From Historical Criticism to Only History — The Change of Role of Criticism in Architectural Ideology

Since Manfredo Tafuri published one of his most influential book, Theories and History of Architecture in 1969, he had revised his discourse several times. He traveled on both way of historian and critic for years without a fixed conclusion[1]. In an interview conducted in 1986, when asked by Richard Ingersoll, that “How important to the development of architectural discourse is the role of criticism”, he suddenly concluded: “there is no criticism only history”. In Theories and History of Architecture, he proposed a historical criticism still related to the design. In the next 17 years, he moved his focus to the criticism of ideology, to micro history. Finally he cut the connection between criticism, history and design. Accompany with his transition is the change in the structure of the society, in the ideology behind architecture eclipsed totally by capitalism. “The architecture of commitment, which tried to engage us politically and socially is finished, and what is left to pursue is empty architecture.”[2] The multiple possibilities of interpretation of history and ideology provided by the historical criticism and the criticism of ideology become unimportant in this empty architecture. It becomes extremely individualized and a subject to empiricist criticism just as the Avant-Guard art. In this background he suggested a total separation of practice architect and criticism (who should focus on the historical criticism). But at that time what criticism or history can do except studying the present? Can they still somehow affect the design? It still remains unsettled in his methodology of criticism.

The Death of Historicism and Criticism

When the book Theories and History of Architecture was published, the architecture is introspecting itself, still trying to engage history into design, such as the typology criticism engaging historical form, or technical utopian attempts by Archigram. Tafuri tried to, reconsider about the relationship between criticism and design, disconnect the two, finding a way to bring architecture out of the however desperate he was about the relationship in writing the book.

Highly influenced by Walter Benjamin, Tafuri declared the death of the classic ideal of history and historicism in the first chapter of Theories and History of Architecture. The classic history regarded as dead is the history of events described, according to Ranke, “As they really were”. This ambition includes the selection and valuation upon criteria of the age one deals with rather than one’s own age. This includes two presumptions. The first is that historian have access to all the information and details he needed to fully understand the event and the context around it. The second is that the history, after the fully objectively condemnation, is dead and cannot have relationship and influence to the present. The first presumption, which apparently impossible, raise the question of how should historian deal with the fragmentary pieces of historical documentation. The second one, which makes the history useless, raise the question of the purpose of the study of history. As Middleton writes about Rudolph, Kahn and Johnson: “it had prompted them to make a number of adaptations of the most limited and limiting kind,”[3] history is a structure, a project that making the past an open, unconcluded time to which the present provides form.[4] The study of history then becomes a continuous reconstruction of the history, with the attention to the erased traces and hidden things, to provide opportunities to reinterpret. It becomes, and have to become a project designed not to enclose, but to open the space between historical events, allowing future interpretation, and finally add to the multiplicity of the present. History will not offer solutions anymore. It only opens up questions to the present.[5] The history actually becomes historical criticism.

The history has been freed from its linear form. All the events and codes are open to be examined and rationalized. Historical codes then lost its myths, declaring the death of historicism. This happened back to the time of Renaissance when humanity rose. Alberti, who Tafuri regards as an architect highly skeptical of authority and is critical of the antiquity, explored rationally the structure of historicism code, its syntactical and emblematical values. This is the first attempt to actualize historical values as a translation of mythical time into present time.[6] Though it seemed to be a revival of the classicism, it is actually a reinterpretation and reconstruction of historicism code, which in nature is anti-historicism. By plunging into the Renaissance, Tafuri unveils how early the loss of a sure foundation was, and how it is an inevitable consequence of the historical trend.

The rise of humanity, as part of the Avant-Guard movement, also announced the crisis for architectural criticism. The Avant-Guard art, as Picasso said, “I do not look for, I find”, ignore existing material. The rhythm of life itself transformed into rational behavior and already being saturated with artistic value that must produce and consume its own.[7] The classical art of super-individualism and immediate communion with the universe was dead. The art became highly personal and subjective, without a stable reference point. The critics lost the universal objectivity, ideology or aesthetics available to everyone. The criticism of art had to run on the rail of empiricism to interpret the behavior and feelings. The art is no longer objects, and the same is the architecture.

But as a type of art that constantly being viewed and checked by the public, having a direct contact with the market and the city context, architecture cannot be as personal as the Avant-Guard art. Attempts to define the boundary of architecture is made during the period. In 17th century allegory and symbolism were ways to stop the total undoing of the classicist figurative system,[8] which did not hold long. Architecture not being an object have to reject all the transcendental dogmas and the entirely mundane universalism of symbolism, deals directly with observer’s psyche, which is impossible when the public is engaged. Architecture can no longer find reasons exclusively within itself. Avant-Guard architecture positioned itself as a discipline conditions the relationship between the artistic communications and public reactions,[9] but failed as no psycho-analysis or psychology involved. Numerous attempts to save architecture were made. Architecture engaged itself with the society, become a metaphor of the industrialization. Architecture put itself back into the city and culture only to find that it would dissolve in the metropolis. Tafuri notes that in this period Le Corbusier, recognizing the historicity of their anti-historicism, embraced the uncertainty of history, the new value of history and memory, which is predicted as the only historically legitimate one by Brecht.

Tafuri is a strict Marxian as he expresses his Marxian view of history, by pointing out in the introduction of this book, which the ideology has to be productive in the specific era, which becomes a criteria of evaluating the criticism. Tafuri analyzed the modern movement and contemporary in a distant and detached manner. All these attempts of architecture pointed out that architecture is still looking for an ideology behind it, something that is “right”. As the classic architectural criticism is no longer valid, a historical criticism, employing the history as a tool to unveil the essential of the problems of the present, providing multiple directions for the contemporary architecture in ideological crisis.

The Historical Criticism and the Failure of the Operative Criticism

The historical criticism is actually a methodology. Though it is a project of reconstructing the historical events, it respects the objectivity of individual events. What it tries to draw is the hidden traces between them. It breaks up value judgments, breaks up dead and petrified words, break the chain of solidly established inevitability of the present, providing more opportunities to the present practitioners. In this manner, it add diversity to the ideology instead of unifying them. As the historicism has died, the historical criticism only explores the possibilities of the past, and ideologies that may potentially be valid at present, both of which are the soil for architectural theories and have little direct impact on the design itself. The critic follows a rational tradition of historical criticism without any personal prejudice, ending at a conclusion that is unknown to the critic himself before the reconstruction is fully completed.

The operative criticism, on the other hand, is “an analysis of architecture that has as its objective the planning of a precise poetical tendency, anticipated in tis structures and derived from historical analyses programmatically distorted and finalized.” The operative criticism plans the past by projecting it toward the future. It verifies itself, while its theoretical horizon is the pragmatist and instrumentalist tradition. [10] Though also trying to make the history has meaning in the present, this method of criticism is in its nature irrational and invalid. It will eternally has the contraction between the conclusions deducted from the history and the brand new value being introduced in to the history will always exist. Induction becomes a typical operation of the operative criticism dealing with history, as the selection of events becomes subject of the priori choice. The manipulation of history mystify the history instead of revealing it. Thus the operative criticism will always be at the opposite side to the historical criticism.

However the operative criticism is dogmatically systematic or methodologically wide open, the presumption of the system, the priori choice can only come from the personal prejudice or emotions the critic has, which throws the criticism into uncertainty, which contributes little to communicable architectural ideals. And because of the whole criticism is based on an idea that already available at present, it will potentially avoid the elements that has a larger influence on the present than others, resulting in less, if any, critical to the present. Though serving to justify specific designs, as the criticism submits to the designer that it will fail to reveal the structure and intention of the design, making it not productive.

He analyzes it as a necessary type of architectural criticism. He pointed out, besides distorting the history using the word, operative criticism has other methodology that distorts and tailors facts into shapes needed. Photographic criticism is anti-perspective, separate the architecture from its immediate surroundings, and distort the view of eyes, resulting in an artificial “reality”. The typology criticism, which is employed by Louis Kahn and Aldo Rossi, is in a historical camouflage. Its study and assembly of historical types starts a discussion of historical language, while the selection of the types being studied is based on the need of the present, without any limitation of period and location, revealing its operative nature.

At the end of this book, Tafuri refuses treating history in an instrumentalist way. Any attempt to act indirectly to a complex culture such as architecture is desperate.[11] Historical criticism, instead of affecting the practice, serves as the frame and touchstone of the contemporary practice: a historical criticism of the past opens up the questions to the present, stimulating architects to give conscious, analytical and verifiable choices; a historical criticism of the contemporary then test these choices. He suggests a total separation of critic and architect for two reasons. The first is that it is almost impossible for one person to be practitioner and critic at the same time without being affected by one’s own design while critiquing. The majority of operative criticism is made by practice architects — they have to express their own ideals. The second one is that historian critics who deduce from the history, cannot foresee from the history sudden jumps[12], which may be crucial for the declining discipline.

It is the profession of a historian trying to not be selective — in other words, operative — that makes Tafuri elaborate operative criticism despite of its failure predicted by its nature. From his merely neutral altitude towards the typology criticism, which is also labeled by him operative, we may also capture his hope that there would be a leap conducted by practice architects, just as what the masters of Modern Movement did, for the discipline in impasse. At that time, he still believed in a salvage in architecture of ideology by criticism, or by a break through by design methodology.

Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology

In the book Theories and History of Architecture, Tafuri introduced the idea of criticism of architectural ideology as he distinguished the historical criticism from the operative ones, framing it as a frame work and touchstone. He points out, any operative criticism, however its theory is systematically constructed, should be aware of the ideology behind, “ideal field now full of anti-history knowledge & activities that might disconcert, dig deeper and not to be pulled by inadequate ideology can one be less disconcert”. The argument insinuates, historical criticism though striving to keep multiple possibilities of the present, it actually provides ideologies that comes from the inevitability of the history that may be the “truth” of the present. That is a typical Marxian way of looking at historical progress.

The concept of criticism of ideology is further developed in his essay, Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology, which is the embryo of his most known book in the US in 1973, Architecture and Utopia. In his essay, he stepped further in to the Marxian view of history, attributing the significant moments of architectural history to the changes of social ideology. Capitalism, described as an operant mechanism, a law of profit, reality, rather than an ideology in this essay, confronts every ideology, pull them down from the utopian level. A typical example is the American cities, devoid of history when established, adopted a pragmatic approach of grid of urban planning, which is foreign to European cities. Though given the total freedom to the individual constructions in that grid, the architecture is actually dissolved in that indifferent plan. The process of modernity is related with capitalism. Utopianism comes to be the universal, systematic planification of capitalism.[13] Tafuri regards this as a deeper crisis of architecture which may reduce architecture to a political tool, a commodity, than the crisis of universality and form addressed in his former book.

Architecture was the one that could give the real answers to the demands made by cubism, futurism, Dadaism, De Stijl and all various constructivism and productivisms, as they all have ideologies about the culture, the city and the politics. Architecture became the most suitable agent to express and experiment their ideals of the social structure. Even earlier than that, in 18th and 19th centuries, architecture has played a destructive role, guided by the production techniques corresponding to the new conditions of bourgeois ideology and laissez-faire economics. The eclecticism and hallucinatory images behind the masters of enlightenment, is filled with anti-European ideologies and nihilistic prospects. It is redefining itself to fit the bourgeois society. When come to the Avant-Guard movement, social movements promotes an ideology that restructure the society, causing an interclass thus anti-bourgeois ideology. The shock of rapid machine age promoted the absorption in to the world, the technique of assemblage, and the suicide of art. The ideology of art and historical criticism of providing new possibilities of the present become severely impaired in this capitalist pragmatism. The death of art was overcame by taking a pure technical role. Architecture of the Modern Movement instead of utilizing the new technologies, tried to be absorbed in the machine age, being the technology itself, fitting itself into the chain of production, in the background that the city has itself become the place of production. [14]After the international recapitalization in 1929, the architectural ideology of having influence on the society is in deep crisis.

Architecture has accepted the task of “politicizing” its own handiwork. Architects as agents of polities had to, take up the challenge of continuously inventing advanced solutions at the most generally applicable levels.[15] Architecture has been excluded from the role of shaping the city, retreating back to the disciplinary autonomy, focusing only on the problems of design.[16]

Despite of the hope of a leap of architecture into the future that is unforeseeable by historians, he actually proved the incapable of developing a new architecture of the future in current sociological situation, from a Marxian historian point of view. “The search for an alternative with in the structure that condition the very character of architectural design is indeed an obvious contradiction of terms.”[17] And at the last chapter of Architecture and Utopia, by reject pure architectural alternatives exploring into the discipline itself, Tafuri actually raises the question that what kind of historical role can architecture be and to what extend the architecture would be reduced as merely an economic instrument, instead of directly declare the death of architectural ideology. He did not close the discourse with total assertion, as historical criticism can only be one aspect of the history, its conclusions would only be one of the multiple possibilities of the present. We could say, he is expecting this book to be a role awakening the consciousness and bring about architectural change.

The Nihilism of the 70s

His willing of change was proved by his research into “micro histories”, a history contains the potential for change. The tradition notion of subjective history logically prevent the project of change, as simply put: “if we cannot even know reality, how can we hope to change it?” He turned back to the Renaissance. In revealing the Renaissance as fragmentary, conflictual, struggling between a universal architectural language and the need for local diversity, he shatters the hope. We never were aided by an unproblematic faith in tradition, and we always had a limited range of action, and always were in search of our role in society and only working at the margins. The task lies ahead is the exploration of the full extension of those margins.[18]

While Tafuri is looking for alternative historical models of change, the post modernism is prevailing on the land of the US. They use operative criticism as a tool, extract the idea that there is no new things possible in the late capitalism. Collage and deconstructionism become a strong methodology of design, bringing the dead anti-historicism language back to the practice. Robert Venturi’s manifestation of Learning from Las Vegas, instead of being ironic, is a total surrender to the commercialization of the architecture in a Tafurian notion.[19] He criticized this kind of practice in his book Modern Architecture in 1976: “…what we have been trying to look into has been precisely the ‘difference’ that makes architectural expression something original with respect to the universe into which it is introduced…But it would be too simplistic merely to run through the entire spectrum of our parallels. ”[20] Running through all the attempts including the typological attempts by Kahn and Rossi, the technological overemphasis by Piano & Rogers, the works of Van Eyck and Carlo Aymonino, Tafuri noted that architectural production of the 1960s and 1970s is much more a demonstration by negatives than positives. Architecture in the capitalist world had preserved its own autonomy in the discipline, without discussions as to its nature, historical status and social position, which is stated as the most urgent agenda for architects to explore by practice in Tafuri’s previous books. Studies by architects of that time to update and champion the lessons of Modern Movement, exalt its prophetic role, ideological charge and utopian quality is an evasion from the present.

Though pessimistic about the architectural ideology in his books, Tafuri actually did not give up seeking a way as a historian to build a structure frame of history to foster potential changes made possible by architects. But before that the practice architects admitted the role of political instrument and commodity of architecture, using the tool of operative criticism to justify their lack of ideology.

There Is No Ideology or Criticism Only History

Browse through the development of Tafuri’s theory of criticism, history (or historical criticism) becomes more and more separated from the design process. Though from beginning to the end, he calls for the separation of critic and architect, the separation of criticism and the practice, there is always a relation between the design and criticism. In the Theories and History of Architecture, he demonstrated the failure of operative criticism, but did not firmly reject, at least part of it, the use of operative criticism. He described the typological criticism as a criticism combined operation and history. While in the Architecture and Utopia, he totally plunged into the historical criticism that provide the ideology behind architecture that might have indirect influence on it, without much concern about the methodology of design, as a typical historian in a Tafurian notion. Though the conclusion is pessimistic, he knows that the uncertainty of historical study. The relation between the criticism and design is simplified. The operative criticism become unimportant. The foundation of ideology laid by the history was drowning in crisis. While presenting the book as an instrument to stimulate the present, hoping the architects would take their supposed job, theorize the present and find an unforeseen way of salvage, he devoted himself into the search of an alternative historical model. But architects surrendered. All the attempts were proved failure of rediscovering the ideological direction for architecture. He showed his pity in his Modern Architecture.

In the interview in 1986, he noted that the problem of that time is the “uncontrollable acceleration of time”,[21] which continuously disposing of things in expectation of the future. Avant-Guard continuously destruct the preceding works in order to go on to something new. Information is explosive that the commodities are consumed even before it comes out. The anxiety of the future turned into nihilism of the present. The study of the contemporary which according to the Tafurian point of view about the history is necessary to evaluate the present and encompass the possibilities of the future, needs lot of caution to balance the distance between the interpreter and the event. As no attention was paid to the present, the future became volatile, increasing the anxiety. People thus need prophets, need a final world. Knowledge and time was no longer considered the present from god. There is too much of them, losing the attentions from the people. The society is commercialized, empty of ideology.

Tafuri insists that “architects should do architecture and historians should do history.” Criticism before Renaissance was formalistic critiques based on universality of codes. Criticism after Avant-Guard is the critiques of ideology that provide the directions for architecture and the foundation on which methodologies of design could be based on. But in the era that formalism and ideology are both destroyed by capitalism, commodification, commercialization and nihilism are all shown in the post-modernism, there is no room for criticism that has a communicability in relate to the design. The rest is the operative criticisms written by the architects, which is based on personal prejudice and emotions, with little sociological value. They became merely advertising of individual architects.

“There are no more utopias, the architecture of commitment, which tried to engage us politically and socially, is finished, and what is left to pursue is empty architecture.”[22] Though empty, Tafuri did not regard it as the failure of modern architecture. At the beginning of Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology he wrote: “when capitalism has taken away the utopia from architecture and architecture is obliged to return to pure architecture, to sublime uselessness.”[23] This is the time that Tafuri jumped out of the Marxian view of history of ideology. This is the time that architect could do when certain things were not possible, and what he could do when they were possible. No one can determine the future. Only by separate themselves from all kinds of criticism including historical criticism, criticism of ideology or their own operative criticism, then can architects work with all possibilities that might bring a prosperity of architecture other than the form of architectural ideology. Thus no criticism is needed. Only historians to constantly analyzing and testing the works of contemporary architects.

References

Alberto Asor Rosa, Ruth Taylor, Daniele Pisani and Manuel Orazi, Manfredo Tafuri, or, Humanism Revisited, Log , No. 9 (Winter/Spring 2007)

Barnet, Sylvan, A short guide to writing about art, (Pearson, 2008)

Biraghi, Marco, translated by Alta Price, Project of Crisis — Manfredo Tafuri and Contemporary Architecture, (The MIT Press, 2013)

Keyvanian, Carla, “Manfredo Tafuri: From the Critique of Ideology to Microhistories”, Design Issues , Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 2000)

McLeod, Mary, “On Criticism”, Criticism of Place: A Symposium, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1987

Tafuri, Manfredo, translated by Deke Dusinberre, Architecture and Utopian, (Hazan, Paris, 1997)

Tafuri, Manfredo, and Dal Co, Francesco; translated by Robert Erich Wolf, Modern architecture, (H. N. Abrams, New York, 1979)

Tafuri, Manfredo, Theories and History of Architecture (New York: Harper and Row, 1976)

Tafuri, Manfredo, translated by Richard Ingersoll, There is no criticism, only history, an interview with Manfredo Tafuri conducted in Italian by Richard Ingersoll, (Design Book Review, no. 9, spring 1986)

Tafuri, Manfredo, Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology, Materiali Marxisti, no. 1, 1969

[1] Alberto Asor Rosa, Ruth Taylor, Daniele Pisani and Manuel Orazi, Manfredo Tafuri, or, Humanism Revisited, Log , No. 9 (Winter/Spring 2007), pp. 29–38

[2] Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Richard Ingersoll, There is no criticism, only history, an interview with Manfredo Tafuri conducted in Italian by Richard Ingersoll, (Design Book Review, no. 9, spring 1986), P 11.

[3] Manfredo Tafuri, translated from the Italian 4th ed. by Giorgio Verrecchia, Theories and history of architecture,

(New York: Harper and Row, 1976), P 57

[4] Marco Biraghi, translated by Alta Price, Project of Crisis — Manfredo Tafuri and Contemporary Architecture, (The MIT Press, 2013) P 2

[5] Manfredo Tafuri, translated from the Italian 4th ed. by Giorgio Verrecchia, Theories and history of architecture,

(New York: Harper and Row, 1976), P 229.

[6] Ibid, P 14

[7] Ibid, P 84

[8] Ibid, P 82

[9] Ibid， P 103

[10] Ibid, p 141

[11] Ibid, p 231

[12] Ibid, P 234

[13] Mandredo Tafuri, Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology, Materiali Marxisti, no. 1, 1969, P 131

[14] Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Deke Dusinberre, Architecture and Utopian, (Hazan, Paris, 1997), P 42

[15] Manfredo Tafuri, Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology, Materiali Marxisti, no. 1, 1969, P 133

[16] Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Deke Dusinberre, Architecture and Utopian, (Hazan, Paris, 1997), P 136

[17] Ibid, P 181

[18] Carla Keyvanian, “Manfredo Tafuri: From the Critique of Ideology to Microhistories”, Design Issues , Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 3

[19] Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Richard Ingersoll, There is no criticism, only history, an interview with Manfredo Tafuri conducted in Italian by Richard Ingersoll, (Design Book Review, no. 9, spring 1986), P 11

[20] Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co; translated by Robert Erich Wolf, Modern architecture, (H. N. Abrams, New York, 1979) P 179

[21] Manfredo Tafuri, translated by Richard Ingersoll, There is no criticism, only history, an interview with Manfredo Tafuri conducted in Italian by Richard Ingersoll, (Design Book Review, no. 9, spring 1986), P 11

[22] Ibid, P 13

[23] Manfredo Tafuri, Towards a Critique of Architectural Ideology, Materiali Marxisti, no. 1, 1969, P 131