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Book Synopsis
A landmark study of abstraction in architectural history, theory, and practice that challenges our assumptions about the meaning of abstract forms.

In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, this book presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries.
 
These divisions were anticipated by the architecture of antiquity, which established a distinction be

Architecture and Abstraction

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    A Paperback by Pier Vittorio Aureli

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      Book details

      Publisher MIT Press
      Published 11 July 2023
      ISBN-13 9780262545235
      978-0262545235
      ISBN-10 0262545233
      Also in:
      Art & Photography Architecture

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      A landmark study of abstraction in architectural history, theory, and practice that challenges our assumptions about the meaning of abstract forms.

      In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, this book presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries.
       
      These divisions were anticipated by the architecture of antiquity, which established a distinction be

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