Architecture and Abstraction

“Architecture and Abstraction poses one of the most important questions facing the profession: what might it mean to be an architectural worker today? In a lucid and brilliant account that reaches back to evidence of early building, the authority of Renaissance architects, and the economic power of the nineteenth-century builder as well as the more recent proliferation of data centers, Aureli traces the genealogy of that question to new powers of measuring and calculating as they drive capitalist accumulation, separate manual and intellectual labor, and control what and how we build.”

Adrian Lahoud, Dean of School of Architecture, Royal College of Art

“In his latest book, Pier Vittorio Aureli has identified and studied a phenomenon that underpins almost everything we do, usually beyond our awareness. In this case, the universality of the subject – abstraction – comes about, paradoxically enough, by constantly reducing reality. Through architecture, Aureli shows how we cannot do without abstraction, but we can, and should, try to master its influence.”

Christophe Van Gerrewey, Professor of Architecture Theory, Ecole Fédérale Polytechnique de Lausanne

“Situating abstraction as derived from the material relations within a socio-political context, Aureli's pivotal study on the developing kinship between abstraction and architecture elucidates how architecture's methods of production become intimately intertwined with capital. Rooted within a thorough historical and theoretical analysis of the design and building of a range of projects, Aureli presents a fascinating lineage, critique, and mechanism to reclaim abstraction within architectural production.”

Neeraj Bhatia, Architect and Urban Designer; Principal, THE OPEN WORKSHOP; Associate Professor, California College of the Arts