Thus, architecture is seen as an autonomous territory with the potential to resist context. This context and, at the same time, an evil that can and should be combated for Aureli is urbanization.
The key concept for modern urbanization is the cult of diversity: capitalist reproduction needs to cover all possible potential users in order to be included in a single consumption process. Aureli, on the other hand, urges: "Instead of a cult of diversity per se, absolute architecture should suppress any attempt at novelty and recognize itself as an instrument of separation, and hence of political action." It should be noted that Aureli's work is always closely related to the concept of the political. By his own admission, he is much more interested in political theory than in philosophy: in this regard, the author inherits the strongest neo-Marxist tradition of Italy, focused on the resistance of the working class. (Pierre-Vittorio also met the influential neo-Marxist theorist and architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri while studying at the Venetian IUAV.) In Possibilities of Absolute Architecture, Aureli describes the concept of the political through the opposition of two opposites - politics (technè politikè) and economics (technè oikonomikè), and states the final victory of the latter in the space of the city. In the struggle against the domination of the market, according to the author's opinion, architecture comes to the aid of its formal component: the ability to limit and divide space: “When speaking about“itself”, the form inevitably speaks about its“friend”. For this reason, the formal is opposed to totality and generalizing ideas of diversity. Thus, the formal is the true embodiment of the political, for the political is the agonistic space of real confrontation, the space of “others”.
Even in such a negatively viewed trait inherent in architecture as inertia, Aureli is inclined to find benefits: “The only indisputable purpose of architecture is its special inertia in relation to the variability of urbanization and the ability to clearly express the uniqueness of a place. If the essence of urbanization is total mobility and integration, then the essence of a city is in the uniqueness of its individual places."
Throughout the text, Aureli refers to the historical figures of interest to him: these include those known to any student of the Faculty of Architecture (Palladio, Piranesi), and fairly forgotten ones (Oswald Mathias Ungers). However, no matter how deep the immersion in history is, it is always a view from the standpoint of modernity. In each of the above examples, the strategies used are important, reacting to the modern realities of these strategies, and at the same time illustrating the author's thesis: only architecture is able to resist urbanization, since it obeys its own special laws. Of interest are the ideas of O. M. Ungers, who had a serious impact on the early period of OMA's work (according to Eliya Zengelis, even the initials of O. M. U. formed the basis for the name of the bureau).
Ungers' methodology consisted of identifying and exacerbating urban conflicts through architectural interventions: "creating islands of intensity filled with forms of collective life that interrupt the infinity of an individualized metropolis." Ungers took the most controversial aspects of the city, accentuated them and turned them into the main driving force of the project.
Strictly speaking, Aureli's work is not a historical tome, but rather a collection of stories united by the author's interpretation. Sometimes this interpretation enters into dissonance with the usual patterns of perception of historical facts: the eccentricity of thinking allows Aureli to place accents in a different way. In general, the work does not give unequivocal answers, but it clearly calls for a struggle: against the senseless and merciless urbanization that digests everything in the world, against the despotism of the market economy. Not being an optimist by nature, Aureli still takes an active position, and the fact that the author not only criticizes the current situation, but gives architecture a chance to become an instrument of this struggle is encouraging.
