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135
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
Manfredo Tafuri’s theory of thearchitectural avant-garde1
Esra Akcan GSAPP, Columbia University, New York, USA
© 2002 The Journal of Architecture 1360–2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360210145088
Despite its frequent use, the meaning of the term architectural avant-garde is ambiguousand an explicit theory delineating its parameters has not been written. What would bethe theoretical glue that binds various architectural movements of the early twentiethcentury, which are commonly referred to as historical avant-gardes? What might be aspeci� c theory of architectural avant-garde, one that is not necessarily synonymous withthe theories of avant-garde in visual arts or literature? In this paper, I suggest that atheory of architectural avant-garde is inscribed in Manfredo Tafuri’s writings, and I exca-vate this theory in relation to three related themes: End (death) of history, metropolitancondition and end of architecture as auratic object.
Tafuri considers ‘death of history’, in the sense of the rejection of the past or aspirationfor newness, as one of the leading principles of avant-garde movements. The metropoli-tan condition that requires a brave confrontation with the ‘intensi� cation of nervous stim-ulation’, ‘rapid crowding of changing images’ or ‘blasé attitude’ that Tafuri observes via Simmel is the second theme I underline. According to the historian, far from feelinganguished for the lost past, the avant-gardes confront the new chaos of metropolis as afruitful condition of existence. Yet these two themes alone have the risk of culminating inthe cult of novelty as the sole ground of avant-gardism, and of dissolving the distinctionbetween avant-garde and fashion. Though Tafuri accepts the description of avant-garde interms of the shock of the new, contingency and ephemerality, I suggest that it is the thirdtheme that differentiates his theory from a de� nition based solely on novelty.
Following Hegel’s theory on the ‘end of art’ and Benjamin’s theory on the ‘destruction ofaura’, Tafuri formulates avant-gardism in terms of the end of architecture as auratic object.Just as mechanical reproduction and mass production gave an end to the status of art as cultobjects, ‘the dialectic between architectonic object and urban organisation’ enters into aradically new phase with the avant-garde. If one translates (Tafuri’s reading of) Benjamin’sand Hegel’s theories into architecture, it follows that the ultimate architectural avant-gardewould mean the end of architecture in the sense of its total dissolution into the urban struc-ture of the modern metropolis. The ful� llment of the architectural avant-garde would be thetotal dissolution of Architecture into something outside itself, of aura into mass, of form intoprocess, of author into producer, of architect into organiser. According to this interpretation,the architectural avant-garde thus demands a radical challenge to the institution of archi-
Framing the questionDespite its frequent use in professional discourse,
the meaning of the term ‘avant-garde’ in architec-
ture is ambiguous and an explicit theory delin-
eating its parameters has not been written. Giorgio
Grassi even claimed that an architectural avant-
garde is a contradiction in terms, not only because
the avant-garde movements have had a minor in�u-
ence on the major shifts in architecture; but also
because architectural avant-gardes have desperately
tried to accommodate themselves to the avant-
garde ‘isms’ that were born and developed within
the sphere of plastic arts (such as Cubism, Suprem-
atism, or Neoplasticism).2 Grassi challenged the task
of theorising an architectural avant-garde, since for
him this would by de�nition be an avant-garde of
the second degree, which attempts to chase and
catch up with movements that are external to itself,
rather than confronting the internal concerns of
architecture.
As opposed to this assertion, a recent sympo-
sium on the American architectural avant-garde
attempted to show the importance of the term forunderstanding architectural practices in this coun-
try, yet little consensus on the term itself or its
theory emerged.3 To give another example, a recent
issue of The Journal of Architecture mapped post-
war architectural movements as motivations toward
a ‘renewed putting in question of the avant-garde’
and as ‘self-conscious and critical engagement with(and interrogation of) the very concept of an avant-
garde’.4 Both of these publications critically yet
brie�y mentioned Manfredo Tafuri and confronted
his judgement about the impossibility of a new
or ‘neo-avant-garde’ to emerge. It seems that adiscussion on both Tafuri’s use of the term and clar-
i�cations toward a working theory of architectural
avant-garde is timely.
The term avant-garde in literature and �ne arts
is equally problematic. The two books written on the theory of avant-garde by Renato Poggioli and
Peter Bürger proposed competing theses. It is useful
to clarify the theses in brief, since one of the aims of
this paper is to question their explanatory power
in reference to an avant-garde in architecture, bycomparing and contrasting their propositions with
Manfredo Tafuri’s ideas.
In 1962, Poggioli5 outlined four types of avant-
garde attitude: activism, in the sense of ‘sheer joy
of dynamism’,6 mobility, speed or sportive enthusi-asm; antagonism, in the sense of opposition to
academic or established schools, as well as nega-
tive reaction to the public; nihilism, in the sense
of beating down anything on the way to a level of
attaining non-action; and �nally agonism, in thesense of antagonism that reaches the level of
136Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
tecture itself, to the ways architecture is produced and consumed within the modernmetropolis. I discuss Tafuri’s theory of architectural avant-garde in relation to his ownarchitectural examples especially in Weimar Germany, suggest that the Siedlung projectshold one of the most crucial places in this theory, and explain why the historian consideredthe avant-garde as an historically conditioned, critical but failed attempt.
self-destruction and welcomes this self-ruin as asacri�ce for future movements.
For Bürger7 writing in 1974, on the other hand,
it was more important to acknowledge the his-
toricity of the avant-garde (situate the avant-garde
in its historical context) than to propose someahistorical moods. Taking the criteria of purpose,
production and reception of art works, Bürger
reconstructed three phases in art history: the sacred,
courtly and bourgeois. For Bürger, as art progressed
through these three phases, it gradually movedfrom being a collective form of production and
reception to an individual affair; art works gradu-
ally lost their meaning as cult objects and became
portrayals of ‘bourgeois self-understanding’.8 This
line of development enabled the artists to attaintheir ‘freedom’ from religiosity and royalty, at the
expense of cutting the very veins that connected
them to life praxis. In other words, with the bour-
geois world, art moved towards its own autonomy,
gaining its own place as an institution separatedfrom religion and court, but also from collective
ideals. According to Bürger, avant-garde art was
an attack on this institutionalisation and autonomy
of art in bourgeois society. Avant-garde art tied
art back to the praxis of life – not to religion orcourt, but to contemporary problems of the soci-
ety; it aimed at a radical transformation of the
way art functioned, was produced and consumed
in the bourgeois society. This contradicts Poggioli’s
interpretation that followed the élitist tradition of Greenberg’s9 essay ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’
(1939), and de�ned avant-garde as a ‘minority cul-
ture’10 with an ‘aristocratic taste,’ in essential ‘oppo-
sition to mass culture and proletarian art’.11
Furthermore, Poggioli claimed that any presumedaf�nity between artistic radicalism and political rad-
icalism was a misunderstanding,12 and that the only
relation between the avant-garde and politics was
the necessity of a liberal regime for an avant-garde
to emerge.13 Thus, Poggioli’s position opposesBürger’s, where favourite avant-garde movements
were Russian Constructivism and Dada, and where
the term included movements with socially oriented
political agendas.
Some of the contributions and limits of Poggioli’sand Bürger’s theories in explaining the architectural
avant-garde have been pointed out by several archi-
tectural critics.14 For Bürger, I would add questions
such as: Can we talk about an autonomous archi-
tecture in any period in the �rst place? Would theattack on institutionalisation of art hold true for
architectural avant-gardes who unavoidably situ-
ated themselves in a profession that is necessarily
tied to institutionalisation of pedagogic and pro-
duction processes? Nevertheless, this does notmean that Bürger’s theory is useless to understand-
ing the architectural avant-garde, as I shall argue in
the following pages. Poggioli’s opposition between
the avant-garde and the masses, as well as between
the avant-garde and political commitment seems tofall short in explaining the architectural avant-
gardes of the early twentieth century. As Hilde
Heynen has stressed following Bürger and Andreas
Huyssen, one of the keys to understanding the
historical avant-garde in architecture is to treat it asa moment of conscious disruption in the rupture
between high art and mass culture.15 The question
remains: What would be the theoretical glue that
binds various architectural movements of the early
137
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
twentieth century, which are commonly referred toas historical avant-gardes? What might be a speci�c
theory of architectural avant-garde, one that is not
necessarily synonymous with the theories of avant-
garde in visual arts or literature? In this paper, I shall
suggest that a theory of architectural avant-gardeis inscribed in Manfredo Tafuri’s writings. The aim
of this paper is to excavate this theory in his texts
between 1968 and 1980, namely between Teorie e
storia dell’architettura (Theories and History of
Architecture) and La sfera e il labirinto (The Sphereand the Labyrinth).
Throughout his writings, I suggest that Tafuri
uses three related themes to refer to the architec-
tural avant-garde. I would like to name and dis-
cuss them as follows: death of history, confronta-tion with the metropolitan condition and death of
architecture as auratic object.
1. Death of historyAs becomes clear in Theories and History of Archi-tecture,16 the concept of history is key to under-
standing Tafuri’s theory of architectural avant-garde.
The term history as well as its derivatives such as his-
toricism, historicity or historicisation can have multi-
ple meanings. Therefore, Tafuri’s use of these termsneeds to be clari�ed. The concept of history can be
used to denote either the past, or writing about the
past, or change (as an unavoidable result of the
movement of time). Though Tafuri uses the word in
all of these senses, he uses what he calls the ‘deathof history’ or ‘anti-historicism’ as an indication of
architects’ rejection of the past. On the other hand,
he uses ‘historicity’ as the consciousness of change
due to the course of time.
Tafuri considers ‘death of history’ – in the sense ofrejection of the past – and aspiration for new-
ness as one of the leading principles of the avant-
garde movements. Yet, this desire to break with his-
tory should be conceived as an historically legitimate
point of arrival within the course of a process thathad its beginnings as early as the Renaissance. ‘We
must test the “historicity” of the anti-historicism of
the avant-garde,’17 Tafuri says, and explains that the
avant-garde’s conception of history had parallels
with that of some Tuscan humanists of theQuattrocento. It was architects such as Brunelleschi
or Borromini who revolutionised the conception of
history in architecture so that ‘from then on absolute
values no longer rule the symbolic structures of artis-
tic activity; it is the adventure of man that takes onthe leading role, and claims the discovery of a new
constructive nature of form’.18
The differentiation between the classical and
modern conception of time is crucial to understand
Tafuri at this point. For him, the revolution ofBrunelleschi and Borromini was the moment when
the modern consciousness of historicity replaced
the classical conception of timelessness. After that
moment, quotations, bricolages or pastiches of
historical elements ‘destroy rather than reinforcethe historical value of the ancient “things” inserted
in the new contexts’.19 After that moment, ‘history
may contradict the present, may put it in doubt,
may impose, with its complexity and its variety, a
choice to be motivated each successive time’.20
History now ‘challenge[s] the validity of classical
codes’,21 rather than con�rms their timeless truth
value. The modern conception of history accepts
the pastness of the past.
138Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
In the �rst chapter of Theories and History, Tafurigives a quick history of the ‘eclipse of history,’ from
the Renaissance’s radical break to the resurrection
of historicism in the 1960s. In this history, avant-
garde refers to a particular moment whose rejec-
tion of history is an historically conditioned pointof arrival.
[T]he artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth cen-
tury have pushed aside history in order to build
a new history. . . . In this way, the neat cut with
preceding traditions becomes, paradoxically,the symbol of an authentic historical continu-
ity. In founding anti-history and presenting
their work not so much as anti-historical, but
rather as above the very concept of historicity,
the avant-gardes perform the only historic-ally legitimate act of the time . . . The anti-
historicism of modern avant-gardes is not,
therefore, the result of an arbitrary choice, but,
rather, the logical end of a change that has its
epicentre in the Brunelleschian revolution, andits basis in the debate carried on for more than
�ve centuries by European culture (Original
emphasis.)22
Thus, what Tafuri calls the ‘death of history’ is
nothing but the avant-garde moment in the eclipseof history, which began in the Renaissance. Rejec-
tion of the past, and self-conscious or selective use
of historical forms on the grounds of their per-
ceived validity for the present – anti-historicism and
historicism – shared the same consciousness oftime. The formation of avant-gardes was intrinsi-
cally connected to this modern consciousness and
to the historicity of their moment.23
For each of the three themes I shall elaborate
through the paper, it is useful to go beyond theabstract de�nition and give some examples. For
instance, in a chapter entitled ‘Modern Classicism:
Architecture Without Avant-Garde’24 in Architettura
contemporanea (Modern Architecture), Tafuri and
Francesco dal Co differentiate between the avant-garde and another trajectory of the modern move-
ment. They say ‘it is important to realise that not all
modern architecture has had its roots in the avant-
garde movements. . . . [I]n opposition to the
Dionysiac vitalism of Futurism and Dada there is alsothe classical style or the unloquacious reserve of
those who, speaking the language of renunciation,
reject the notion of death postulated by the avant-
garde’ (my emphasis).25 Tafuri and dal Co consider
Behrens, Loos, Tessenow, Garnier and Perret to beamong the classicist trajectory of the modern
movement, as these architects sought ‘a new dignity’
and for forms with ‘petri�ed words’26 (Figs 1–3). For
those architects who ‘shunned avant-garde experi-
mentalism but without falling into the populist ornationalist nostalgias’,27 architecture can still speak
with classical signs. In these explanations by Tafuri
and dal Co, it seems that the distinction between the
desire for timeless values as opposed to ephemeral
ones (‘death’) is one of the main generators of thecon�ict between architectural avant-garde and its
opposite – the classicist trajectory.
But what would it mean for architecture to be
based on transient and ephemeral values? Tafuri
confronts this question in one paragraph of Theoriesand History, but seems reluctant to pursue it to its
logical conclusion.
What is the signi�cance, for the artistic object,
of the loss of its traditional value as a thing
139
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
Figure 1. Peter
Behrens, AEG
Turbine Factory,
1909. Included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 130, p. 82.
Figure 2. Heinrich
Tessenow, Single-
Family house for
the Garden city of
Hohensalza, 1920.
Included in Tafuri,
Dal Co, Modern
Architecture, Fig.
148, p. 91.
Figure 3. Auguste
Perret, Apartment
house at Rue
Raynouard, 1930.
Included in Tafuri,
Dal Co, Modern
Architecture, Fig.
165, p. 99.
140Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
subject to ageing, and of its renunciation to alife in time analogous to that of man, to an
intrinsic, meaningful historicity? Obviously,
an object without historic value lives only in the
present. And the present, with its contingent
and transient laws, completely dominates itslife-cycle: the rapid consumability of the object
is built-in from the very �rst stage of planning.
(My emphasis.)28
‘Contingent’, ‘transient’, ‘rapidly consumed’,. . . .
Fashion seems to be the appropriate and missingword here. If these were Tafuri’s last words to
explain the avant-garde, he would have ended
at a similar point as Poggioli. For Poggioli the ‘des-
tiny’ of avant-garde is fashion, in the sense of
‘impos[ing] and suddenly accept[ting] as a new ruleor norm what was, until a minute before, an excep-
tion or whim, then abandon[ing] it again after it has
become a commonplace, everybody’s “thing” ’.29
After recalling Charles Baudelaire’s de�nition of
the genius as the person who continuously cre-ates stereotypes, Poggioli claims that avant-gardism
means entering into a fashion system in which the
artist continuously cycles on a spiral. Being radi-
cal, then fashionable and then stereotypical is the
repeating pattern. For Poggioli, it should follow thatavant-gardes are the makers of fashionable objects,
though not the buyers; they are the élite who pro-
duce new things and throw them out after their
assimilation by the masses.
If we considered this as the only criterion, theavant-gardes would be perfectly attuned to the
market system. Their relation to the masses would
be only of a patronising sort, and they would be
motivated only by a desire for newness and a fear
of boredom. If this were true, being fashionable andbeing avant-garde would be the same thing – a
statement whose limits in explaining the historical
avant-garde was acknowledged even by Philip
Johnson, when he said:
But you see, the true avant-garde is never very good at selling things . . . I never was a
member of the avant-garde . . . No, I am just
addicted to the new . . . the avant-garde gave
way to the shock of the new, to the tradition
of the new. Some critics call my fascinationwith the new �ippant, lightweight. I get the
point. But it just expresses my desire to be dif-
ferent, to see different things and yet to stay
perfectly centered within the system. I am not
out to change anything. I am just �ghting offboredom. . . . A desire to be famous and a
hatred of boredom. Period.30
Though Tafuri would accept the description of the
avant-garde as the shock of the new, I shall sug-
gest that he further re�nes this de�nition with thehelp of Walter Benjamin and his own reading of
Hegel. It is Hegel’s theory of ‘death of art’ and
Benjamin’s theory of ‘death of aura’ – which sur-
prisingly mean similar things for him – that release
Tafuri’s theory of the avant-garde from a de�nitionbased solely on novelty. Yet, to explain the theory
of ‘end of art or architecture’ as the ground of
avant-gardism, we �rst need to examine the role
of the metropolitan condition.
2. Confrontation with the metropolitanconditionFrom his article ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’ in Contropiano (1969) onwards, Tafuri
141
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
puts metropolis at the centre of his explanationsof the avant-garde. Unlike the Brunelleschian break
with history he stressed in Theories and History,
Tafuri now traces the beginnings of avant-garde to
Enlightenment. In the article in Contropiano, Tafuri
explains this condition in reference to Benjamin and Baudelaire; he adds Georg Simmel’s early but
groundbreaking observations about the metropol-
itan life to the expanded and reworked version of
his article, which appeared as Progetto e utopia.
Architettura e svillupo capitalistico (Architectureand Utopia) in 1973.31 In Architettura contem-
poranea (Modern Architecture), published in 1976,
Tafuri further elaborated this theme by contrasting
Simmel and Tönnies’ theories as a framework to
differentiate the avant-garde from others.Following Baudelaire, Simmel and Benjamin,
Tafuri analyses the metropolitan condition and the
new behaviour of the individual in the metropo-
lis in terms of ‘intensi�cation of nervous stimula-
tion’, ‘rapid crowding of changing images’, ‘blaséattitude’, ‘regulation of money economy and com-
modi�cation of objects’. Although the differentia-
tion of these three writers and their in�uence
on Tafuri would have been useful for the sake of
adequate detail, for our purposes I shall shift myemphasis to the avant-garde responses to this met-
ropolitan condition.
In the article in Contropiano, Tafuri explains the
speci�c characters of avant-gardism as follows:
To remove the experience of shock from allautomatism, to use that experience as the
foundation for visual codes and codes of action
borrowed from already established characteris-
tics of the capitalist metropolis, . . . to reduce
the structure of artistic experience to the statusof pure object, to involve the public, as a uni-
�ed whole, in a declaredly interclass and there-
fore antibourgeois ideology: such are the tasks
taken on, as a whole, by the avant-gardes of
the twentieth century. . . . [A]s a whole – thatis beyond any distinction between construc-
tivism and protest art. Cubism, Futurism, Dada,
De Stijl, all the historic avant-gardes arose and
followed one another. . . . [T]he problem now
became that of teaching not how one should‘suffer’ that shock, but how one should absorb
it and internalise it as an inevitable condition
of existence.32
In the 1973 version of the article Tafuri adds:
Simmel’s considerations on the great metropo-lis . . . contained in nuce the problems that
were to be at the centre of the historical avant-
garde movements . . . The problem was, in
fact, how to render active the intensi�cation
of nervous stimulation; how to absorb theshock provoked by the metropolis by trans-
forming it into a new principle of dynamic
development; how to ‘utilise’ to the limit the
anguish which ‘indifference to value’ con-
tinually provokes and nourishes in the metro-politan experience.33
As these quotations suggest, even though Tafuri
adds the parts on Simmel afterwards, his de�ni-
tion of the avant-garde in terms of the accommo-
dation of shock experience in the metropolis doesnot change. Almost all of Tafuri’s avant-gardes at
the dawn of the twentieth century confronted the
speedy, stimulated and nervous life of the metrop-
olis with a sharp, brave and cool performance
142Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
(Fig. 4). In that sense, they be�t the military con-
notations of the term ‘avant-garde’. If metropolitan
life were the battle�eld to �ght for the ideology of
progress and modernity, the self-image of theavant-gardes would be the armed soldiers battling
for the whole society.
In Modern Architecture (1976), Tafuri further
works on this interpretation by contrasting Simmel
and Tönnies. In Tafuri’s framework Tönnies, unlikeSimmel, could not deal with several layers of loss
imposed on the individual by metropolitan life. By
constructing the opposition between civilisation
and culture or between society and community
(Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft) and by not hidinghis sympathy for the latter, Tönnies nostalgically
longed for the ‘organic’ community, the peasant life
and the spirit of neighbourliness, which was putinto crisis by the metropolitan condition. For Tafuri,
this is the complete opposite of the avant-gardist
position that bravely confronted the new society
in which inward experience, personal history,
psychological introspection, everything subjec-tive, no longer mattered . . . the metropolis
became the very sickness to which the intellec-
tual felt himself condemned: exile in his home-
land: . . . Baudelaire deliberately and in full
awareness laid the bases for a personal attitudethat was to remain constant in all the European
avant-gardes: the redemption of the intellec-
tual can come about if he will accept his own
condition as a sickness that can be sublimated
only through the eccentricity of the clown. (Myemphases.)34
If homelessness is the ‘disease’ of the metropolis,
Baudelaire’s �aneur that laid the ground for the
avant-garde attitude, is homeless everywhere
because he can feel at home anywhere. WhileTönnies still longed for an essential home in the
era of homelessness with an anguish typical to nos-
talgic people, the avant-gardes – according to Tafuri
– confronted and accepted the ‘disease’ of the
metropolis as a normal and actually a fruitful con-dition of existence.
In relation to this de�nition who would be the
avant-gardes? In the article in Contropiano of 1969,
Tafuri differentiates two trajectories of the avant-
garde, that are nevertheless dependent on eachother just as the mirror-image relies on the existence
of its referent. Representing the two trajectories in
terms of order vs. chaos, Tafuri asserts that avant-
gardes such as De Stijl and Bauhaus represented
Figure 4. Georg
Grosz,
Friedrichstrasse,
1918. Included in
Tafuri, Architecture
and Utopia, Fig. 15,
p. 97.
143
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
order, while Dada and Surrealism represented and
con�rmed the reality of chaos (Figs 5–8). I believe
the sphere and the labyrinth are allegories of these
two trajectories, chosen to imply Tafuri’s distinction
in the title of his book on avant-gardes.35
Chaos and Order were thus sanctioned by
the historic avant-gardes as the ‘values’ in the
proper sense of the term, of the new city of
capital. Chaos, of course, is a given, while
Order is a goal. Yet Form henceforth shouldnot be sought beyond Chaos, but within it: it
is Order that confers meaning on Chaos and
translates it into value, into ‘freedom’. To
redeem the formlessness of the city of pro�t-
ruled consumption, one must draw upon all its
progressive valences.36
As this quotation suggests, Tafuri interprets these
two avant-gardes as two necessarily related posi-
tions. Representations of chaos gained their value as
‘freedom’ because there was a will-to-order, there
was a will-to-order because there was no apparentorder, but seeming chaos in the capitalist metropo-
Figure 5. Herbert
Bayer, cover of the
Bauhaus journal,
1928. Included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 223, p. 131.
Figure 6. George
Grosz and John
Heart�eld, Dada-
merika, 1919.
Included in Tafuri,
The Sphere and the
Labyrinth, Fig. 96.
144Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Figure 7. Theo van
Doesburg, colour
study for architec-
ture, c. 1923.
Included in Tafuri,
Dal Co, Modern
Architecture, Fig.
185, p. 109.
Figure 8. Nikolai
Ladovsky, project for
a communal house,
1920. Included in
Tafuri, The Sphere
and the Labyrinth,
Fig. 130.
145
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
lis. Tafuri is indebted to Franco Fortini in differentiat-ing these two trajectories of avant-gardism, as he
also acknowledged with some reservations in a
footnote to The Sphere and the Labyrinth.37 Here,
Tafuri refers to Fortini’s article ‘Due avanguardie’ in
which the latter juxtaposes ‘absolute subjectivityand absolute objectivity’. Fortini differentiates
between ‘abstract irrationality – that is, rejection of
the discursive, dialogical moment in favour of free
association, involuntary memory, and dream – and
abstract rationality, that is, intelligibility achieved bydiscursive and rational means’. Although Tafuri and
Fortini do not refer to Simmel at this point, the oppo-
sition between a ‘subjective’, ‘irrational’ response
and ‘objective’, ‘rational’ culture is noticeably simi-
lar to the dialectic Simmel formulated in terms of the clash of ‘individual’ and ‘objective culture’ in the
metropolis. Tafuri via Fortini has translated this
observation about metropolitan life to the realm of
architecture by de�ning two avant-garde responses.
For Simmel, the ‘over-individuation’, ‘strangesteccentricities ’ and obsession with ‘being different’
that can be observed in some individuals of the
metropolis arise as a result of the reaction against
the domination of ‘objective culture’, money order
and ‘over-intellectualisation ’ of life in the metropo-lis.38 These two types of metropolitan life resonate in
the distinction between avant-gardes representing
Chaos and those representing Order.
The atrophy of individual culture through the
hypertrophy of objective culture lies at the rootof the bitter hatred which the preachers of the
most extreme individualism, in the footsteps
of Nietzsche, directed against the metropolis.
But it is also the explanation of why indeed
they are so passionately loved in the metrop-olis and indeed appear to its residents as the
saviours of their unsatis�ed yearnings.39
Chaos and Order, eccentricity and organisation are
two forces pulling the tensioned rope of metropo-
lis from two sides. Their presence depends not onlyon the rope but also on their dialectical relation with
each other. To repeat this in Hilde Heynen’s words:
‘According to Tafuri, then, the whole concern of
the avant-garde movements was to recognise and
assimilate the dialectic of chaos and order that isfundamental to modern mechanised civilisation: the
dialectic between the apparent chaos of the con-
stantly changing dynamic image of the city on the
one hand and the underlying order of the de facto
rationality of the system of production on theother.’40
On the other hand, Tafuri interprets German
Expressionism as an example for the counter-image
of the avant-garde (Fig. 9). He is far from hiding
his hostility to the German Expressionists (to bemore speci�c, Glass Chain and the Arbeitsrat für
Kunst) or any movement that he considers akin to
Tönnies.41 He uses explicitly pejorative terms for
this position such as ‘regressive’, ‘nostalgic’, ‘mys-
tical’, – not to mention ‘Orientalist’ that needsanother discussion. Unlike Simmel, but like Tönnies,
Expressionist architects could not confront the loss
of organic unity or the loss of centre resulting from
the metropolitan condition – Tafuri claims. Instead,
they searched for ways to ‘dominate the metropol-itan phenomenon, to overcome the inertia of the
pure anguish’.42 They did not try to reconcile the
individual with the metropolis. Rather than ‘sub-
limating’ or ‘dispelling’ the experience of shock,
146Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
they ‘turned it inward’ and ‘interiorised’ it.43 Their
glass utopias were ‘mystical’ aspirations that longed for ‘a recovery of prebourgeois values’.44 Their
skyscrapers were ‘magic mountains’ and spiritual
cathedrals of the modern metropolis as opposed to
American skyscrapers that bravely confronted the
chaos of the metropolis.45 Even in his last words onthe avant-garde, Tafuri continues to contrast ‘a
“progressive” ideology – typical of the historical
avant-gardes’ to a ‘regressive ideology’ that pro-
moted ‘utopia of nostalgia’, ‘antiurban thought’, or
‘the sociology of Tönnies’.46
On the chapters reserved for Nazism in Modern
Architecture, Tafuri goes as far as implicitly treat-
ing Expressionism as a proto-fascist movement.
Tafuri uses the fact that some late romantic and
Expressionist architects took sides with Nazism asthe means to prove that ‘the ambiguity of certain
basic theses in the debate over the modern archi-
tecture became dramatically obvious’. Tafuri draws
a similarity between Speer’s monumental plans for
Berlin, striving to unify the whole city as if theywould erase time, ‘transcend history’ and ‘annul
dialectic’, on the one hand, and the (Expressionistic)‘attempt to give the world a centre again, a return
to Great Synthesis, to bring to life a universe with-
out contradictions’,47 on the other. Such analogies
make Tafuri’s interpretation of Expressionism one of
his weakest. In an attempt to justify his pejorativecomments on anguish, Tafuri is bound to overlook
some of the historical complexities that separated
Expressionist utopias from Nazi programmes.
Tafuri’s discrediting of any ‘nostalgic’ movement
may be understandable, given his warnings againstthe instrumentalisation of history for design prac-
tices in Theories and History. In a later interview in
1986, Tafuri repeated this criticism proposing that
if one ‘really resolved to eliminate anxiety’ one
‘would realise that history serves to dispel nostal-gia, not inspire it’.48 Despite the validity of this
observation, the strict opposition Tafuri formulates
between those who mourned for the lost past and
those who confronted it with brave and celebrating
strength needs critical discussion. I shall pursue partof this criticism in the last section of this paper.
Before concluding this section, I would like to
draw attention to the relation between the �rst
and second themes I have outlined. Tafuri’s intol-
erance for any nostalgic ‘anguish’ is directly relatedto acknowledging the ‘death of history’ as the only
historically legitimate step of the moment to which
avant-garde architecture belonged. However, both
the ‘legitimate confrontation with the metropolis’
and ‘death of history’ risk culminating in the cultof novelty as the sole ground of avant-gardism.
Yet, as I have suggested earlier, ‘newness’ is not
the only motivation of the avant-garde movements
in Tafuri’s theory. The analysis of the metropolitan
Figure 9. Bruno Taut,
‘fantasy landscape
with glass architec-
ture on mountain-
scapes around
Lake Lugano’, from
Alpine Architecture,
1917–19, included
in Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 189, p. 111.
147
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
condition also gave rise to another criterion I shallanalyse in the next section.
3. Death of architecture as auratic objectIn a noticeably similar manner, in Theories and
History, the article in Contropiano (that had not
been changed in Architecture and Utopia) and in
Modern Architecture, Tafuri interprets many avant-
gardist movements such as Italian Futurism, Dada
or De Stijl as efforts to achieve the end of art, in
the sense of art’s total dissolution into life. Quoting
several lines from Futurist, Dadaist, Neoplasticist or
Russian Constructivist manifestoes about the death
of art, Tafuri theorises avant-gardism as the justi�-
cation of Hegel’s judgement about art’s end. A few
quotations might exemplify the point:
Life and art having proved antithetical, one
had to seek either instruments of mediation
. . . or ways by which art might pass into life,even at the cost of realizing Hegel’s prophecy
of the death of art.49
The task of artist is . . . to render art super-
�uous . . . Then we will no longer need
pictures and statues because we will be livingin a fully realised art. Art will disappear from
life in the measure in which life itself gains in
equilibrium.50
It appears that Tafuri links Hegel’s theory of the
‘death of art’ to the avant-gardist motto ‘Art intoLife’. However, this theory is hardly Hegelian and
actually – speaking within the discourse of aesthet-
ics as an area of philosophical investigation rather
than art history – it may at best be a Heideggerian
response to the Hegelian question.51 Neverthe-less, this still seems to be a basic mental tool for
Tafuri himself, and I will therefore continue to dis-close its crucial place in the historian’s theory of
avant-garde. ‘Art dies to make room for a higher
form of knowledge’,52 Tafuri suggests, following his
Hegel.
Tafuri also asserts that architecture, or rather themetropolitan physical structure, plays a pivotal role
in the death of art. The metropolis is actually the
only medium that can provide a locus for the avant-
gardist attempt to dissolve art in life.53 Thus, unlike
Grassi for whom architectural avant-garde alwaysfollows behind the artistic avant-garde, for Tafuri
architecture and city are necessary for the accom-
plishment of the artistic avant-garde itself.
The city itself is the object to which neither
the Cubist paintings, nor the Futurist ‘slaps’,nor the nihilism of Dada referred speci�cally,
but which remained . . . the reference value
to which the avant-gardes tried to measure
up. Mondrian would later have the courage to
‘name’ the city as the �nal object at whichNeoplasticist composition aimed; yet he would
be forced to acknowledge that once it was
translated into the urban structure, painting
would have to die.54
The ‘Art into Life’ motto would not have a vitalexplanatory power to differentiate the architectural
avant-gardes from their precedents, since architec-
ture has always been more closely tied to life. Yet,
viewed from another angle, this observation also
suggests the speci�c locus of architecture and thecity in the avant-gardist project itself. What would
be more suitable for the avant-garde artists who
try to inject art into life than to blend their artworks
in the life of the metropolis?
148Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Despite his continuous reference to Hegel, what Tafuri really has in mind seems to be the
Benjaminian concept of the ‘destruction of aura’. In
Theories and History, Tafuri links Benjamin’s theory
of reproduction with Hegel’s assertion of the end of
art. In the article in Contropiano and Architectureand Utopia Tafuri uses the ‘death of art’ and ‘death
of aura’ in an interchangeable way55 and never
elaborates any distinction between the two con-
cepts.56
In the late 1960s, the texts Tafuri examines ofBenjamin are ‘Das Kunstwerk in Zeitalter seiner
technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’ (‘The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’)57 and ‘Der
Autor als Produzent’ (‘The Author as Producer’).58
Both are the most Marxist essays of Benjamin andthey provide a useful background especially for the
historical avant-garde movements that were polit-
ically on the left. In the ‘Work of Art’ essay of
1936, Benjamin celebrates the mechanical repro-
duction technologies, since mechanical reproduc-tion would make it possible for art to reach the
masses. In ‘The Author as Producer’ on the other
hand, Benjamin attacks the bourgeois notion of the
artist as the sole creator of art works. Instead, he
celebrates new modes of information and avant-garde techniques in art, such as wall newspapers
and mobile movie houses, for their potential to
blur the distinction between author and reader
or between artist and audience. The two essays
can be read together as advocating a radicalchange in the way art works are produced and
received. Benjamin celebrates the new reproduc-
tion techniques for their potential to give an end
to the notion of art as a luxury of the bourgeois
individual and carry it to the masses where it wouldbe produced and consumed collectively.
I will suggest that when Tafuri formulates avant-
gardism as the death of art, what he means is the
end of art as an auratic object whose aura is depen-
dent on its authenticity, uniqueness and productionby a single author. What then would be a theory
of the architectural avant-garde? For Tafuri, just as
mechanical reproduction and mass production gave
an end to the status of art works as cult objects,
‘the dialectic between the architectonic object and urban organisation’59 enters into a radically
new phase with the avant-garde. If one translates
Benjamin’s concept of the ‘destruction of aura’ and
Hegel’s theory of the ‘death of art’ into the context
of architecture, it follows that the ultimate archi-tectural avant-garde would mean the death or end
of architecture in the sense of its total dissolution
into the urban structure of the metropolis. It should
follow that the realisation of the death of aura in
architecture would be the end of architecture as anobject standing independently in the city struc-
ture. Subsequently, the end of architecture would
also require the death of the architect as the
individual creator. The ful�llment of the architec-
tural avant-garde seen in this light, would be the total dissolution of Architecture into something
other than itself, of aura into mass, of form into
process, of author into producer, of architect
into organiser.
Thus, the argument about the ‘death of archi-tecture’ becomes the last piece that completes the
jigsaw puzzle, which gives at least one picture of
the architectural avant-garde. According to Tafuri’s
theory, the architectural avant-garde demands a
149
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
radical challenge to the institution of architectureitself, to the ways architecture is produced and
consumed within the modern metropolis. In that
sense, we can assert that Tafuri’s de�nition of the
avant-garde is far more in line with Bürger’s
theory,60 rather than Poggioli’s.61
Again, the next step should be to elaborate this
argument in relation to speci�c examples. For the
sake of appropriate concentration, I have decided
to test this argument with Tafuri’s ideas on Weimar
Germany. Close reading of these texts veri�es thatTafuri’s ideas on the de�nition of the avant-garde
do not undergo radical changes. As a matter of
fact, the chapters dealing with the German context
in The Sphere and the Labyrinth were originally
written before the publication of Architecture andUtopia in 1973.62 Therefore, it is quite legiti-
mate to treat Tafuri’s different texts on Germany
together. The choice of Germany is not completely
arbitrary since it stays as a main context in all of
Tafuri’s books on this period, while Le Corbusier63
disappears in The Sphere and the Labyrinth, and
the American and Soviet contexts are introduced
in later texts. Additionally, Weimar Germany that
is ‘seemingly the most resistant nucleus of the
concept of the avant-garde’64 in Tafuri’s ownwords, seems to be the main context in the histo-
rian’s mind for the themes I have elaborated. It
would be the task of later analyses to test this
theory in relation to the American, Soviet or other
contexts.Tafuri is critical of German Expressionists also
because they hardly understood the demand for the
‘end of architecture’. He treats German Expression-
ism on the one hand and the ‘rigourism’ of Meyer,
Lurçat or the Neue Sachlichkeit on the other as two
opposing positions.65 Neither Poelzig, nor Höger, or
Mendelsohn were ‘willing to accept the loss of form
that is necessitated by the contemporary urbanworld. Their problem was still the problem that
had tormented German thinking at the start of
the century. Are there still possibilities for Form
in the world today?’66 (Fig. 10). To give another
exemplary quotation, as early as 1969 Tafuri wrote:The two poles of Expressionism and the Neue
Sachlichkeit once again symbolised the
inherent rift of European culture. Between the
destruction of the object, its replacement by
a process intended to be experienced as such(a transformation effected by the artistic revo-
Figure 10. Hugo
Häring, elevation
and ground plans,
single-family houses,
1922. Included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 272, p. 149.
150Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
lution brought about by the Bauhaus andthe Constructivist currents) and the exaspera-
tion of the object (typical of the lacerating
but ambiguous eclecticism of the Expression-
ists), there could be no real dialogue. (My
emphasis.)67
On the other hand, Tafuri treats the Bauhaus
as the locus where the spiritual-mystical tones of
Expressionism as well as the resistance of Form
�nally came to an end, leaving its place to ‘true’
avant-gardism. In a chapter entitled ‘USSR-Berlin’in The Sphere and the Labyrinth,68 Tafuri analyses
the gradual development of this shift, starting in
1921 with the clash of Dadaist ethic as well as
the arrival of Russian Constructivists in Berlin. After
these encounters, the in�uence of ‘the East’ wouldno longer be the ‘messianic expectations’ from
the Orient, but the socialist ethic of the Bolshevik
Revolution, Tafuri says. The artists of the Bauhaus
would then realise the revolutionary potential of
technology for the liberation of the working class.69
Tafuri phrases this transformation with one of his
smart and equally poetic metaphors: ‘Light coming
from the East’ is no longer ‘spiritual’ but ‘electric’.70
Thus, artists of the Bauhaus would no longer
design objects with an aura, but organise massproduction for society as a whole. The German
adventure from craft-oriented design to industrial
production is a perfect example that veri�es Tafuri’s
thesis of architectural avant-garde as the destruc-
tion of aura, as well as the death of the designeras author.71
Apart from the Bauhaus – which actually
produced more projects for industrial design than
architecture – I would like to suggest that Tafuri
gives central importance to the urban reform andSiedlung projects of Weimar Germany as a sequel
of avant-gardism. Already in 1969, he says:
Accepting with lucid objectivity all the avant-
garde’s apocalyptic conclusions as to the ‘death
of art’ [‘death of aura’ in Architecture andUtopia] and purely ‘technical’ role of the intel-
lectual, the Central European Neue Sachlichkeit
adapted the very method of design to the
idealised structure of the assembly line . . .
From the standardised part and the cell to thesingle block, the Siedlung, and �nally to
the city: such is the assembly line that the
architectural culture devised between the wars
with exceptional clarity and consistency . . . The
result of all this was the revolutionisation of the aesthetic experience itself. No longer is it
objects that presented themselves for appraisal,
but an entire process, to be experienced and
used as such. Architecture, in calling upon the
public to participate in the design . . . forced theideology of the public to make a leap forward.
(My emphasis.)72
Hilberseimer who conceived the entire city as
a single unity, as a ‘social machine’ with elemen-
tary cells building up the urban organism as awhole, holds a speci�c place for Tafuri (Fig. 11). In
Hilberseimer’s Grossstadtarchitektu r, the single
building was no longer an ‘object’, because the
‘architectural object has been completely
dissolved.’73
By not offering ‘models’ for design, but rather
presenting the coordinates and dimensions of
the design at the most abstract (because the
most general) level possible, Hilberseimer
151
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
reveals – more than do Gropius, Mies or Bruno
Taut around the same time – to what new tasks
the capitalist reorganisation of Europe was
summoning its architects . . . [T]he architect, as
producer of ‘objects’ became an incongruous�gure. It was no longer a question of giving
form to single elements of urban fabric, nor
even to simple prototypes. Once the true unity
of the production cycle has been identi�ed in
the city, the only task the architect can have isto organise that cycle.74
These words suggest that for Tafuri, Hilberseimer
is the ‘ultimate expression of German theoretical
tradition of the subject of Grossstadt’,75 as well as
the ‘true’ avant-garde of his moment. Hilberseimer
does not even have to deal with the ‘crisis of the
object’ because the object has already disappeared
from his considerations.
Hilberseimer was a perfect example for Tafuri in his article in Contropiano and Architecture and
Utopia. However, in his later books, the historian
will give equal attention to other Siedlung projects
by Martin Wagner and Bruno Taut – who by then
had abandoned his spiritualism (Figs 12–16) – ErnstMay (Figs 17–19), and Schumacher, as the ‘master-
pieces of German avant-garde’.76
For its part, the architectural object as such
proved in Frankfurt as in the Berlin of Martin
Figure 11. Ludwig
Hilberseimer,
illustrations from
Grossstadtarchitektur,
1927, included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Figs 307–308,
p. 165, and Tafuri,
Architecture and
Utopia, Fig. 18,
p. 108.
152Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Wagner and Bruno Taut to be truly a thing of the past: the Siedlung was a clearly de-
�ned ensemble, but we must recognize, along
with Benjamin, that it was a victory of the
perception of the type over the perception of
the unicum.77
This quotation suggests that Tafuri explains the
Siedlung projects in terms of a dichotomy between
auratic object and reproduction. For him the single-
family house standing as an architectural object out
of the urban fabric as a ‘unicum’ refers to aura;whereas typological study that makes mass-hous-
ing possible refers to reproducibility. In several texts,
the Benjaminian opposition between aura and mass
stands as the main criterion through which Tafuri
interprets several housing projects of the period. Forinstance, he treats Taut’s early Magdeburg hous-
ing as well as the Weissenhof and Siemensstadt
Siedlung as unsuccessful projects that hardly ful-
�lled the aspiration for urban reform. Tafuri inter-
prets Taut’s early Magdeburg project (Fig. 20) thatstill had ‘anarchic-libertarian ’ and ‘messianic’ expec-
tations from a revitalisation of agricultural life as a
residue of his ‘romanticism’.78 Yet, after such last
sighs, Taut joined Wagner (and May) in their hous-
ing projects that were leading towards not only anurban but also an industrial and social reform.79 The
Weissenhof project in Stuttgart on the other hand
(Fig. 21), which was and still remains for many his-
torians the main masterpiece of housing of the
Weimar years, was not revolutionary at all for Tafuri,because it was just a collage of single-family
dwellings designed by famous architects. It was a
propaganda display of the new architecture but
lacked the new conception about the speci�c
dialectic between the house and the metropolis that
was, by that time, already realised by May, Taut and
Wagner.80 An equally ‘less signi�cant’ and ‘excep-tional’ housing was the Siemensstadt in Berlin
(Fig. 22). In this project, while the blocks by Gropius
Figure 12. Bruno
Taut, Martin Wagner,
Siedlung Britz, site
plan and aerial view,
1925–31. Included
in Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Figs 292–293, p. 159.
153
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
and Bartning accomplished the requirements of thenew housing reform, those by Scharoun and Häring
appealed to the ‘organic myth’ and the desire to
recover the aura.81 In an exemplary passage Tafuri
says: ‘If the ideology of the Siedlung consummated,
to use Benjamin’s phrase, the destruction of the“aura” traditionally connected with the “piece” of
architecture, Scharoun and Häring’s “objects”
tended instead to recover an “aura”, even if it was
one conditioned by new production methods and
new formal structure’.82
What is equally important in the social housing
projects of May, Taut and Wagner for Tafuri was
their production process. These projects moved
towards a ‘radical reform of the organisation of the
building industry and of the administrative controlof urban development’.83 In terms of the building
industry, the Siedlung projects – of May in par-
ticular – were based on studies of modules, pre-fabricated concrete panels, standardised minimum
cells and the idea of Existenzminimum (Fig. 23).
Such production techniques became available only
through the latest developments in building indus-
try, and thus made the social housing projects real-istic. Therefore, these projects were one of the rare
architectural achievements in history where the
avant-gardist enthusiasm for new techniques on
the one hand, and the political orientation to build
for the workers’ class on the other, intersected.Though Tafuri started to avoid ‘avant-garde’ as a
label, he treated social housing projects as the
perfect sequel of the avant-gardist project. Histor-
ically they represented one of the few moments
where the political potential that Benjamin cele-brated in the era of mechanical reproduction
was translated into architecture. Mass production
Figure 13. Georg
Fritz. Perspective
drawing of Taut and
Wagner’s Siedlung
Britz, c. 1925,
included in Tafuri,
The Sphere and the
Labyrinth, Fig. 240.
154Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Figure 14. Bruno
Taut, Siedlung Onkel-
Toms-Hütte, Berlin,
general ground plan,
1926–31, included in
Tafuri, The Sphere
and the Labyrinth,
Fig. 243.
155
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
Figure 15. Bruno
Taut, Siedlung Onkel-
Toms-Hütte, Berlin,
1926–31, included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 294, p. 160.
Figure 16. Bruno
Taut, Siedlung
Schillerpark, Berlin
1924–25, included
in Tafuri, The Sphere
and the Labyrinth,
Fig. 220.
Figure 17. Ernst
May and collabora-
tors, Siedlung
Praunheim, Frankfurt,
1926–30, included
in Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 288, p. 158.
156Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Figure 18. Ernst
May, H. Boehm,
et al., Siedlung
Bornheimer Hang,
Frankfurt (plan of the
�rst version), 1926,
included in Tafuri,
The Sphere and the
Labyrinth, Fig. 230.
Figure 19. Ernst
May, H. Boehm, W,
Bangert, Siedlung
Römerstadt,
Frankfurt, 1926–28,
included in Tafuri,
The Sphere and the
Labyrinth, Fig. 229.
157
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
techniques would make it possible for the architects
to build for society as a whole rather than for a priv-
ileged élite, just as mechanical reproduction would
carry art to the masses.Apart from the technology of reproduction, the
German experiments were also of particular interest
to Tafuri for their administrative process. From 1919on, ‘a new conception of the technician’s role in
dealing with the urban problem’84 began to take
shape. Architects such as Wagner, Taut and May
had political and administrative roles in the con-
trol of urban environments especially where socialhousing was concerned. What Tafuri appreciates
highly in this process is its potential to turn the
author into producer (in Benjaminian terms) and
the architect into organiser.
This theory may create less astonishment in the
reader when it is understood within the Italian
context of the 1960s, as well as within Tafuri’s own
formative years. Giorgio Ciucci and David Dunster
have emphasised the importance of debates ontotal planning, administrative centres, and the rela-
tion between architecture and city territory as key
issues in Tafuri’s intellectual concerns in the 1960s.
After commenting on Tafuri’s contributions to
Casabella throughout the 1960s, which was thena journal committed to presenting large urban
projects and the importance of planning, Ciucci has
suggested that these formative years signi�cantly
shaped Tafuri’s self-declared task as an intellectual
in the years to come.85 Dunster, on the other hand,has argued that Architecture and Utopia was born
out of the context of the 1960s when questioning
the relation between politics and architecture had
convinced many young students and architects that
the answer lay in moving architecture into plan-ning.86 However, Tafuri’s whole historical narrative
in this book is constructed to prove the impossi-
bility of any critical action towards political change
through architecture. The book is written as a
Figure 20. Bruno
Taut, project for an
agricultural and
livestock pavillion,
Magdeburg,
1921–22, included
in Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 281, p. 154.
158Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
warning to those whose beliefs in the possibility
of a new avant-garde ‘often serve as illusions that
permit the survival of anachronistic “hopes in
design”.’87
Tafuri regards avant-garde as an historicallyconditioned and failed attempt – a statement that
has disturbed many architects and critics who took
up the challenge to prove him wrong. According
to Tafuri, there can be no new avant-garde or crit-
ical architecture, whose attempts he labels as ‘neo-avant-garde’ with a humorous sense of irony, since
a nostalgia for avant-garde is a contradiction in
terms. To put this in David Cunningham’s words:
‘In Tafuri’s essentially Hegelian schema, all possi-
bility of an avant-garde was completely sublated
within the modernist “ideology of the plan” and
any attempt to re-activate it is at best a kind offutile nostalgia which fails to understand “histori-
cally the road traveled”’.88 It is now necessary to
disclose why Tafuri gives no chance to the future
of the avant-garde and why he thinks the histor-
ical avant-garde was a failed attempt. As Tafuriadmits both in Modern Architecture and The
Sphere and the Labyrinth, the urban reform
Figure 21.
Weissenhof Siedlung,
aerial view, Stuttgart,
1927, included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 305, p. 163.
159
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
projects of the Weimar period came to an end by1933, and with them died all the hopes to achieve
the sequel phase of the avant-gardist project. It is
necessary to list Tafuri’s explanations for the failure
of the Siedlung projects to understand the per-
ceived historicity, failure and anachronicity of theavant-garde.
According to Tafuri in Modern Architecture, when
May was given the chance to realise a new urban
model for Frankfurt, the project failed because May’s
power was restrained to an area that hardly had anyeffect on the overall organisation of land use. The
whole ideology of ‘rationalisation of building
production’ or studies of Existenzminimum col-lapsed because the rents of the houses ended up
being too high for the working class, due to the rise
in the cost of building materials or uncontrolled
credits. ‘Here was the proof that a reform in one
sector, isolated from a complex of institutionalreforms coordinated in a coherent political strategy
is doomed to failureeven in that particular sector’,89
Tafuri concludes. In some parts of Modern
Architecture, Tafuri mentions the Nazi intervention
as one of the causes of the failure of the Siedlungprojects,90 whereas in The Sphere and the Labyrinth,
the historian �nds even this explanation naive. After
Figure 22. Hans
Scharoun, Walter
Gropius, Hugo
Häring et al.,
Siemensstadt
Siedlung, project
model, Berlin,
1929–31. (Scharoun’s
blocks are the ones
on the bottom-left,
E.A.) Included in
Tafuri, Dal Co,
Modern Architecture,
Fig. 299, p. 160.
160Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
narrating in detail all the alternatives Martin Wagner
tried one by one, and all the failures each alternativehad to go through,91 Tafuri ends by concluding that
the failure of the Siedlung experiment was hardly
due to Nazi intervention. Almost all of the options
were tested and consumed anyway. It was rather the
inability to cope with the real problems arising as anintrinsic result of capitalism that put the architects
on a dead-end road. The only critical moment in
modern architecture when architects had the role of
building for the working class was also doomed to
fail.These two explanations would support Tafuri’s
well-known conclusion in Architecture and Utopia:
‘there can be no class architecture, only class criti-cism of architecture’.92 Any socially oriented hope
to build for the sake of the working class is only a
naive idealism, unless the political system as a whole
prepares the ground for it. In Fredric Jameson’s sum-
marising words, ‘an architecture of the future willbe concretely and practically possible only when the
future has arrived, that is to say, after a total social
revolution’.93 I would like to conclude this section
with Tafuri’s own last words on the avant-garde,
dedicated to the ‘melancholy man’ of Weimar whodesperately tried but lost every possible �ght:
The fragments rising to the surface, in fact,
form a question mark, which installs itself
forcefully in the narrow passage that was
painfully opened up between disciplinary reor-ganisation and politics. The encounter was
transformed into a clash: only one who refuses
to cross the mined terrain of this new battle-
�eld will be able to see the funeral drapes �ut-
tering over it.94
The ignored dilemma of modernity – acritique of Tafuri’s theory of architecturalavant-gardeTafuri explains architectural avant-gardism (espe-cially of Weimar Germany) as an historically condi-
tioned, critical but failed attempt. Neither the
destruction of aura – the dissolution of architecture
into metropolis – as a result of modern reproduction
techniques was achieved; nor could its politicalpotentials for the working class be ful�lled.95 Tafuri’s
tripartite argument that I excavated in his texts in
terms of the death of history, confrontation with the
metropolitan condition and death of architecture as
Figure 23. Ernst May,
H. Boehm, W.
Bangert, Siedlung
Römerstadt,
Frankfurt, 1926–28,
included in Tafuri,
Architecture and
Utopia, Fig. 21,
p. 118. And in The
Sphere and the
Labyrinth, Fig. 227.
161
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
auratic object, constructs a convincing theory ofarchitectural avant-garde. Although this theory does
not explain every movement that is commonly
referred to as avant-garde, such as Expressionism or
Futurism, it is still strong in developing a necessary
clarity for the use of the term.As a conclusion, I would like to question Tafuri’s
judgements about the critical power of this avant-
gardist project. Was the death of history, celebra-
tion of the confrontation with the metropolitan
condition and destruction of aura, the only criticalstrategy of its present, as Tafuri seems to argue as
much as he denies any possibility for the avant-
garde to change society? In doing this, I would like
start by criticising Tafuri’s one-sided reading of
Simmel and Benjamin, whose ideas on metropolisand aura hold the pivotal place in the historian’s
theory of the architectural avant-garde.
In his opinions about the metropolitan condition,
Simmel is not as decided as Tafuri is. In Simmel’s
texts, one can come across expressions that Tafurihimself might criticise as ‘anguished’. For instance,
Simmel’s groundbreaking essay ‘Die Grossstadt und
das Geistesleben’ (‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’)
of 1903, analyses the adjustment of the individual
to the speedy, money-oriented and ‘objectiveculture’ of the metropolis, at an early moment
when the transformation from a non-metropolitan
to a metropolitan life was taking place. However,
unlike Tafuri’s, Simmel’s value judgements about
this transformation are far from ambiguous or hesi-tant. For example, the two contrasting quotations
below that are separated by nothing but three
pages depict town life both as a peaceful and as
a restricted milieu respectively :
This incapacity to react to new situations withthe required amount of energy constitutes in
fact that blasé attitude which every child of a
large city evinces when compared with the
products of the more peaceful and more stable
milieu. (My emphases.)96
Small town life in antiquity as well as in
the Middle Ages imposed such limits upon the
movements of the individual in his relationships
with the outside world and on his inner inde-
pendence and differentiation that the modernperson who is placed in a small town feels a
type of narrowness which is very similar. (My
emphasis.)97
Simmel’s text �uctuates between similar hesitations
about the loss and gain introduced by metropol-itan life. Portrayals of the metropolitan individual
swing from his/her inability to judge any quality
requiring a re�ned sensitivity, to the pleasure of
freedom no non-metropolitan enjoys. On the one
hand, Simmel is critical of the metropolitan indi-vidual’s reserved relationship with others as a result
of the protective organ s/he develops against the
rhythm of metropolitan life. On the other hand, he
appreciates this ultimate loneliness as the price of
metropolitan emancipation. While Tafuri regardsthe uncomplaining confrontation with loss as the
only historically legitimate step, Simmel would have
much more understanding for the ‘anguished’
responses to this loss. Simmel neither seizes the
metropolitan condition with ultimate enthusiasm,nor criticises it with a nostalgic fear of novelty.
A similar case is true for Tafuri’s interpretation of
Benjamin as well. First, as it became perfectly clear
in his ‘Thesis on the Philosophy of History,’98
162Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
Benjamin was far from celebrating ‘the storm wecall progress’ as the fruitful condition of existence
in modern times – unlike Tafuri’s avant-gardes.
Second, it is now a well-known fact that Benjamin’s
value judgements on the decline of aura with
modernity were ambiguous. The different treat-ments of aura in ‘The Work of Art’99 essay of 1936
and ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’ (‘Some
Motifs in Baudelaire’)100 of 1939 have been studied
in detail.101 In the essay of 1936, Benjamin de�ned
the aura of an artwork in terms of its authenticity,uniqueness and cult value, and celebrated the
decline of aura with the advent of mechanical
reproduction for the sake of its political potential.
The essay of 1939, on the other hand, favoured
the experience of aura as the condition where theperson (or object) we look at is invested with the
ability to return the look. Thus Benjamin pictured
the metropolitan life (of the poet and �aneur in
particular) as an auratic experience. From his
earliest essays, Benjamin had deep respect for theauratic experience of ‘looking back’ and he often
used this metaphor to describe his sympathy for
children and collectors,102 as well as German
Romanticism. Similarly, in the ‘Der Erzähler’
(‘Storyteller ’)103 written in the same year as the‘Work of Art’ essay, Benjamin favoured auratic
experience in the traditional art of storytelling and
referred to the contemporary decline of aura as a
tragic loss. The fact that a set of essays that cele-
brate the decline of aura against another set thatbemoans its loss are written during similar years,
makes it harder to explain Benjamin’s treatment of
aura in terms of chronologically oriented cate-
gories. In other words, Benjamin seems less to
change his mind essay after essay, than to be atthe centre of a dilemma whose forces are equally
compelling. Benjamin gives up neither the auratic
experience nor the political potential of mass
production.104
As Hilde Heynen and Thomas Llorens105 pointedout, Tafuri’s interpretation of Simmel and Benjamin
is highly indebted to his colleague Massimo Cacciari
from the Venice School. Cacciari criticises both
Simmel and Benjamin for ‘refusing to accept the
full consequences of [their] own analysis’.106 ForCacciari, Heynen suggests, the attempt to rescue
values such as individuality and personal freedom,
as did Simmel, is nothing but retreating into nos-
talgic and bourgeois values. In that way, Cacciari
criticises even what he considers to be the most pro-gressive writers that have helped him develop his
own radical critique of modernisation. For Cacciari,
in the last analysis the modern life of the metrop-
olis is false consciousness based on the asser-
tion that it is essentially tied to capitalism. InHeynen’s words: ‘Apparently he excludes the possi-
bility that any form of critical thought could emerge
that would do anything other than con�rm the
system it claims to condemn.’107
Tafuri seems to follow Cacciari’s approach in nothighlighting the ambiguities and uncertainties of
Simmel’s and Benjamin’s ideas on the metropolitan
condition. Both in Simmel and Benjamin’s texts, we
can observe a confrontation with what I would like
to call the dilemma of modernity. Unlike Tafuri’savant-gardes of the early twentieth century whose
heads are stubbornly turned forward, Simmel and
Benjamin stand at an in-between space. Of course,
every critic is free to use and interpret any text
163
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
s/he desires from another writer. However, I wouldlike to suggest that incorporating Benjamin’s and
Simmel’s complex treatments of the decline of aura
and metropolitan condition might have given
another level of sophistication to Tafuri’s histories.
Confronting the dilemma of modernity may nothave explained the architectural avant-gardes, but
it might have developed a better understanding of
the potentials and limits of their approach. It might
have opened a door for appreciating works that
hold some of the avant-gardist aspirations, but that nevertheless do not promote the ‘end of archi-
tecture’ in the sense of its dissolution into the
metropolis or the ‘death of history’ in the sense of
total novelty. This might have brought a more
subtle interpretation for other receptions of theexperiences of modernity. For instance, Tafuri’s
intolerance for anxiety over loss prevented him
from cultivating any historical sympathy for many
important �gures of the period and caused him
relative weakness or silence in interpreting archi-tects such as Loos, Tessenow and Expressionists.108
Unfortunately, this also caused Tafuri to ignore any
possible dialectical relation between his avant-
gardes and non-avant-gardes. Despite his commit-
ment to dialectical analysis, it is surprising to realisethat Tafuri’s interpretations of this period do not
allow much dialectic between anguish and cele-
bration of loss. Tafuri does not come to terms with
the dilemma of modernity that many of his intel-
lectual sources confronted. One may also challengethe historian’s account of the German avant-garde
and Siedlungen of the Weimar period. Although
this is not a topic I can elaborate here, one can
�nd enough historical justi�cation to argue that
there was more continuity than break between the‘anguished’ garden-city debate and the Siedlungen
experience. To put it in other words, the history
of Weimar Siedlungen as a transformed legacy of
the pre-war garden-city debate was much more
complicated than a shift or break from the anguishof loss to the brave confrontation with the metrop-
olis achieved as a result of the avant-garde. Reread-
ing this period by tracing the post-Weimar days of
architects such as Taut, Wagner and Margarete
Schütte-Lihotzky in Turkey (and Japan for Taut) orMay in Africa would also con�rm that the archi-
tects of the Siedlung experience internalised the
dilemmas of modernity much more intensely than
Tafuri liked to see.109
Finally, let me conclude with a few words on thepossibility of criticism and critical practice today,
whether we call it the new avant-garde or not.
Tafuri’s interpretation of Benjamin may also be ques-
tioned for not admitting the critical power that
Benjamin himself saw in the avant-garde. Critics suchas David Cunningham and Hilde Heynen110 have
pointed out that Benjamin’s own version of the
avant-garde, which was developed in a series of
essays including ‘Surrealism’, ‘Destructive Char-
acter’ and the Arcades, allows much more criticalpower to the artist than Tafuri is willing to admit.
Unlike Tafuri, Benjamin imagined that art could
have much more non-utopian yet transformative
power. After all, it is this ‘daydreaming’ that moti-
vates the artist for the demand toward change. Iwould like to suggest a second point of hesitation
against Tafuri’s denial of the possibility of any critical
architecture based on his analysis of the mod-
ern ‘crisis’. In the last analysis, capitalism and the
164Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
oppression of the working classes seem to lie at theroot of this crisis according Tafuri. Yet with a pre-
dictable North American twist, one may be justi�ed
in asking whether the working class is the only group
excluded from Architecture. As long as class remains
as Tafuri’s privileged category of historical analysis,oppressions based on other categories such as gen-
der, race and geography seem to be considered less
relevant. However, looking back at the evolution of
architectural criticism after Tafuri, perhaps with a
level of far-fetched optimism, one may suggest thatthe critique of ideology as a methodological tool, and
critical analysis of the oppressions and exclusions of
Architecture have nevertheless shaken some status
quo. Whether these criticisms have made any valu-
able change possible or whether they have actuallyretarded and concealed the confrontation with the
‘real question’ is something that is up to each indi-
vidual’s own judgement.
Notes and references1. This paper was �rst written in 1999 and revised in
2002 for this publication. I would like to thank Mary
McLeod for conducting a PhD seminar on Tafuri at
Columbia University that inspired the �rst draft of this
paper. I would also like to thank the editors and ref-
erees of The Journal of Architecture for their valuable
comments.
2. Giorgio Grassi, ‘Avant-Garde and Continuity’, S.
Sarterelli (trans.), in Oppositions Reader, M. Hays (ed.)
(Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998) pp.
391–401. Original publication: 1980.
3. R.E .Somol (ed.), Autonomy and Ideology. Positioning
an Avant-Garde in America (Monacelli Press, New
York, 1997).
For the reception of Tafuri in the United States,
also see: Joan Ockman, ‘Venice and New York’,
Casabella, 619–20 (January-February 1995), pp.
57–71.
4. Cunningham, Goodbun, Jaschke, ‘Introduction’, The
Journal of Architecture, Vol. 6 (Summer 2001),
p. 107.
5. Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, G.
Fitzgerald (trans.) (The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, London, 1968). Trans-
lated from Teoria dell’arte d’avanguardia (Il Mulino,
Bologna, 1962).
6. Ibid., p. 25.
7. Peter Bürger , Theory of the Avant-Garde, M. Shaw
(trans.) (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
1984). Translated from Theorie der Avant-Garde
(Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1974).
8. Ibid., p. 48.
9. Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, in Art
and Culture Critical Essays (Beacon Press, Boston,
1961). Original publication: 1939.
10. P. Poggioli, op. cit., p. 108.
11. Ibid., p. 123.
12. Ibid., p. 89.
13. Ibid., pp. 96–101.
14. See essays by Michael Hays, Alan Colquhoun, Beatriz
Colomina and Christian Hubert in Joan Ockman
(ed.), Architecture production (Princeton Architectural
Press, New York, 1988).
– Joan Ockman, ‘The Road Not Taken. Alexander
Dorner’s Way Beyond Art’, in Autonomy and Ideology
op. cit., pp. 82–120.
15. Hilde Heynen, ‘What belongs to architecture?’ Avant-
garde ideas in the modern movement,’ The Journal of
Architecture, Vol. 4 (Summer 1999), pp. 129–147.
16. Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History of Architec-
ture, G. Verrecchia (trans) (Harper and Row, New
York, 1980). Translated from: Teorie e storia
dell’architettura (Laterza, Bari, 1968).
165
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
17. Ibid., p. 14.
18. Ibid., p. 26.
19. Ibid., p. 20.
20. Ibid., p. 20.
21. Ibid., p. 20.
22. Ibid., pp. 30–1.
23. On a different topic, Carla Keyvanian has also
pointed out that there is a continuity between
Tafuri’s interpretation of the Renaissance and of the
modern period. While many regarded Tafuri’s return
to the study of the Renaissance as a ‘retreat’ after
disclosing the impossibility of any critical practice in
the contemporary world, Keyvanian suggests con-
nections between Tafuri’s reading of the Renaissance
and the modern world, in the sense that the his-
torian saw the beginnings of the modern ‘crisis’ in
the Renaissance world.
Carla Keyvanian, ‘Manfredo Tafuri: From the Critique
of Ideology to Microhistories,’ Design Issues, Vol. 16,
No.1 (Spring 2000), pp. 3–15.
For another important article on the relation between
Tafuri’s history of the Renaissance and the ‘crisis’ of
the modern world, see: Daniel Sherer, ‘Progetto and
Ricerca: Manfredo Tafuri as Critic and Historian’,
Zodiac, 15 (March/August, 1996), pp. 33–51.
24. ’Though this chapter was written by Francesco dal
Co, it can be argued that Tafuri would at least agree
with the title and the main principles of the chapter.
Throughout this paper – except the ‘Architecture
Without Avant-Garde’ chapter mentioned at this
moment – all of the references to Modern Archi-
tecture will be to the chapters written by Tafuri. This
is necessary in order to be able to analyse Tafuri’s
viewpoint, rather than confusing it with Dal Co’s.
25. Manfredo Tafuri, Francesco dal Co, Modern
Architecture, R.E. Wolf (trans.) (Electa/Rizzoli, New
York, 1986), v.1, p. 91. Translated from: Architettura
contemporanea (Electa, Milan, 1976).
26. Ibid., p. 91.
27. Ibid., p. 96.
28. M. Tafuri, Theories and History, op.cit., p. 40.
29. R. Poggioli, Theory of the Avant-Garde, op. cit., p. 79.
30. Philip Johnson, Jeffrey Kipnis, ‘A Conversation
Around the Avant-Garde’, in Autonomy and
Ideology, R.E. Somol (ed.), op cit., p. 46.
31. Tafuri revised and extended his article in Contropiano
(1969) in 1973, published as Progetto e utopia
(Architecture and Utopia). Almost one third of the
book was added to the later version, yet the additions
do not challenge the main argument. Apart from the
third (‘Ideology and Utopia’) and the seventh (‘Archi-
tecture and Its Double: Semiology and Formalism’)
chapters that were totally written anew for the book,
Tafuri also added discussions on L’enfant, Jefferson,
Piranesi’s Carceri etchings, MA, Vesc, and most notably
Simmel’s ideas to the 1973 version. The concluding
parts have also been revised extensively.
– Manfredo Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Archi-
tectural Ideology’, (trans.) S Sartarelli, in Architecture
Theory since 1968, M. Hays (ed.) (Columbia Uni-
versity Press, New York, 1999). Translated from ‘Per
una critica dell’ideologia architettonica’ Contropiano,
1, (January–April 1969).
– Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia. Design
and Capitalist Development, B.L. La Penta (trans.)
(The MIT Press, Cambridge, London, 1976). Trans-
lated from Progetto e utopia. Architettura e sviluppo
capitalistico (Laterza, Bari, 1973).
32. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., pp. 17–18.
33. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, op. cit.,
pp. 88–9.
34. M. Tafuri, dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 87.
35. Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth.
Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the
166Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
1970s. P. D’Acierno, R. Connolly (trans.) (The MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1987).
Translated from: La sfera e il labirinto. Avanguardie
e architettura da Piranesi agli anni ’70 (Einaudi, Turin,
1980).
36. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., p. 20.
37. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
p. 308.
– Franco Fortini, ‘Due avanguardie’, in Avanguardia
e neoavanguardia (Sugar Editore, Milan, 1966),
pp. 9–21.
38. Georg Simmel, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in
On Individuality and Social Forms, Donald N. Levine
(ed.) (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971), p.
336. Translated from ‘Die Grossstadt und das
Geistesleben’ (1903), in Brücke und Tür (Koehler,
Stuttgart, 1957).
39. Ibid., p. 338.
40. Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity. A Critique
(MIT Press, Boston, 1999), p. 133.
41. Yet as a footnote, it is important to note that Tafuri’s
judgements about Expressionists such as Bruno Taut
will undergo doubt, when he wrote ‘The Stage as
Virtual City’ in 1975, which was reprinted in The
Sphere and the Labyrinth. In this article, when he
is tracing the genealogy of avant-gardist theatre,
Tafuri confronts the ‘avant-gardism’ of Taut. His
different ideas about Taut in these essays, and the
extent to which Taut challenges Tafuri’s thesis on
avant-garde as well as the strict opposition he con-
structs between the homelessness of the metropolis
and the nostalgia of those who are anxious about
this homelessness, is a theme I hope to explore in
the future.
42. M. Tafuri, F. dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 89.
43. Ibid., p. 87.
44. Ibid., p. 113.
45. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
pp. 173–177.
46. M. Tafuri, ‘Introduction: The Historical Project’, in The
Sphere and the Labyrinth’, op. cit., p. 17. The early
version of this article was written in 1977. It is one
of the last articles in the book.
47. M. Tafuri, F. dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 269, 277.
48. Manfredo Tafuri, ‘There is no criticism, only history.
Interview by R. Ingersoll’, Casabella, 619–620
(Jan/Feb 1995), p. 99. Originally published: 1986.
49. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., p. 19.
50. M. Tafuri, F. Dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
pp. 111–112.
51. Heidegger brie�y mentioned his answer to Hegel’s
judgement about the end of art in the ‘Epilogue’ of his
essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’. However,
unpacking this reply would not be possible unless it is
interpreted in the light of Heidegger’s theory of
art in general, that was developed in a number
of essays including the ones in Poetry Language
Thought and the �rst volume of Nietzsche. This task
would require another paper, which I have taken else-
where: ‘Geçmiste Kaldigi Çagda Sanat. Bir Heidegger
Yorumu’ (Art in an Age of its Own Oblivion. An
Interpretation of Heidegger), Defter 25 (1995), pp.
65–87. Reprinted in: Stüdyolar (July 1996), pp. 18–27.
52. M. Tafuri, Theories and History, op. cit., p. 29.
53. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., p. 20.
54. Ibid., p. 19.
55. For instance, the phrase ‘death of art’ in the article
in Contropiano (p.21), becomes ‘death of aura’ in
Architecture and Utopia (p.101).
56. Tafuri also uses the term ‘crisis of object’ to de�ne
this situation. Upon being asked why he never really
167
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
elaborates what he means by these terms in an
interview; Tafuri answers that they were already
analysed by Benjamin and therefore needed little
further explanation
Manfredo Tafuri, ‘The Culture Markets. Françoise
Very interviews Manfredo Tafuri’, K. Hylton (trans.)
Casabella, 619–20, (Jan/Feb 1995), p. 41. Originally
published: 1976.
57. Walter Benjaimin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, H. Arendt
(ed.) (Schocken Books, New York, 1968), pp. 217–
253. Translated from: ‘Das Kunstwerk in Zeitalter
seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, 1936.
58. Walter Benjamin, ‘Author as Producer’, in Re�ec-
tions, P. Demetz (ed.) (Schocken Books, New York,
1978), pp. 220–239. Translated from: ‘Der Autor als
Produzent’, 1937.
59. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., pp. 6–7.
60. The fact that Bürger’s theory can not explain all of
the avant-gardes but some of them is also true for
Tafuri. For example, the historian’s relative silence on
the fascism of futurism or Italian Rationalism should
hardly be neglected.
61. Chronologically speaking, Tafuri could not have read
Bürger, and he refers to Poggioli for an unrelated
subject. Yet these two facts do not necessarily falsify
my assertion here.
62. ‘USSR-Berlin, 1922: From Populism to “Constructivist
International” ’ was written in 1972; ‘Sozialpolitik
and the City in Weimar’ was written in 1971.
63. Tafuri’ s analysis of Le Corbusier could be the subject
of another paper. While Le Corbusier’s Algiers project
can be considered as the ultimate avant-garde in rela-
tion to the ‘end of architecture’ argument in Archi-
tecture and Utopia, Tafuri’s silence about Le
Corbusier’s single houses – which are auratic objects
par excellence standing in the landscape – is ques-
tionable. On the other hand, after Architecture and
Utopia, Tafuri would stop working on Le Corbusier
until his article ‘Machine et Mémoire’ where he
would mention ‘Le Corbusier’s anti-avant-gardism’.
– Manfredo Tafuri, ‘Machine et Mémoire: The City
in the work of Le Corbusier’, in Le Corbusier, H.A.
Brooks (ed.) (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1987). p. 208.
64. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
p. 198.
65. M. Tafuri, F. Dal Co, ‘The Dialectic of European
Modern Movement: Expressionism vs. Rigourism’, in
Modern Architecture, op. cit., pp. 142–152.
66. Ibid., p. 143.
67. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., p. 23.
68. M. Tafuri, ‘USSR-Berlin, 1922: From Populism to
“Constructivist International” ’, The Sphere and the
Labyrinth, pp. 119–149.
69. Tafuri explains how the ethics of ‘freedom from
work’ in the Dadaist manifestoes would also �t into
this context.
70. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit., p.
131.
71. I can note that this point is also mentioned by Michael
Hays, in his study on Meyer. Michael Hays, Modernism
and the Post Humanist Subject. The Architecture
of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (The MIT
Press, Cambridge, London, 1992).
72. M. Tafuri, ‘Toward a Critique of Architectural
Ideology’, op. cit., p. 21.
73. Ibid., p. 22.
74. Ibid., p. 22.
75. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
p. 221.
76. Ibid., p. 197.
77. M. Tafuri, F. dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 158.
168Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan
78. Ibid., pp. 153–155.
79. At the risk of leaving the German context momentar-
ily, it would support the argument to mention Tafuri’s
interpretation of Oud and van Eesteren. ‘Both Oud
and van Eesteren were members of the De Stijl group.
For them, the prophecy proclaimed by Mondrian – a
future in which art will disappear from life in the mea-
sure in which life itself will have absorbed the demand
for “equilibrium” expressed by Neo-Plasticism – was
something to be translated immediately into concrete
experiments.’ The concrete experiments Tafuri men-
tions in this text that would translate the avant-gardist
desire for the disappearance of art into architecture
are the social housing projects by Oud and van
Eesteren. In other words, Tafuri interprets social hous-
ing experiments in Holland as a continuation of avant-
gardist ideals, as he did in Germany.
Quotation from: M. Tafuri, F. Dal Co, Modern
Architecture, op. cit., p. 166.
80. Ibid., p. 161.
81. Ibid., p. 161, M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia,
op. cit., p. 117.
82. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, op. cit., p. 117.
83. M. Tafuri, F. Dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 153.
84. Ibid., p. 153.
85. Although Ciucci admits that Tafuri’s practice as a
writer and intellectual would go through some trans-
formations after he met Cacciari, Astor Rosa and
Negri in Venice, these early years of interest in plan-
ning issues were indicative of his future work. In that
sense Theories and History was not only a ‘break-
through’, but also a ‘point of arrival’.
Giorgio Ciucci, ‘The Formative Years’, Casabella
(Jan/Feb. 1995), pp. 13–25.
86. David Dunster, ‘Critique: Tafuri’s Architecture and
Utopia’, AD, 73 (1977), p. 3.
87. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, op. cit., p. 182.
88. David Cunningham, ‘Architecture, Utopia and the
futures of the avant-garde,’ The Journal of Archi-
tecture, Vol. 6 (Summer 2001), p. 171.
Cunningham also suggests that Tafuri’s assertion
itself is part of an historically conditioned tradition
of the critique of romanticism in architecture. Tafuri
follows the Marxist critics of romanticism (such as
the critique of utopian socialism in The Communist
Party Manifesto) who were sceptical of any possi-
bility for the artist and architect to alter social
structure through their work.
89. M. Tafuri, F. Dal Co, Modern Architecture, op. cit.,
p. 158.
90. Ibid., pp. 162, 166.
91. Tafuri lists several reasons for failure such as the
inability to confront the free play of market forces
(p. 210); the inability to control related sectors other
than social housing (p.212); the 1929 economic crisis
(p. 218), etc.
– Manfredo Tafuri, ‘Sozialpolitik and City in Weimar
Germany’, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
pp. 197–233. Originally published: 1971.
92. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, op. cit., p. 179.
93. Fredric Jameson, ‘Architecture and the Critique of
Ideology,’ J. Ockman (ed.), Architecture Criticism Ideol-
ogy (Princeton Architectural Press, NY, 1985), p. 55.
94. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, op. cit.,
p. 233.
95. In that sense Tafuri shares another point with Bürger.
For Bürger, the fact that we still have art as (insti-
tutionalised) Art is proof that the avant-gardist
project was never accomplished.
96. G. Simmel, ‘Metropolis and Mental Life’ . . ., p. 329.
97. Ibid., p. 333.
98. Walter Benjamin, ‘Thesis on the Philosophy of History,’
in Illuminations, H. Arendt, (ed.) (Schocken Books, New
York, 1968). Originally written: 1940.
99. W. Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art . . . op. cit.,
169
The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 7Summer 2002
100. Walter Benjamin, ‘On some Motifs in Baudelaire’, in
Illuminations, p. 169. Translated from: ‘Über einige
Motive bei Baudelaire’ 1939.
101. Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin. An Aesthetic of
Redemption (Columbia University Press, New York,
1982).
– Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experi-
ence: The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology’
NGC, 40, (Winter 1987), pp. 179–224.
– A. Arato, E. Gebhart, ‘Aesthetic Theory and
Criticism’, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader
(Continuum, New York, 1995), pp. 209–215.
102. Benjamin interpreted children’s mimetic and collec-
tors’ non-instrumental relation to things with the
metaphors of looking back. For Benjamin’s early
essays on children see:
– ‘A Child’s View of Colour’, (1914–15).
– ‘Painting and the Graphic Arts’, (1917).
– ‘Riddle and Misery’, (1920–21).
– ‘Old Forgotten Children’s Books’, (1924).
– ‘A Glimpse into the World of Children’s Books’,
(1924).
– ‘One-Way Street’, (1923–26).
reprinted in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol
1., M. Bullock, M.W. Jennings (ed.) (Harvard Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge, London, 1996).
For Benjamin’s essays on collectors, see:
– Paris, Capitale du XIX. Siécle, E. Jephcott (trans.) (Les
Editions du Cerf, 1989).
– ‘Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian’, in The
Essential Frankfurt Reader, A. Arato, E. Gebhart (ed.)
(Continuum, New York, 1995), pp. 209–215. Trans-
lated from: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. 6,
1937.
– ‘Unpacking My Library. A Talk About Book Collect-
ing’, in Illuminations, H. Arendt, (ed.) (Schocken
Books, New York, 1968). Originally written: 1931.
103. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller’, in Illuminations . . .
op. cit., pp. 83–109. Translated from: ‘Der Erzähler’,
1936.
104. For a discussion and possible implications of different
treatments of aura in Benjamin, see:
– Samuel Weber, ‘Mass Mediauras; or, Art, Aura,
and Media in the work of Walter Benjamin’, in Walter
Benjamin. Theoretical Questions, D.S. Ferris (ed.)
(Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1996).
pp. 27–49.
– Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience:
The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology’ op. cit.
– Esra Akcan, ‘Duvarlar Ona Geri Bakar. Walter
Benjamin, Modern Aura ve siirsel Düsünce’ (“Walls
Look Back to Him. Walter Benjamin, Modern Aura
and Poetical Thinking”), Gelenek ve Modernite.
Kemal Aran’a Armagan, E. Aközer, N. Ögüt (eds)
(METU Architectural Press, Ankara, 2001).
105. Tomas Llorens, ‘Manfredo Tafuri: Neo-Avant-Garde
and History’, AD, 51, no. 6/7 (1981), pp. 83–95.
Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity. A Critique,
op. cit., pp. 136–141.
106. H. Heynen, Architecture and Modernity. A Critique,
op. cit., p. 138.
107. Ibid., p. 140.
108. Perhaps it is not so surprising that many of these archi-
tects are handled in chapters written by dal Co in
Modern Architecture.
109. It would obviously exceed the scope of this paper
to discuss this long history, which I am working on
for my dissertation: ‘Modernisation and Melancholy.
Cross-cultural Translations in House-Culture between
Germany and Turkey,’ (provisional title) PhD disser-
tation in process. Graduate School of Architecture,
Columbia University.
110. D. Cunningham, ‘Architecture, Utopia and the
futures of the avant-garde’, op cit., pp. 175–178;
Heynen, ‘ “What belongs to architecture?” Avant-
garde ideas in the modern movement,’ op cit.,
pp. 136–143.
170Manfredo Tafuri’s
theory of thearchitectural avant-garde
Esra Akcan