Cultura libertii politice i arhitectura limitei

... afirmaia lui Tocqueville : Trecutul nu mai lumineaz viitorul, iar spiritul i croiete drum prin bezn .
Platon descria sfera problemelor umane tot ceea ce aparine convieuirii oamenilor ntr-o lume comun din
perspectiva ntunericului, a confuziei i a decepiei de care cei care aspira la adevrata existen trebuie s se
ndeprteze dac vor s descopere cerul clar al Ideilor eterne. Sfritul [acestei tradiii europene] a venit cu declaraia lui
Marx c filozofia i adevrul ei sunt situate nu n afara problemelor oamenilor i a lumii lor comune, ci exact n ele, i
c pot fi realizate numai n sfera vieii comune, pe care el o numete societate, prin apariia omului socializat ...
Sfritul a venit atunci cnd un filozof s-a ndeprtat de filozofie astfel nct s o realizeze n politic (H. Arendt).
Dimensiunea politic a arhitecturii. But what form can architecture define within the contemporary city without
falling into the current self-absorbed performances of iconic buildings, parametric designs, or redundant mappings of
every possible complexity and contradiction of the urban world? What sort of significant and critical relationship can
architecture aspire to in a world that is no longer constituted by the idea and the motivations of the city, but is instead
dominated by urbanization? In what follows I will attempt to reconstruct the possibility of an architecture of the city
that is no longer situated only in the autonomous realm of its disciplinary status, but must directly confront
urbanization. This possibility is put forward in two ways: first, by critically understanding the essential difference
between the concept of the city and the concept of urbanization how these concepts overlap, as well as how they
address two radically different interpretations of inhabited space and second, by looking at how urbanization has
historically come to prevail over the city. I will show the rise of urbanization not through its presumed real effects,
but through exemplary projects for cities, which here are understood as effective representations not simply of
urbanization itself but also of its logic. In an argument critical of the logic of urbanization (and its instigator,
capitalism), I will redefine political and formal as concepts that can define architectures essence as form ...
Aristotle made a fundamental distinction between politics and economics the distinction between what he defines as
techn politik and techn oikonomik. What he calls techn politik is the faculty of decision making for the sake of the
public interest decision making for the common good, for the way individuals and different groups of people can
live together. Politics in this sense comes from the existence of the polis (and not the other way around). The polis is the
space of the many, the space that exists in between individuals or groups of individuals when they coexist ... Political
space is made into the institution of politics precisely because the existence of the space in between presupposes
potential conflict among the parts that form it. This possibility is the very foundation of techn politik the art of
politics the decision making that must turn conflict into coexistence (albeit without eradicating the possibility of
conflict). Precisely because politics is incarnated in the polis the project of the city the existence of the polis holds
the possibility of conflict and the need for its resolution as its very ontological foundation. (...) Facing this scenario of
infinite urbanizationwhich today is no longer just theory but daily practice I would argue that the time has come
to drastically counter the very idea of urbanization. For this reason I propose a partisan view of the city against the
totalizing space of urbanization. In order to formulate a metacritique of urbanization as the incarnation of infinity and
the current stasis of economic power over the city, I propose to reassess the concepts of the political and the formal as
they unfold into an idea of architecture that critically responds to the idea of urbanization. In this proposal, the political
is equated with the formal, and the formal is finally rendered as the idea of a limit. Arendt writes, Politics is based on
the fact of human plurality. Unlike desires, imagination, or metaphysics, politics does not exist as a human essence but
only happens outside of man. Man is apolitical. Politics arises between men, and so quite outside man, she writes.
There is no real political substance. Politics arises in what lies between men and it is established as a relationship.
The political occurs in the decision of how to articulate the relationship, the infra space, the space in between. The
space in between is a constituent aspect of the concept of form, found in the contraposition of parts. As there is no way
to think the political within man himself, there is also no way to think the space in between in itself. The space in
between can only materialize as a space of confrontation between parts. Its existence can only be decided by the parts
that form its edges. (...) The task of architecture is to reify that is, to transform into public, generic, and thus
graspable common things the political organization of space, of which architectural form is not just the consequence
but also one of the most powerful and influential political examples. (...) An architecture that is defined by and makes
clear the presence of limits which define the city. An absolute architecture is one that recognizes whether these limits are
a product (and a camouflage) of economic exploitation (such as the enclaves determined by uneven economic
redistribution) or whether they are the pattern of an ideological will to separation within the common space of the city.
Instead of dreaming of a perfectly integrated society that can only be achieved as the supreme realization of
urbanization and its avatar, capitalism, an absolute architecture must recognize the political separateness that can
potentially, within the sea of urbanization, be manifest through the borders that define the possibility of the city 1.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ABSOLUTE ARCHITECTURE, Massachusetts, 2011