Intro

Examining the transformation of domestic spaces over the last decades dating back from the early European monasteries to contemporary micro flats as reinterpretations of 1970s hotels in New York and San Francisco, in Less is Enough, Pier Vittorio Aureli questions the foundations of private property. The Italian architect and theorist wonders how the modernist architectural canon of the economy of means, minimalism, and asceticism shaped our current understanding of the built environment and life itself through the idea of "less". Most importantly, as he would put it, how it all went wrong.

Published in 2013 by Russian publisher Strelka1, the book is part of the Italian architect’s extensive quest on the issues revolving around domestic space and its power of transformation. With similar goals to the publisher, through both research and design, Aureli’s work as DOGMA director and professor at the Architecture Association in London blurs the boundaries of the architecture field, meandering through visual arts, sociology, literature, and philosophy to fully comprehend the complexity of domestic spaces. Later in this paper, we will briefly look at how his design work is influenced by his understanding of history as a tool for understanding present conditions to provide alternative ways of living.

Before diving into the presented theory and provocations, we will look into how the content itself is presented. Aureli’s take on asceticism and minimalism has a clear and extremely intentional influence on the book’s structure. Stripped of all imagery - except the silhouette of a house defined by two flat colors on the cover - the book is organized in seven short chapters, with no titles, index, page numbers, footnotes, and no references to the book's name, author, or publisher in the pages. Arguing that the complexity of forms of living can not be explained in pictures, Aureli wanders through both space and time with nothing but carefully curated words, framed by symmetrical empty margins, justified sans-serif text, and single spaced text.

In addition to the way the book is presented, we will see that content-wise Aureli stretches from the institutionalization of the Church to the iconic photograph of Steve Jobs sitting on his living room floor - not shown but described - to craft his argument with direct and provocative sentences.

It is through this constant dialogue between different fields and time frames, the way it is presented, and the questions brought up that Less is Enough poses itself as an important piece in architecture theory. Aureli's approach toward history is one of both chronology and contrast. In considering that histories are narratives that domesticate change in favor of a specific agenda, the history of domesticity could be said to intentionally blind us to our domestication. It is usually taken for granted how the ethos of production influences our most prosaic relationships and beliefs, and Aureli’s book puts even the most unthought of questions into the spotlight. It challenges not only practicing architects and academics, but whoever reads it to question and rethink the way we design, interact, and most importantly, the way we live.

Forensic Linguistics

Even before diving into the content, the book which was originally published online can be analyzed through the lens of forensic linguistics. Aureli’s choice of words and sentence structure have a significant impact on how he presents the content and the message he wants to convey. In short, we can highlight five characteristics: the constant dialogue with history, the referencing of renowned personalities, the author’s emphasis on his point of view and his role as part of the conversation, the effort of connecting and engaging with the reader and making them part of the discussion, and last but not least, the understanding of the book itself as an (almost) physical space for dialogue.

Firstly, the book relies heavily on historical facts and transformations over the last centuries to make its point. Several paragraphs are introduced with phrases such as "within the history of”, or “in recent years”. In fact, history and time play such a significant role that "for many years" are the opening words of the book. Those words exemplify the strategy of the book in referring to the past to explain the present and argue for future change. Also, the past is usually expressed through verbs in the past-participle or present-perfect continuous. “Have (always) tried”, “have advocated”, and “has always been”, to cite a few, are his way to clarify what no longer exists or is still seen in contemporary settings.

Secondly, Aureli extensively relies on renowned architects, designers, thinkers, and artists to validate his thoughts since most readers - people in academic environments or in possession of certain required knowledge - have heard of them. Not necessarily by agreeing with whoever is cited - as is the case with Hannes Meyer and Charles Baudelaire, but also by showing the contradictions and misreads in the works of Le Corbusier and John Pawson. Also mentioned are the names of Mies van der Rohe, Maurizio Lazzarato, Max Weber, Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Roland Barthes, Sebastiano Serlio, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Zumthor, Steve Jobs, Friedrich Holderlin, and Absalon; a selected group of white men, largely part of Western civilizations from the global North. In a subject that involves domesticity and gender - as Aureli himself would mention - the narrow and specific nature of the group draws a narrow spectrum in regards to possible different points of view. The only woman mentioned is Diana Walker, the photographer that is brought up briefly as the author of Steve Jobs’ iconic photo.

Thirdly, Aureli’s ambition to be a part of the large architectural dialogue with that select group is emphasized by the frequent use of the first-person pronoun. He puts himself physically in the book with expressions such as “in what follows, I would like to address”, “I have chosen a slightly different”, and “I don’t want to discuss the discontents” together with others such as “it is interesting to note that”, which also clarifies what he deems important to the narrative and can not be taken for granted, or what is somehow left aside. It makes the narrative more personal as a particular piece of theory.

In addition, throughout the book, the first-person pronoun is also used in the plural to make the reader participate in the dialogue. The architect engages with the audience and keeps them hooked to the story through pronouns and by explaining what was said and what will follow. “As we have seen”, “when we talk”, “if we observe”, “we will see that”, and “here we see that” are also accompanied by rhetorical questions that can help him direct the reader to focus on something specific or to reflect upon certain issues.

Finally, as the conversation develops, the book supposedly leaves the field of words on paper to become an actual space of discussion. Constantly referring to it as “here” - placing himself and the reader in the referred spaces - Aureli seems to take the concept of architecture creating space for conversation not only as a narrative for his built work but as written too. All combined add to how the book plays a significant role in architectural discourse and intentionally assumes the character of an important piece of theory.

Asceticism

In the first pages, Aureli introduces the term that will drive the entire narrative: Asceticism. In his words, it is a "way to radically question given social and political conditions" 3. It is the self-discipline seen in monks’ way of living that requires "repression of instincts for ethical rationality". However, as he would later put it in the book, all starts to go wrong when that is turned into a style and merely aesthetics. The radicalism and refusal of property and ownership loosened its ethos over the centuries to what became an image-consuming society. We will later see that this shift is exemplified in the book through the work of contemporary British architect John Pawson, where his monastic minimalism and austerity set the scene for his work that includes both Calvin Klein stores in Manhattan and countryside monasteries in Europe.

It is important to highlight that as with many other concepts in the book, asceticism is first mentioned without any explanation. It is only in the first chapter, after the introduction, that the writer states his understanding of asceticism as

abstinence and self-discipline, as a willingness to sacrifice our present in order to earn our future – something which goes beyond the religious meaning of the term and has more to do with the ethics of entrepreneurial capitalism.

That being said, it makes it clear that the book is written to a specific audience, who would need previous knowledge in specific areas to fully comprehend it, and a specific vocabulary. In parallel with (temporarily) taking for granted the meaning of those words, the lack of imagery also presupposes a previous contact with the different fields addressed. By doing so, he assumes that the reader either knows of or can look up all imagery references from Western arts, architecture, history, but also have read or at least heard of writers such as Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin.

As previously mentioned, the visual simplicity with which Aureli presents his arguments in the book could be said to be his own form of austerity. Not only in the book but in his practice as the founding partner of DOGMA and professor, Aureli carefully curates how his work is displayed: text seems to always precede images whenever they are present. As the original ascetic architecture of monasteries was designed to express life’s immanent details, Aureli’s book’s repression of ornaments and images allows for the focus to be on the content itself. There is nothing else but the reader and his words. Therefore, minimalism here is not out of the economy of means or appearance as he claims to be the driving reason for modernist simplicity, but an intended ideology.

Less is more, less, and enough

Taken originally from literature in Robert Browning’s poem, spread through architecture by Mies Van der Rohe, and appropriated by capitalism as a cynical celebration of budget cuts, the canonical sentence “Less is More” is well known among people from different fields. The clear reference and positioning made by Aureli with the book title already set the bar for the book’s ambition as a piece of theory. One could draw a parallel to Bjarke Ingels’ approach by naming his first manifesto book and exhibition “Yes is More”, in 2009, which put the Danish architect in the spotlight of architectural conversations.

However, Aureli and Ingels's approach to the topic could not be on the opposite spectrum. While Aureli strips off of images, adds several layers of intellectual references in a very non-appealing presentation, and uses specific vocabulary, Bjarke’s approach aimed to make architecture theory extremely accessible to the general public, portraying this office philosophy and agenda through a comic book format, arguing for “the overlap between radical and reality” 5. In both cases, by referring to Mies Van Der Rohe's modernist dogma, both architects assume the importance - and determination - to be a part of that conversation. To add their own layer and knowledge to an ongoing discussion that for decades shapes architectural production, and now with Aureli, how it no longer belongs to imagery but the political dimension of more ideologized times 6.

Through the chapters, Aureli will mention the ideology behind “less is more” as a ‘celebration of the economy of means’ 7, both ethical and aesthetically. The refusal of all that was not necessary was associated with an understanding of beauty but also the financial aspect behind the global post-war scenario that pushed for a reduction in costs and rationally in production. Mies’s theory, however, creates a paradox with his highly costly buildings, where construction is hidden to make a performance. His built work is one of an extremely controlled and static sense of movement, where materials float and freeze in space.8 Amid all the supposed hypocrisy - or simply contradiction - between theory and practice, is it still possible to reprise the idea of “less” as a radical alternative?

Building off of centuries of transformations in society’s ways of living, typologies, and the pretensions and ideologies behind them, Aureli defends the necessity to redefine our needs and to live detached from the social ethos of property, production, and possession, simply by understanding that ‘less is enough’. He argues that ‘beyond the promise of growth and the threatening rhetoric of scarcity ’, and in response to the modernist dogma, the concept of “less” should not be an ideology. It should not be more. Less should just be less, and nothing else. In other words, encourages us to replace the Miesian phrase by making the shedding of material things the basis of a life free of the anxiety of production and possession⁹.

Property, production, and possession

Aureli’s approach to the history of domestic spaces in Less is Enough is similar to Rem Koolhaas’ retroactive manifesto in Delirious New York. Looking constantly at the past, the Italian writer reverse-engineers history in a straightforward approach to untangle the theories, transformations, and reverberations of ways of living that allowed for the formation of what we now know as ‘private property. Aureli sees property as an unintended consequence of turning the abandoning of power through seclusion practiced by monks into a style, a way to monetize, and systematically bring even the most low-income parcel of society into a Capitalist system.10 In Aureli’s words, “asceticism was no more autonomy from the system but a way into it, [so] it became the legitimation of the status quo”11.

The author's use of history works in two complementary ways. Firstly, the chronology thread of events explained creates a linear succession of events that allows the reader to understand how we (as a society) radically shifted our ways of living. Secondly, by contrasting the past and the present. Both time spectrums are not separate and unrelated, but a cause and consequence - and this is why Aureli needs to dissect history over time to make his point valid. If one looks at the current parcelization of land and the private property regime merely in opposition to a monks monastery, most likely no direct connection could be made. Therefore, to allow and motivate us to question those imposed conditions, the book crafts an appalling argument to shed light on a process that we have taken for granted.

Going through the history of monasticism abandoning power with the first monks organized in minimal individual huts around a central space sharing collective facilities, to the self-sufficiency of Benedictine monasteries and the Cistercians and Franciscans reform antithetical to the modern concept of private property, ownership, and possession, Aureli crafts his arguments towards the concept of use and temporary appropriation in opposition to property as means of power. In parallel with and departing from the evolution and transformation of monasticism, Aureli touches base on Russia’s post-1930 housing situation, Walter Benjamin’s understanding of property as greed, identity, and the illusion of permanence, Baudelaire’s perception of the city as a vast habitation, arriving at Hannes Meyer’s simple room as a non-autonomous unit to question the relationship between privacy and property, solitude and concentration, intimacy and domesticity. In extreme opposition to Middle Age society when ownership of a private property qualified for citizenship, Aureli defends a point of view of shared domestic spaces to reclaim our subjectivity as ‘social individuals’. In his own words, “the less we have, the more we share” - again, the use of "we" is a clear intention of persuading the reader to take a stand and be part of his vision.

It is, therefore, crucial to dissect the transformations over the last century, to understand how we unintentionally crafted domestic spaces from the Roman Domus and its gradient of social prestige to the independence of contemporary micro-flats. Not exclusively related to spatial conditions, Aureli’s work as a practitioner and theorist also dives deep into the issues of domesticity in financial contexts, the ethos of productions developed through Capitalism, and patriarchal and gender narratives. Even the most prosaic changes of rooms shifting from circular spaces to rectangular are portrayed as essential transformations for going from nomadic to sedentary settlements built around the illusion of permanence and identity. Yet, the rise of housing as a mass phenomenon - made possible by the standardization of rooms, buildings, and life itself - turned the private room into an instrument of control - not any more a symbol of prestige.

Room as minimal dwelling

The private room is arguably a large portion of the work’s positioning regarding domesticity and property. Presented in chapter 5, the idea of the room as the minimum dwelling peaks with the mentioning of Hannes Meyer’s photograph of the Co-Op room, presented together with Walter Benjamin’s writings on the Russian housing situation in the decades that followed the 1917 Revolution. The image of Meyer’s staged room with nothing but a bed, two chairs, a gramophone, and a shelf unit is addressed as a critique of domestic space as what is simultaneously the most intimate and generic cell in a house. The photo is often presented in a cropped version that removes half of the already few objects in it. However, it is necessary to highlight the different settings between the two. While the Muscovites’ situation was drastically related to poverty and a precarious lifestyle, driven out of necessity and not by choice, the Co-Op exhibited in 1924 intended to reclaim the ‘unproductive time’ in a context of worker’s nomadism and up-rootedness.

In an essay that followed the publication of the book, Aureli says that

“Domestic space is often described as a personal, private dwelling space that sits in opposition to a public urban realm charged with social and cultural concepts and definitions. In this sense, domestic space is perceived as a shelter from society and its political notions, which provides room for the individual to exist. However, is domestic architecture ever personal?

The public dimension in domestic space often remains abstract, making it harder to identify and grasp. The dwelling is a combination of individualistic objects and a set of norms dictated by culture and community that are depicted within the spatial elements and organization of the home.” ¹2

The common assimilation that privacy and property go together is, therefore, wrongdoing in the writer’s eyes. With Meyer’s room as a manifesto for a ‘traceless way of living’ to liberate us from the trap of domesticity, he highlights that it is not about a minimal possession but privacy as solitude and concentration. The lack of identity presented in the image is not necessarily uncomfortable as most would interpret. The scarcity of decoration and personal items does not create an ‘atmosphere of repression but calm and hedonistic enjoyment.’ He argues that it is only through the lack of property that the inhabitants can realize the possibility of happiness, and a life free from the burdens of domesticity.

However, that is hardly the case in most societies. The ideology and religiousness associated with the asceticism from monasteries or the anonymity of Meyer’s room go completely against everyone’s desire for their property. Unknowingly influenced by a Capitalist driven mentality, we shifted the focus from shared spaces, collective maintenance, and care, to seeing land as a commodity, and possessions as material richness. Citing the Communist vision of German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, Aureli understands and assumes that the equal distribution of poverty by all is a necessary condition for the minimal dwelling to be seen as a luxury. Consequently, in a world where the ‘extreme commodification of land’ and the ‘lack of affordability and the collective ethos’ of domestic historical precedents invalidate the possibility of asceticism as it once was, Aureli analyzes three specific and extreme cases where self-discipline and aesthetic help us question our own relationship to the property.

Self-Discipline

Understanding the concept of Asceticism as ‘a way of life in which the self is the main object of human activity, and the evolution of domestic spaces, Aureli extrapolates the field of built domestic spaces through analysis of the work and life of architects John Pawson and Peter Zumthor, and Apple’s former CEO and founder Steve Jobs. Spotting and explaining contradictions in all three, the writer dwells on the duality of their inner-worldly and outer-worldly discipline.

Starting with John Pawson, Aureli focuses on the transformation of asceticism as an aesthetic. His built work seems to aim for an almost religious ambiance, even if it is a clothing store in Manhattan's speculated and tourist-occupied 5th Avenue. The minimalist appearance, nordic palette, and countryside ambiance became the image of Pawson’s work, applying it regardless of the program. Aureli then says that his “architecture is minimal to the point of inadvertently denouncing itself as cliché.”¹3 In other words, its austerity has nothing to do with a radical refusal of systems, norms, or conditions. It is simply aesthetics.

Driving from Pawsons’ minimal countryside aesthetic, Pritzker-winning architect Peter Zumthor is mentioned in regards to the known parallel between his work and persona. Zumthor’s practice is based at a small office in the Swiss mountains, rarely conceding interviews or public appearances, and only a handful of built projects. That is seen as an attempt to create an ‘aura of abstinence’; a quasi-hermit persona relatable to the reclusiveness of monks. Aureli then refers to the Serpentine Pavilion built by the architect in 2011 as the culmination of those characteristics. A ritual of entrance separates the profane exterior of the British capital and the sacred interior with contrasting ambiances and an open-air garden. The pavilion’s name - ‘Hortus Conclusus’ - is also mentioned as a calculated way to refer to the monasteries. By doing so, Aureli makes the reader wonder about the intentionality and meaning of the wordplay he does in this book’s title.

Finally, away from architecture, the extreme contradiction of Steve Jobs’ persona, Apple’s philosophy, and their product is the ultimate exemplification of the idea of self-discipline and its possible spectrum. Going back to Jobs’ notorious photograph sitting on his living room floor, taken by Diana Walker in 1982, the author highlights the simplicity and minimalist nature of the inventive designer as an example of extreme self-control. In the same way, as Zumthor intentionally opts to self-isolate, Jobs’ coordinated precision is completely thought through. Jobs was aware of his own body, mind, and outfits, and that, he argues, is his version of a monk’s habitus’. It is asceticism taken to its fundamentals. However, the contradiction lies in the effect their products have on consumers. It provides everything they allegedly need and desire, but self-control. The distraction and dopamine addiction caused by the incessant notifications, apps, and visual pollution makes it barely possible for one to experience some sort of self-discipline and refusal of the idea of power.

The relevance of these comparisons made by Pier Vittorio is that it adds another layer to his work character as a piece of theory. With the book, he does not aim to display his work - as Ingels did - or to strictly write about someone or a time-specific ideology of architectural production or theory - as Mies did. Aureli adds by shedding light on the parallel between someone’s work and their own life. And he does that to implicitly motivate us to not only dwell on ideas but to question our relation to property and ownership. He would also add: “is the idea of self-discipline only a religious way to achieve reciprocity between subjects freed from social contracts imposed upon them?” ¹⁴ Or is the refusal of such contracts a “subtle manifestation of a man’s will to power” ¹⁵, as Nietzsche would argue. One way or another, the importance of dissecting Pawson’s, Zumthor’s, and Job’s life and work seems to rely on the idea of privacy and self-control as freedom in a life liberated from society’s enduring obligation to the sense of ownership.

History-Driven Design

Finally, shifting from Aureli's book to his design work in DOGMA alongside Martino Tattara, we can look deeper at how history shapes his built (or proposed) work. Firstly, it is worth mentioning how their website makes clear the interest in private property and residential spaces as a theme. Most of the projects accompanied by text and images revolve around that topic. Be it a proposal for a self-built prototype for cooperative housing (Do you hear me when you sleep?) or case studies of suburbanization in Belgium (The Opposite Shore), the projects are accompanied by a retroactive study with redrawn plans and sections in a quasi-exhibition style introduction. Together with the texts, they curate a base to set the ground for their proposals as something deeply connected to their long and short-term context.

At DOGMA, often overlooked narratives and rhetorics give place to design informed by history, translating the chronological thread into new solutions. It is not only about rethinking the built aspect of spaces and construction materials, but the politics and funding that would allow it to get built-in different contexts. It is about basing his projects on history but simultaneously detaching them from such.

Is therefore important to put his built and written work as complementary and intertwined practices. Again, here we can draw a parallel between Aureli's work to Koolhaas' OMA-AMO duality. In sum, one can argue, for Aureli, that history is operative: it is an essential tool to understand the present while arguing for change, and arguably the element with most relevance in making his work part of the larger architecture discourse.

Conclusion

In sum, we can argue that Aureli makes his voice heard and takes an important stand on architecture history through three main aspects: the content of the book, the way it is presented both graphically and linguistically, and the dialogue he establishes through the questions he poses to our reflection by shedding light into issues and process we have taken for granted thus far. If architecture creates space for conversations, and criticism takes doubt and makes it public, Aureli does both through his writing.

By reverse-engineering the transformation of the religiousness of asceticism into an architectural aesthetic and lifestyle, he accomplishes his goal to generate debate and critical thinking on the condition of ‘less’, domesticity, and the domestication of society. His seemingly retroactive manifesto and directional declaration towards a need to ‘redefine our needs and live detached from the social ethos of property, production, and possession’ is argued by looking at points in the past that helped build the contemporary scene of living, making us understand how Capitalism drove our current view of the space and shaped the idea of private property.

Graphically, the presentation of the book as a sort of meta-asceticism is a curated way of emphasizing his point - one that is not mentioned and can go unnoticed if not carefully analyzed. Together with the book’s title and its previously mentioned reference to the modernist dogma “Less is More”, this subtle extra layer added by the author exemplifies his self-control, and consequently his determination and willingness to join the conversation around the topic. Again, the vocabulary used and the first-person point of view of a narrator that is part of the story only reinforces his role in the conversation.

Finally, and most importantly, Aureli is not presenting his point as hard information or soft theory. The book is not supposed to be read simply as research material or one’s perspective of the theme. The bigger scope is to make readers question their relation to the property. Through rhetorical questions, affirmations, and examples, both of built environments or well-known designers and thinkers, driving from history to present, he puts the reader into the spotlight by making them question their ways of thinking and living, and hopefully stand up to imposed social contracts.