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The Myth of Autonomy
Nathaniel Coleman

Architecture, one would think, has its own validity. 
It needs no reference to any other discipline to make 
it “viable” or to “justify” its value. We might even 
question whether words like value or morals are 
applicable to an architectural style.1

My point is very different from e.g. Eisenman’s idea 
that architecture is self-centered and only concerned 
with its own formal-compositional issues. Eisenman 
posits that architecture should throw off  its concern 
with the world, abandon function and only concentrate 
on architectural form. [...] I am trying to formulate 
the overall rationality of  the discipline that necessarily 
involves the integration of  world-reference (function) 
and self-reference (form).2

In this article, the so-called ‘autonomy project in 
architecture’, as theorised by Ignasi de Solà-Morales 
(1942-2001); K. Michael Hays’s (b. 1952); Patrik 
Schumacher’s (b. 1961), of  Zaha Hadid’s office; 
and Pier Vittorio Aureli (b. 1973) is interrogated. 
In particular, the main aim of  this article is to 
reveal the project of  autonomy in architecture as 
a myth, especially in relation to the parallel myth 
of  an avant-garde (especially a neo-avant-garde) in 
architecture. However, it is important to underline 
that my interrogation of  ‘the myth of  autonomy’ 
has little to do with recent trends in anti-theory, for 
example as outlined by Jeremy Till (b. 1957) in his 
Architecture Depends (2009). 

Ultimately, the aim of  this article is to recover a 
critical-historical perspective that reveals the project 
of  orthodox modern architecture eschewed by 



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autonomists as itself  an earlier response to the same persisting disciplinary 
crisis that animates their efforts. Following on from this, Utopia is 
reintroduced as providing architects with a much more promising set 
of  tools for redeeming architecture than autonomy ever could. As I will 
argue, the most significant contribution Utopia can make to architecture is 
to return the social and political to it, which also provides a way to resist 
the formalist pull of  autonomy.  Renewal of  Utopia, and with it the social 
and political dimensions of  architecture, inevitably reveal(s) autonomy as 
a myth invested primarily in the dissolution of  just such a possibility. The 
great paradox of  autonomy in architecture is that it is duplicitous, using 
the inevitable impurities of  realization as a cover for impossible desires for 
purity as a means to liberate architecture from its obligation to communities. 
The apparent naiveté of  the modernist project as one of  engagement, as 
interpreted by architects such as Aldo van Eyck, is discarded in favor of  
disengagement as apparently the only realistic response.

Oppositions

In the introduction to The Oppositions Reader compilation he edited, Hays 
ruminates on why autonomy became such an important preoccupation 
of  so many of  the architect authors and theorists who contributed to 
Oppositions (1973-1984), the journal of  the Institute for Architecture and 
Urban Studies in New York City (1967-1984). However, he goes no further 
than raising the question, a move as provocative as it is frustrating:

For the essential contradictions between architecture’s autonomy – its self-
organization into a body of  formal elements and operations that separate 
it from any place and time – and its contingency on, even determination by, 
historical forces beyond its control subsumes all the ‘formal socio-cultural and 
political’ concerns into an all embracing dialectic. The conflicts of  formalism 
and determinism [...] seem almost symptomatic of  a deeper [...] social pathology 
[... .] One should ask not whether architecture is autonomous, or whether it can 
willfully be made so, but rather how it can be that the question arises in the first 
place, what kind of  situation allows for architecture to worry about itself  to this 
degree.3

Despite leaving readers without a definitive response to his question, Hays 
does offer several takes on autonomy drawn from the pages of  Oppositions. 
Even so, relatively convincing explanations for architects’ turn inward, 
away from material reality and the perplexing burdens of  their discipline, 
do exist. As the German philosopher of  hope Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) 
and the Italian architectural historian and theorist of  closure Manfredo 
Tafuri (1935-1994) have intimated, architecture as a ‘work’, akin to the 



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unique achievements of  the fine arts, rather than as 
an industrially reproducible ‘product’ – as French 
sociologist and philosopher of  cracks Henri Lefebvre 
(1901-1991) asserted – is all but impossible under 
capitalism. The failures of  orthodox modernism, in 
particular its ostensive social project and ultimate 
rejection of  this, left architects without a program 
or project for architecture and the city. Ascribing 
this failure to Utopia also left them without the 
tools for thinking their way beyond capitalism and 
modernism. Although these phenomena are often 
presented as a new condition particular to the crisis 
of  modernity after the Second World War, with the 
move toward autonomy seen as having taken a cue 
from the frontiers of  visual and performing arts. 
However, this understanding deprives narratives 
of  the terminal condition of  orthodox modernity 
of  a critical-historical perspective that might well 
reveal the project of  modern architecture eschewed 
by autonomists as itself  an earlier response to the 
same persisting disciplinary crises. Although Tafuri’s 
discussion of  Piranesi in The Sphere and the Labyrinth 
is very helpful in illuminating this predicament, to 
my mind, British architectural historian and theorist 
Joseph Rykwert’s (b. 1926) The First Moderns (1980) 
offers an even more lucid account of  the shift in 
direction for the discipline suggested here. Indeed, 
Rykwert, who was awarded the 2014 Royal Institute 
of  British Architects Gold Medal, pushes the 
origins of  this shift slightly further back than Tafuri 
does, to the end of  the Baroque and the period of  
the Rococo, in particular to Claude Perrault’s (1613-
1688) conceptualization of  ‘positive and arbitrary 
beauty’ – the division between the quantitative 
and qualitative in building. In light of  the dramatic 
consequences of  this, for Rykwert, the only way 
forward for the discipline of  architecture is to 
recuperate its enduring vocation: 

The nature of  our responses to the world of  artifacts, 
the way in which groups and communities appropriate 
space, occupies sociologists and anthropologists. And 

Utopia is 
reintroduced 
as providing 

architects 
with a much 

more promising 
set of tools 

for redeeming 
architecture 

than autonomy 
ever could

“

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we acknowledge these human scientists as important and wholly serious people. 
Yet their studies are, in the last reduction, almost inevitably problems of  form. 
This book [The First Moderns, 1980] recalls a time when the architect’s 
business was just that. Perhaps if  there is to be a place for the architect’s work 
within a future social fabric, he will need to learn how to deal with such problems 
again.4

Rykwert leaves us with a challenge at the end of  The First Moderns, 
rather than an answer: for architects to regain their lost place within the 
culture, they must reconnect with those aspects of  their discipline that 
once ensured this. Although not explicitly stated, this clearly reveals the 
project of  autonomy in architecture as a profound form of  alienation that 
deprives buildings of  many of  its associations and topics. While Rykwert’s 
reconstruction of  the preconditions that have led to the current situation 
of  the past forty to fifty years is decidedly wide-ranging, he does not exactly 
excavate the causes of  this condition, which Tafuri is more comfortable 
doing. As such, the significant socio-political import of  his argument is 
somewhat obscured. Perhaps the reason for this is that whereas Tafuri had 
lost all hope for architecture, Rykwert has remained optimistic, leaving it 
to those more pessimistic of  his readers to intensify the polemic his work 
suggests.

Indeed, my consideration of  autonomy in relation to architecture 
developed here is informed by the battle for an architectural soul (perhaps 
only my own) carried out – in spirit at least – in the triangulated space 
between the thinking of  Tafuri, Lefebvre, and Rykwert.5

The tension that exists between Tafuri’s theoretical world and 
Lefebvre’s is a product of  the friction between the former’s conviction 
that the world system of  capitalism is totally closed, and the latter’s belief  
in the generative potential to be drawn through the cracks that always exist 
in that never quite totally closed system. Rykwert provides the third point 
of  the triangle by being even more stalwartly optimistic than Lefebvre 
on the one hand, and unconvinced by Tafuri’s pessimism on the other. 
Arguably, the play of  architectural theory today continues to be carried 
out within the triangulated space created by the tensions identified above, 
even if  it tends to be imagined as operating within the altogether less 
determinate spaces of  Collage City, as conceived by architectural historian 
and theorist Colin Rowe (1920-1999), who, as Hays observes, suffered a, 
“deep disillusionment with the utopian mission of  [modern] architecture.”6 
Actually, of  the four theorists introduced just above, Rowe is the one 
who most believed, if  only half-heartedly, that autonomy – as a using of  
things and not believing in them – alone could redeem Orthodox modern 



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architecture from its significant failings that came 
into view after World War II. 

Tafuri was also committed to autonomy in 
architecture, but did not share Rowe’s conviction 
that it could only be redeemed by formalism, which 
promised to quash its social and political content. 
Tafuri’s conception of  autonomy differs from 
Rowe’s as fundamentally a critique of  the tragedy of  
architecture under capitalist production. However, 
the inevitable self-indulgence of  the autonomy 
project in architectural practice, especially as 
advanced by the New York Five architects in the 
1960s and 1970s proved too much for Tafuri 
to take. Ultimately, he came to see the crisis of  
architecture as ‘a crisis of  ideology’. In light of  this, 
he came to assert that architects are powerless to 
resist their capture within the system of  capitalist 
production; as they are little more than technicians 
within a building industry, ensnared within the total 
closure of  the capitalist/neoliberal system.

It is in confronting Tafuri’s pessimism (valid as it 
might be) that the possibility of  the counter-spaces 
suggested by Rykwert, and more emphatically 
theorized by Lefebvre really cannot be ignored. 
Rykwert’s positivity, and, in particular, Lefebvre’s 
stubborn optimism, furnishes compelling antidotes 
to Tafuri’s resolute pessimism. As introduced above, 
Lefebvre could locate possibilities in even the 
most unpromising conditions of  the same system 
described by Tafuri as total; precisely because 
Lefebvre believed that systemic closure is never as 
total as it might appear: cracks in the system can 
always be detected, which reveals the apparently 
impossible as actually possible, even across the 
scant moments that separate the two. Paradoxically, 
Tafuri’s pessimism seems to me to have been, at least 
in part, an inevitable byproduct of  the ultimately 
frustrated hopes he placed in autonomy, no matter 
how short-lived, while Lefebvre’s work on space, 
in particular his determined optimism, would have 



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been impossible had he grounded his hopes for transformation, even his 
ideas on autgestion (self-management), in autonomy. The crypto-utopianism 
of  Rykwert and the more overt utopianism of  Lefebvre articulate an 
alternative to the project of  autonomy that long ago lost its political edge 
as a form of  resistance to the inevitable dissolution of  the engaged cultural 
work of  architecture when subsumed within the building industry as one 
of  the most extreme forms of  capitalist production. 

Tafuri, Lefebvre, and even Rykwert share serious doubts about 
the architect as expert, or advocate, or as guardian of  some imagined 
“communal imaginary” (at least in the present), rendering such a view 
difficult to sustain, unless the conventional professional mythologies of  
the architect are left unchallenged. Although Tafuri and Lefebvre shared 
a relative suspicion about autonomy and the avant-garde alike, what 
separates them are their respective ideas on the degree to which the total 
closure of  the given condition is actually final. As such, they differed on 
the relative value of  Utopia as well. 

In contradistinction to its reputation, Utopia is bound up with the real 
world on the ground (at least in Lefebvre’s conception of  it, and my own). 
As such, Utopia offers real possibilities for overcoming given conditions 
without exiting the everyday. Indeed, Utopia is actually nearly always about 
the everyday. But Utopia permits us to act on the everyday, and even exit 
given conditions, without necessitating the delusion of  either autonomy or 
a fictional avant-garde to imagine transformative alterity. The otherness of  
Utopia is always about return as well – the exit is necessary to re-imagine 
the present that will be transformed. Ultimately, concrete, or constitutive, 
Utopias mount a challenge to autonomy in architecture, to the repetition 
compulsion of  neo-avant-gardes without a cause as well. The alternatives 
that Utopia posits enlivens history and renews tradition by being a ‘handing 
over’ rather than a ‘handing down’: Utopia imagines how the past can be 
surrendered to the future by way of  renewed – reimagined – tradition.

Reading autonomy through Utopia, as I am doing here raises a 
paradox by which Utopia (in the way I understand it) although so 
commonly presented as impossibility or no place, inevitably problematizes 
the myth of  architectural autonomy. By returning the social and political 
to architecture, Utopia provides a way around the formalist pull of  
autonomy while retaining the hope of  freedom in the distanciated space it 
articulates, which autonomy must negate. The space of  utopian thought, 
though located elsewhere in space or in time, is always situated in the 
present as a critical appraisal of  and alternative to it. In this way, Utopia 
can never be autonomous, as its engagement with the context it attempts 



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to transform is always dialogical, interweaving self  
and other, individual and society. 

Autonomy must ultimately take the form 
of  a myth – in art as in life – because all works 
– especially architecture – and all people are 
always already embedded within a wider web of  
associations, primarily social. In this way, autonomy 
in architecture is arguably above all else a fairytale 
remarkably well-suited to transforming ideologies 
of  freedom, individualism, and neoliberalism into 
a myth, a self-soothing story that perpetuates the 
illusion of  agency (particularly evident in the endless 
cycles of  aimless neo-avant-gardes in architecture). 
Considered in this way, the shape autonomy 
has taken in architectural theory and practice as 
formalism begins to make sense, especially in the 
form of  spatializations of  disconnectedness from 
the social and political in architecture that autonomy 
entails. 

As developed immediately above, what I am 
proposing here might well seem to be at odds with 
framing the question of  autonomy in a traditionally 
Kantian way. For Kant, autonomy is to be valued as 
a form of  ethical understanding, in the sense that 
it presupposes some rational will. As noted Kant 
expert Paul Guyer notes, 

Above all, Kant was the philosopher of  human 
autonomy, the view that by the use of  our own reason 
in its broadest sense human beings can discover and 
live up to the basic principles of  knowledge and action 
without outside assistance, above all without divine 
support or intervention.7 

I am unconvinced that life on the ground bears 
this out as a real possibility. While such a belief  
may be seductive, how many people actually act 
in accordance with their own moral duty (or even 
their own best interests, rather than apparent self  
interest) independent of  a web of  social relations? 

Although autonomy in practice in architecture 
might be explained as the (morally) laudable effort 

Autonomy in 
architecture 

is arguably 
above all else 

a fairytale 
remarkably 

well-suited to 
transforming 

ideologies 
of freedom, 

individualism, and 
neo-liberalism 
into a myth, a 
self-soothing 

story that 
perpetuates 

the illusion of 
agency.

“

”



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to act ‘without outside assistance’, architecture is not philosophy, at least 
not in the sense that permits the purity of  argumentation in isolation from 
concrete experience and practices on the ground. So while arguments in 
philosophy might need not be troubled by the way in which the mundane 
inevitably taints practice, as architects we are so deeply embedded in the 
world that attempting to claim any such luxury is at best a misapprehension. 
Inevitably, as architects, only if  we are vigilant in attending to just how 
infrequently any of  us actually act in our own best interest, or on behalf  
of  the communities to which we belong, will we have any hope of  acting 
in remotely ethical ways. It is in this regard that autonomy as individualism 
(and as willful disengagement), inevitably suggests just the sort of  
isolation associated with formalism. Intriguingly, the idea of  freedom 
that best describes a wide range of  autonomy projects in architecture 
is transcendental (in the sense of  being a priori or preternatural), rather 
than empirical (in the sense of  being experiential or pragmatic).8 In this 
regard, perhaps the opposition ought to be more simply stated as the 
‘pure’ as opposed to the ‘impure’, which in terms of  Utopia could be 
indicated as the difference between the ‘abstract’ (transcendental) and the 
‘concrete (empirical). However, for these differences to have dialectical 
value, in terms of  defining an alternative idea of  freedom with regard 
to architecture, the concrete, empirical, or pragmatic would need to be 
thought of  as far more nuanced than technocratic understandings of  
them usually permit.

K. Michael Hays

Influenced by philosophical post-structuralism in their responses 
to the failures of  architects’ flirtations with positivist social science that 
so marked the orthodox modernism of  the post World War II period, a 
fair number of  the generation of  architects reaching maturity post-1968 
set for themselves the task, as Hays has put it, of  ‘thinking architecture 
back into its own.’ Interestingly, this group’s prevailing conception of  
architecture’s own imagined it as domain of  practice free of  social obligation 
and unfettered by the habits of  culture, of  comprehensibility and of  the 
everyday. Arguably, this fantasy of  a pure architecture remains dominant, or 
at least prevails as an aspiration for practice, what Hays calls the ‘autonomy 
project.’9 Given the association of  high-modern, or orthodox-modern 
architecture with Utopia, most of  the post-1968 generation of  architects 
wants to be as post-utopian as they are autonomous; indeed, many are 
categorically anti-utopian. 

According to Hays’s reading (and that of  other chroniclers) of  



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autonomy, architects as divergent as Aldo Rossi 
and Peter Eisenman, or Bernard Tschumi, Rem 
Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid (amongst others) share a 
suspicion of  architectural sincerity of  the sort Aldo 
van Eyck detailed until his death in 1999, and which 
Rykwert continues to encourage. The counter-
projects of  still practicing architects as diverse as 
Tadao Ando, Deborah Berke, David Chipperfield, 
Herman Hertzberger, Renzo Piano, Tod Williams 
and Billie Tsien, and Peter Zumthor come to mind. 
Paradoxically, the first group attempt to escape 
Utopia by way of  inventing architectures in which 
some relative perfection is achievable, whereas 
the second group transacts in the transformative 
potential of  hope, while embracing hints at fallibility 
as a crucial humanizing characteristic (yes, arguably 
even Ando, Zumthor, and Chipperfield). 

Consciously or otherwise, I believe this tension 
reveals some sort of  awareness (in both camps) that 
autonomy is preternatural, only possible outside 
of  the realm of  “time and necessity” (as Alberti 
observed), or “place and occasion” (as van Eyck 
observed). Equally, as John Ruskin long ago asserted 
(and Le Corbusier practiced) perfection is reserved 
for the unknown or unknowable, or is achievable 
only when the problem is so reduced, or the aims 
set low enough, that it can be attained. Confirming 
this interpretation, Hays argues that the “autonomy 
project” entails freeing “architecture from the 
burden of  utility” necessarily so in “recognition 
of  the impossibility, or failure of  meaning” for 
an architecture inexorably compromised by its 
capture within the building industry that realization 
ironically exacerbates. It is for this reason that 
autonomists like Hays are not particularly 
interested in the actual reception of  built works. 
Only theories and theoretical (or visionary) projects 
have any chance of  freedom from the burden 
of  use and the destructive consequences of  the 
capitalist production of  building. In Hays’s view, 
architecture, in, “any traditional sense, such as van 

Autonomy as 
individualism 

(and as Willful 
disengagement) 

inevitably 
suggests 

just the sort 
of isolation 

associated with 
formalism.

“

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Eyck proposed,” is irredeemably lost, ostensibly leaving autonomy as the 
only authentic response.10

The troubling thing about the supposedly authentic response of  
autonomy is that it requires emptiness, or meaninglessness, for its 
achievement. As an example of  this, consider Tafuri and Francesco Dal 
Co’s assessment of  Louis I Kahn’s work:

[T]he new bases for architecture set up by Kahn are every bit as artificial as 
the myths and institutions in which he put his trust [...]. It is nostalgia that 
determines Kahn’s language. That determinism breaks with the modern tradition 
no less violently than does every attempt to confine it in the display cases of  
a museum. Kahn’s work inveighs against the reduction of  architecture to a 
negligible object.

But this signifies protecting the values from the process of  history by transfiguring 
them into symbols, by attempting to recover their arcane properties.11

While I might experience Kahn’s work as an audacious attempt to 
recuperate social meaning and comprehensibility in modern architecture, 
Tafuri and Dal Co necessarily see it as confirmation of  a false consciousness, 
in the sense that it is an attempt to resist the, ‘reduction of  architecture to 
a negligible object,’ as an inevitable consequence of  capitalist production 
and the flows of  history. In Tafuri and Dal Co’s terms, although resistance 
of  this sort might be possible because it exists, it is false – a myth – in the 
sense of  misleading us as regards the material, ideological and institutional 
processes of  capitalist society. The significance of  this is that, in Marxist 
terms, those conditions could only ever be overcome if  nothing diverts 
attention from the reality of  our circumstances under capitalism. While 
I have great sympathy for this position, I remain unconvinced by the 
prospect of  autonomy – of  a socially and politically empty architecture 
that retreats from reality and the everyday, as much as from Utopia – as the 
way to set the stage for what Ernst Bloch called “true architecture” that will 
only ever be possible when architecture emerges from the, “hollow space 
of  capitalism.”12 Although this might make me into a utopian socialist who 
encourages piecemeal attempts to willfully act upon history out of  step 
with its flows, rather than a scientific socialist, Deleuze and Guattari argue 
that, “[w]hat matters is not the supposed distinction between utopian and 
scientific socialism but the different types of  utopia, one of  them being 
revolution.”13 In my estimation, as practiced, autonomy is not a revolution 
but rather a restoration of  sorts in the sense that an empty architecture, 
whatever its claims to resistance, is an architecture fully coincident with 
the processes of  the capitalist production of  buildings. Without the edge 
of  Utopia, of  a sustained critique of  the present that seeks to transform it, 



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architecture is just another product to be exchanged. 

By the same measure, the autonomy project 
of  architecture is compensatory; a sad response 
to architects’ diminished authority and reduced 
influence within the building industry of  capitalist 
production, effected through a reduction of  
the tasks of  architecture primarily to formal or 
typological concerns. Thus, the autonomy project is 
less liberation than requiem.

Couched as a form of  resistance to the 
dominance of  capitalist production, autonomy in 
architecture is more convincingly a symptom of  the 
very condition it purports to resist. In point of  fact, 
autonomy in architecture constructs an apologia 
for solipsism, radical individualism, self-indulgence, 
and a negation of  the social and other external 
forces that shape architecture and which it shelters, 
to say nothing of  the web of  associations of  which 
it is part. Clearly, nothing could be more consistent 
with the logic of  products. Though I feel closer 
in spirit to Lefebvre and Rykwert, this pessimistic 
conclusion is closer to Tafuri, who, as Hays observes, 
“found architecture in a double bind. To the 
extent that architecture can function in a capitalist 
society, it inevitably reproduces the structure and 
codes of  that society in its own immanent logics 
and form.”14 Escape becomes capture, suggesting 
that the choice is between either capitulation or 
transformation, rather than between determinism 
or autonomy. Summarizing Tafuri, Hays notes: 
“When architecture resists, when it attempts to 
reassert its own disruptive voice, capitalism simply 
withdraws from service, relegates it to the boudoir, 
so that demonstrations by architects of  their works’ 
autonomy and degraded life become redundant 
and trivialized in advance.”15 Indeed, for Tafuri, 
the, “return to pure architecture,” that capitalism 
necessitates, is little more than a return, “to form 
without utopia [...] to sublime uselessness.”16

The autonomy 
project is less 
liberation 

than 
requiem.

“
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Ignasi de Solà-Morales 

For Ignasi de Solà-Morales (1942-2001), the autonomy project really 
begins to take shape in the aftermath of  the rebellions of  1968. For 
him, in its present form, this condition is describable as, “our present 
panorama of  incertitude and desolation.”17 Indeed, the self-absorption 
suggested by the very desire for an autonomous architecture arguably only 
becomes a preoccupation in periods of  crisis, or of  “pessimism.”18 In 
Morales’s view autonomy entails, “the disappearance of  all reference to 
anything beyond the universe of  artistic products’ themselves.”19 What 
is more, “the idea’ is put ‘before the materiality of  the object […]. The 
process is more important than the work of  art. More important than the 
finished, isolated object are the ideas [that] made it possible.”20 Although 
for Morales the preceding describes what he calls “plastic arts,” a similar 
condition exists for architecture, in which its autonomy is “based on the 
body of  theory intrinsic to it.”21 In a passage that highlights the limitations 
of  thinking of  theories and projects as autonomous from construction – 
from the built reality of  building – Morales describes the experience of  
visiting a constructed building designed by Italian architect Aldo Rossi 
(1941-1997), as opposed to the genuine pleasure of  seeing his drawings 
and other representations: 

The sense of  disillusion experienced by many upon seeing a Rossi building 
constructed on an actual site and from concrete materials derives from the fact 
that the building thus asks to be considered objectively or functionally, while its 
author tries to call instead to the process revealed in his drawings, so that the 
construction of  the building is an episode in an architectonic discourse understood 
as autonomous and thus indifferent to construction or use.22

In such work, including that of  the architects Peter Eisenman (b. 1932), 
Michael Graves (b. 1934), Richard Meier (b. 1934), John Hejduk (1929-
2000), and Charles Gwathmey (1938-2009) considered in the 1971 book 
the New York Five, “[t]he idea, defined by sketches, not by built work 
overtakes the importance of  the ‘real thing.”23 The desire for ‘the autonomy 
of  the discipline’ of  architecture is a symptom of, “the failure of  modern 
architecture,” that apparently joins this grouping of  architects together.24 
As described by Morales, the architecture of  autonomy is characterized by, 
“the evocation of  impossible architectures, of  ruins, of  spatial absurdities, 
and of  conceptual paradoxes,” indicative of  a, “loss of  confidence in the 
possibility of  a truly buildable and culturally valid architecture.”25 The 
internalized work of  automist architects is, “concerned purely with syntax 
[the composition or arrangement of  architectural elements]: semantics 
[the meaning of  architectural elements that emerges from assemblages of  



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them, and from their metaphoric power] constitute 
not so much a goal to be reached as a point from 
which to depart.”26 Here, Morales returns our 
attention to the association between autonomy and 
a draining away of  culturally associative content in 
architecture, in response to the crisis of  architecture 
(and modernity) as a crisis of  meaning and ideology, 
and as a symptom of  the capitalist production of  
buildings.

Pier Vittorio Aureli (b. 1973) – The Project of Autonomy

For Aureli, the key aim of  what he calls “the 
project of  autonomy” is to intensify the difference 
between “present thinking” and “past thinking.” 
In this sense, “autonomy” is that process by which 
the apparent uniqueness of  the present can know 
itself  as distinct from the past and from tradition, 
even if  both become tropes that autonomists 
“mess” with. However, while Aureli is interested in 
autonomy as a project of  international architectural 
culture in general, his main preoccupation is with 
emphasizing its Italian origins and the multiplicity 
of  expressions within that context, which is to say, 
that while it might be convenient to identify Aldo 
Rossi with Tafuri, for Aureli they are different in 
the way that Rowe and Eisenman are. Although 
the subtlety of  this might be elusive, it is surely 
reasonable to argue that historian/theorists (Tafuri 
and Rowe) will be different from practitioner/
theorists (Rossi and Eisenman). At the very least, 
the former could make a much more convincing 
claim to autonomy than the latter: history and 
theory exist in the realm of  texts, which are much 
less costly or risky to produce than buildings 
are. On the other hand, architecture is always 
implicated in the dominant culture and bound to 
its modes of  production. As such, the construction 
of  architecture always renders it already far too 
compromised – by association – to lay any claim 
to autonomy of  any substantive sort. It is precisely 



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this compromised position that implementation foists upon architecture 
that encouraged a range of  autonomists to initially turn away from 
making buildings toward the construction of  theories and representations. 
However, even these activities, in particular the crafting of  supposedly 
autonomous representations, are quickly subsumed within the logic of  the 
provision of  products and of  consumption. The beautiful representations 
of  architect theorists may have been free of  the ‘burden of  use’ because 
they could, or would, never be constructed, but this did not inoculate them 
from quickly becoming objects of  exchange, far from autonomous in any 
convincing sense. One need only think of  the importance of  the Leo 
Castelli Gallery in SoHo New York City in this regard during the 1970s 
and early 1980s. Many architects’ reputations were made, and building 
careers ultimately launched, on the basis of  first producing apparently 
autonomous representations. It is in this regard, as Aureli observes that 
“capitalism evolves to disarm [...] resistance.”27

Aureli’s argument, it is worth noting, obtains to a small architectural 
elite that is not representative of  architecture as generally practiced. Nor 
does his argument particularly relate to the individuals who conventionally 
populate buildings. Indeed, this is likely the point: autonomy of  any sort 
that actually proceeds to some real form of  resistance presupposes isolation 
from the mainstream. It is in this regard that autonomy is countercultural, 
which ostensibly confirms it as a critical practice of  a sort. Though only 
for so long as it is not named as a style or consumed as one. The near 
impossibility of  actually achieving this turns on the duration of  the cycles 
of  style that autonomy is part of  having – paradoxically – become shorter 
and shorter since the 1970s. Although Aureli offers something of  a history 
of  autonomy in architecture – from the 1960s onward – with an emphasis 
on Italian currents, it seems to me that the main aim of  his project is to 
locate, or more precisely, to carve out, a place for his own practice by 
laying claim to an inheritance from the Italian Autonomists, in the belief  
that this would actually make practice – his own – possible in the midst of  
capitalist production. Thus, his observations about the convictions of  the 
Autonomists appear to mirror his own hopes: 

[The Autonomists’ Project was] not about the destruction of  capitalist culture 
and bourgeois history per se but, on the contrary, [it was rather about] their deep 
analysis and instrumental use. Autonomy was not the creation of  politics and 
poetics ex nihilo but rather an audacious effort to appropriate the political realm 
in order to construct an alternative to capitalist domination.28

The peculiar thing about Aureli’s reading, or perhaps of  the strain 
of  autonomy he is interested in, is that its aims are, according to him, 



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“postpolitical” rather than “political”, which to me 
seems a sure recipe for failure.29 Clearly, attempting to 
act upon capitalist production in some postpolitical 
manner comes just a bit too close to the myths of  
the end of  history that underpin the neoliberal 
project today. However, in telling the story in this 
way, Aureli brings us close to a truer condition, 
that of  melancholia, of  a sense of  exhaustion and 
despondency in the face of  the apparent failure 
and defeat of  communism, and of  the Left more 
generally, particularly in their inability to offer up a 
compelling alternative to the entrepreneurial spirit 
and chameleon-like wiles of  capitalism. Indeed, in 
Aureli’s view Autonomy’s target was not so much 
capitalism as it was communism and the Left, in the 
belief  that through the antagonism of  autonomy, 
capitalism could be transformed (somehow from 
within). But how this could be achieved – disengaged 
from politics – remains a mystery. Nevertheless, 
Aureli is clear: he wants to, “attempt to extract from 
[the] history [of  the project of  Autonomy] what is 
still valid today.”30 Achieving this clearly presents a 
significant problem in a context where autonomy 
suggests a particular attitude, or style, as much as 
a retreat from many of  the multiple problems that 
make up architecture, for example, encounters with 
place and use. Ultimately, for Aureli, by the time the 
autonomy project in architecture was exported to 
the Anglo-American context it arrived as an already 
spent force, suggesting aesthetic innovations of  
a formalist sort, rather than any radical political 
initiative. As such, the very conditions of  extreme 
commercial production that autonomy professed 
to counter quickly consumed it within its own 
capitalist logic. Nevertheless, Aureli looks to, 
“autonomia as a way to establish long-term 
responsibilities and solid categories by which to 
counter the positivistic and mystifying ways that 
social and political development comes to be seen 
as evolutionary progress.”31 While I certainly agree 
with the necessity of  doing just this, the “autonomy 

Ultimately, 
the myth of 

the autonomy 
project maintains 

the status quo 
by which utopia 

must still be 
renounced.

“

”



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project” in architecture must inevitably turn-in on itself  to become both 
self-justifying and self-indulgent, little more than a compensation for the 
near impossibility of  socially rich and significant architectural practise 
with the reach of  capitalism. Ultimately, the myth of  the autonomy 
project maintains the status quo by which Utopia must still be renounced, 
including the commitment to transformation it speaks, and the real social 
and political engagement it requires. In this renunciation, the architect can 
also maintain his or her fiction of  some special status in the making and 
remaking of  the world, despite all of  the evidence to the contrary that 
persistently debunks this myth.

Patrik Schumacher

Patrik Schumacher, who teaches at the Architectural Association 
in London, is a director in the office of  Zaha Hadid Architects; his 
prominence in UK architectural education and position in Hadid’s office, 
as representative of  so-called starchitect practises, are the key reasons for 
considering his take on the autonomy of  architecture here. The main 
shortcoming of  Schumacher’s writing on architecture is that to make his 
point he presumes an either/or situation of  either grand master narratives, 
or none. As such, his argument is totalizing and lacks subtlety. His tone 
suggests that the current system of  cultural production really is as closed 
as the absolute fragmentation he posits would ensure. He associates master 
narratives with the social renewal projects of  Utopia, evident, according to 
him, in the urban projects of  orthodox modern architecture. Overcoming 
master narratives, with a putative realism, entails, as with most autonomists, 
doing away with Utopia. According to Schumacher, the current condition 
reveals, “the all too evident impossibility of  designing a new world,” not 
least, he argues, because the current condition, “indicates how far utopia 
has been left behind.” In this regard, Schumacher observes, “two related 
tendencies that conspire to frustrate any straightforward utopian impulse 
within architecture and design: 1. The dissolution of  the utopian politico-
cultural discourses of  emancipation and social progress [...].” And, “2. 
The increasing autonomy and self-referential closure of  the discipline 
of  architecture, as expressed [...] in the [...] work and writings of  Peter 
Eisenman.” He continues, “while [i]t might seem that [...] architecture 
withdraws into itself  because no compelling social project exists that 
could inspire and direct architectural speculation [...], there is another way 
one could theorise the relationship between these two phenomena.”32 On 
the basis of  the argument developed in the preceding pages of  the present 
article, by this juncture it should come as no surprise that my conviction 



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is that the withdrawal of  architecture into itself  
is indeed a symptom of  having, “no compelling 
social project,” to, “inspire and direct architectural 
speculation.”

In Schumacher’s view:

[t]he tendency towards architectural autonomy 
might be understood as a moment of  an overall 
societal process of  differentiation, whereby social 
communication fragments into a series of  autonomous 
domains – the economy, politics, the legal system, 
science, art etc. – establishing self-referentially closed 
subsystems within society. Each of  these autonomous 
discourses contributes, in its specific way, to the overall 
social process. But this overall social process – society – 

does no longer have any control centre over and above 
the various increasingly autonomous communication 
systems. The differentiated discourses establish their 
own sovereign independence with respect to their 
underlying values, performance criteria, programmes 
and priorities. In this sense the various subsystems 
operate self-referentially [...] in a kind of  self- 
referentially enclosed autonomy.33

According to Schumacher, such fragmentation is 
to be welcomed precisely because the condition of  
autonomy facilitates, “the ability to experiment with 
adaptations to a turbulent environment on many 
local fronts simultaneously, without the need to 
synchronise all moves, and without running the risk 
that failures rip too deep into the social fabric.”34 
Moreover, his belief  is that such fragmentation 
protects architecture because, “design rationality 
too can neither be reduced to nor controlled by any 
other than its own logic.”35

Schumacher’s discourse depends on a large 
degree of  overconfidence in the supposed logic 
of  his statements. Nowhere is this arrogance more 
pronounced than in his naïve and out-of-date 
statements on Utopia that are, admittedly, fairly 
typical of  primitive understandings of  the concept, 
and which stubbornly persist in architecture theory: 



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The self-referential closure of  the differentiated subsystems of  societal 
communication spells the end of  utopia. Utopia as a coherent project and 
blueprint, i.e. as the wholesale reinvention of  society integrating politics, law, 
economy and architecture, breaks up in the face of  an insurmountable complexity 
barrier [...]. Today society has no address, no centre and no opportunity to 
generate a binding representation of  itself  and its destiny.36

The preceding begs the question as to whether or not Utopia must be 
blueprint to articulate reinvention. An alternative position arising from 
with the discipline of  utopian studies and beyond is that the blueprint 
Utopia is just one, albeit unfortunate, utopian possibility amongst others. 
Examples of  these alternatives include “Utopia as method” as Ruth 
Levitas understands it, as a way of  thinking about and working toward the 
“possible-impossible” as Henri Lefebvre described it, or the taking of  the 
first resolute, though by no means certain, steps toward the realization of  
alternatives that would be “constitutive” rather than “pathological”(of  a 
blueprint utopian sort), in Paul Ricoeur’s sense.37

Amongst the many peculiar aspects of  Schumacher’s thinking is his 
conviction that:

[a] mark of  the self-referential closure of  architecture is that design decisions 
are tightly knit to their kind and only obliquely/indirectly [...] refer to external 
demands and circumstances [...]. Political, legal or financial concerns are not 
immediately architectural concerns.38

The sheltered vision of  architecture this encourages only serves to further 
separate architecture from the everyday and to absolve architects of  their 
obligation to communities and individuals. As construed by Schumacher, 
autonomy liberates architects to a space of  unobstructed self  involvement 
of  an “art-for-art’s-sake” sort which only confirms the disconnect between 
architects and their architecture from everyday life while contributing to the 
transformation of  buildings and cities into little more than a collection of  
branded commodities. As with so many architects, Schumacher’s ultimate 
defense for such a disconnected view of  architecture is the cultural capital 
that attaches to some imagined association with a putative avant-garde: 

The distinction of  avant-garde versus mainstream, merely commercial 
“architecture”, remains constitutive for the discipline. Only innovative, 
generalisable contributions [...] that are deeply entangled in the autopoeitic 
network of  architectural communication [are considered]. The degree of  
autonomy that architectural discourse has established by differentiating itself  
from the immediacy of  everyday talk about buildings [...] should grow with the 
overall complexity of  society.39



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In Conclusion

Although Tafuri could see only false 
consciousness – and certain failure – in attempts to 
act upon history, when acting within history is seen as 
the only possible option, the risk is that the results 
will be as self-serving as they are anti-utopian. But 
what other possibility could there be if  attempts to 
act upon history are seen as being out of  step with 
its flow, and thus supposedly doomed? Moreover, 
if  acting within history entails doing away with 
Utopia, acting upon history is fundamentally utopian. 
Resigning oneself  to history as determinant also 
risks becoming self-serving by absolving architects 
from being critical and acting critically. This 
conundrum leads me to a passage from Deleuze and 
Guattari’s What is Philosophy?, with which I would 
like to conclude, as I believe it captures many of  the 
strands I have been developing in this paper while 
helping us to imagine how to reconcile our desires 
for freedom with our simultaneous capture within 
webs of  social association, by way of  Utopia:

Actually, utopia is what links philosophy with its own 
epoch, with European capitalism, but also already 
with the Greek city. In each case it is with utopia that 
philosophy becomes political and takes the criticism of  
its own time to its highest point. Utopia does not split 
off  from infinite movement; etymologically it stands 
for absolute deterritorialization but always at the 
critical point at which it is connected with the present 
relative milieu [...]. In utopia (as in philosophy) there 
is always the risk of  a restoration, and sometimes a 
proud affirmation, of  transcendence, so that we need to 
distinguish between authoritarian utopias, or utopias 
of  transcendence, and immanent, revolutionary, 
libertarian utopias [...]. The word utopia therefore 
designates that conjunction of  philosophy, or of  the 
concept, with the present milieu – political philosophy 
[...].40

if acting 
within 

history 
entails doing 

away with 
utopia, acting 

upon 
history is 

fundamentally 
utopian.

“

”



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The quote above establishes an apparently irresolvable paradox for 
architecture: if  the autonomy project in all of  its myriad guises actually 
reveals an attempt to be free of  Utopia, it is precisely this self-deceiving 
attempt at escape that renders architecture irrelevant and ensures its 
conclusive separation from culture – in Adolf  Loos’s sense – and 
from everyday life. Conversely, it seems, then, that Utopia holds out a 
potential resolution to the problem of  renewed purpose and relevance for 
architecture, fortifying it to act against the solvent of  capitalism, the very 
same condition that inspired most of  the doomed attempts at architectures 
of  autonomy in the first place.

Endnotes

1. Philip Johnson, “Where Are We At?”, Architectural Review, CXXVII, 
September 1960, pp. 173–75, reprinted in Philip Johnson Writings (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 100.

2. Thomas Schumacher, “On Parametricism: Georgina Day interviews 
Patrik Schumacher” (2012), available at http://www.patrikschumacher.
com/Texts/On%20Parametricism_.html

3. K. Michael Hays, ‘Introduction’, Oppositions Reader (New York City, 
Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), p. ix. 

4. Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns: The Architects of  the Eighteenth Century 
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), p. 470.

5. For more on Tafuri, Lefebvre, and Rykwert see N. Coleman, Utopias and 
Architecture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2005), and Nathaniel Coleman, 
Lefebvre for Architects (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015). I have also 
considered the importance of  Tafuri, Lefebvre, and Rykwert, as outlined 
here, in numerous journal articles.

6. Ibid., p. xi.

7. Paul Guyer, “Kant, Immanuel”,  in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia 
of  Philosophy, (London: Routledge 1998/2004), retrieved June 16, 2014, 
from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047

8. See Paul Guyer, “Kant on the Theory and Practice of  Autonomy”, 
Social Philosophy and Policy 20.2 (July 2003), pp. 70-98, here p. 98. 

9. K. Michael Hays, “The Textualization of  Architecture, 1978–1986” (talk 
presented as plenary speaker at Text & Architecture, An International Word 
& Image Conference, Paris, 26–28 June 2003, organized by the University 
of  Paris, 7 Denis-Diderot/College of  the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, 26 



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June 2003). 

10. K. Michael Hays, “Textualization”, ibid.

11. Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern 
Architecture, trans. Robert Erich Wolf  (New York: 
Harry N. Abrams, 1976), p. 402.

12. Ernst Bloch, “Building in Empty Spaces”, in The 
Utopian Function of  Art and Literature: Selected Essays, 
trans J. Zipes and F. Mecklenburg (Cambridge, 
Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 187-190. 

13. Deleuze and Guattari, op. cit., p. 100.

14. Hays, “Introduction”, Oppositions Reader, p. xiv.

15. Ibid.

16. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design 
and Capitalist Development (1973), trans. Barbara 
Luigia La Penta (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 
1976), p. ix.

17. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to 
Untimeliness” (1991), in Differences: Topographies of  
Contemporary Architecture, trans. Graham Thompson 
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 73.

18. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, ibid., p. 73.

19. Ibid., p. 74.

20. Ibid., p. 74.

21. Ibid., p. 75.

22. Ibid., p. 77.

23. Ibid., p. 77.

24. Ibid., p. 77.

25. Ibid., p. 82.

26. Ibid., p. 77.

27. Pier Vittorio Aureli, Project of  Autonomy: Politics 
and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (New 
York City: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), p. 
9.

28. Ibid., p. 14.



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29. Ibid., pp. 9-11.

30. Ibid., p. 12.

31. Ibid., p. 83.

32. Patrik Schumacher, “The Autopoeisis of  Architecture”, in LATENT 
UTOPIAS - Experiments within Contemporary Architecture (Vienna/New York: 
Springer Verlag, 2002). Available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher.
com/Texts/Autopoeisis.htm. Interested readers are encouraged to 
see also an earlier treatment of  Schumacher’s thinking on Utopia and 
contemporary architecture in my article ‘Utopia Beyond Amelioration’, 
Boundaries 8 (April-June 2013), 4-11.

33. Schumacher, “Autopoeisis”.

34. Ibid

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. See Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 
2013); Nathaniel Coleman, “Utopia and a New Romanticism”, in Lefebvre 
for Architects (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), pp. 18-52; and Nathaniel 
Coleman, in Utopias and Architecture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2005), 
pp. 10-11, 29, 38-39, 52, 56-62, 237-38.

38. Patrik Schumacher, “The Autopoeisis of  Architecture,” in LATENT 
UTOPIAS - Experiments within Contemporary Architecture (Vienna/New York: 
Springer Verlag, 2002). Available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher.
com/Texts/Autopoeisis.htm.

39. Patrik Schumacher, ibid.

40. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? [1991], trans. G. 
Burchell and H. Tomlinson (London: Verso, 1994), pp. 99-100.


