Project of Crisis - 9780262519564

The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935--1994) invokedthe productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a "project of crisis" (progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, MarcoBiraghi explores Tafuri's multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian's concept of aproject of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporaryarchitecture.

Mindful of Tafuri's statement that there is no such thing ascriticism, only history, Biraghi carefully maps the influences on Tafuri's writing -- WalterBenjamin, Karl Krauss, Massimo Cacciari, and the architect Ludovico Quaroni, among others -- inorder to create a portrait of one of the most complex minds in twentieth-century architecture andarchitectural history. Tracing an arc from Tafuri's first articles in the magazineContropiano to the idea of contradiction at the center of the project of crisis,Biraghi cites Tafuri's writing on some of his contemporaries, including Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier,Robert Venturi, Aldo Rossi, and the "Five Architects" (Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves,Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier). Tafuri's historical construction of thecontemporary, Biraghi explains, is based on the idea that the past is open, providing the presentwith ever-changing and indeterminate form. There is no contradiction between Tafuri the historianand Tafuri the contemporary critic, only the greatest possible integration. The importance ofTafuri's interpretation of architecture goes beyond mere academic or historiographic interest,Biraghi argues; Tafuri's notion of the project of crisis is fundamentally important in understandingour present-day architectural condition