Pier Vittorio Aureli: Tafuri’s Critique of Red Vienna

Tafuri’s Critique of Red Vienna – A lecture by Pier Vittorio Aureli

Pier Vittorio Aureli (Rome, 1973) is an architect and educator. He studied at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) and later at the Berlage Institute and TU Delft where he earned his PhD. Aureli currently teaches at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne where he direct the Laboratory Theory and Project of Domestic space and teaches courses on History and Theories of Architecture. He has taught at the Architectural Association in London, Yale School of Architecture, Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, Columbia University in New York. Aureli is the author of several books including The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (2008), The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (2011), Less is Enough. On asceticism and architecture (2013), The City as a Project (2014), Ritual and Walls: The Architecture of Sacred Space (2016, with Maria Shéhérazade Giudici), The Room of One’s Own. The Architecture of the Private Room (2017, with Dogma), Loveless. Minimum Dwelling and its Discontents (2019, with Dogma), Platform. Architecture and the Use of the Ground (2021, with Dogma), Living and Working (2022, with Dogma) and Architecture and Abstraction (forthcoming in Spring 2023). Together with Martino Tattara, he is the co-founder of Dogma, an office for architecture based in Brussels. Dogma has developed a specific interest in large-scale interventions, urban research, and especially domestic space and its potential for transformation. Aureli is also a painter; the first solo exhibition of his paintings has taken place at Betts Project gallery in London in 2017.

Dogma was founded in 2002 by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara. From the beginning of its activities, Dogma has worked on the relationship between architecture and the city by focusing mostly on urban design and large-scale projects. Dogma is active in offering consultancies to municipalities and agencies concerned with urban planning and architectural issues. Parallel to the design projects, the members of Dogma have intensely engaged with teaching, writing, and research, activities that have been an integral part of the office’s engagement with architecture. In the last years, Dogma has been working on a research by design trajectory that focuses on domestic space and its potential for transformation. This work, made of studies and projects, has been exhibited at different venues among which the Tallinn Architectural Biennale (2014), the HKW Berlin (2015), the Biennale di Venezia (2016), the Chicago Architectural Biennial (2017), and the London Design Museum (2018). In 2006, Dogma has won the 1st Iakov Chernikhov Prize for the best emerging architectural practice.