Pier vittorio aureli biography examples

Zygmunt Borawski: Your book on minimalism has an intriguing title: Less is Enough. And he borrowed it from the English poet Robert Browning to describe his work ethos, founded on the idea of constant reduction.

Pier vittorio aureli biography examples

It was used by the Italian architect and city planner Stefano Boeri, who wanted to communicate that from now on, we need to work very hard to create even more with even fewer resources; to make more for less. But Mies meant something completely different! Having just arrived in the city with his bags in tow, Aureli found that the student accommodation provided by the university was beyond his means, and he had no other contacts or companions with whom he could share.

Led by the Dominican Padri Orionini followers of Beato Luigi Orione the monastery had operated as an orphanage but later accepted disadvantaged students who were willing to live according to their rules. Aureli moved in, while vowing to himself to find more suitable accommodation as soon as possible. But with his limited budget there was just nothing else available.

Weeks went by, and although still looking around for alternative rooms or shared apartments, he found that the monastery was not without its advantages — not least the spectacular site it occupied on the Zattere with direct views towards the Giudecca, and the spacious series of cloistered buildings it occupied. He also discovered that the rules required by the Dominicans meant he could concentrate on his school designs and essays without any interruption — his work quickly developed a focus — and the monks around him were friendly and very knowledgeable.

Even the refectory was okay. In the end Aureli stayed six years. Perhaps we are all the product of our own histories, of the homes we inhabit and the heroes we venerate, but for Pier Vittorio, this biography seems so manifest in his books and essays, design work, lectures and teaching, and also in his wonderful drawings. This line of thought, which is introduced here through two interviews conducted in and by Felipe De Ferrari and Diego Grass —architects and professors in our school—recognizes the profound historical and collective tradition of architecture, showing itself distant from those conceptions that see both creativity and the subjective originality of form as a sort of ethical manifest.

Far from celebrating authorial genius, Aureli insists in the inseparable link that exists between architectural production and the cultural realm in which it develops. Courtesy of ARQ Ediciones A fact that results particularly noticeable and refreshing, is that his search does not neutralize or underestimate the scope of form, but rather recognizes in architecture an active agent of transformation and, in its broadest sense, of resistance.