Pier Vittorio Aureli

Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism

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“Less is more” goes
the modernist dictum. But is it? In an age when we are endlessly urged to do
“more with less”, can we still romanticise the pretensions of minimalism? For Pier Vittorio Aureli, the return of “austerity chic” is a perversion of what
ought to be a meaningful way of life. Charting the rise of asceticism in early
Christianity and its institutionalisation with the medieval monasteries, Aureli
examines how the basic unit of the reclusive life – the monk’s cell – becomes
the foundation of private property. And from there, he argues, it all starts to go wrong. By late capitalism, asceticism has been utterly aestheticised. It manifests itself as monasteries inspired by Calvin Klein stores, in the monkish
lifestyle of Steve Jobs and Apple’s aura of restraint. Amid all the hypocrisy,
it must still be possible to reprise the idea of “less” as a radical
alternative, as the first step to living the life examined.

This book is currently unavailable
45 printed pages
Original publication
2013
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Quotes

  • Елизавета Яновскаяhas quoted9 years ago
    the most blatant was a piece written by the then architecture critic for the New York Times, Nicolai Ourousoff, significantly titled ‘It Was Fun Till the Money Ran Out’.
  • Rita Hoogehas quoted9 years ago
    Rather than owning a robe, a house or a book, they would use these things. Here use was understood not as a value but as the act of sharing things, as the supreme form of living in common.
  • otis686has quoted4 years ago
    There is an increasing interest in more socially oriented ways of living such as co-housing or sharing domestic space beyond the compound of the family apartment. But what is seldom discussed is that this way of life requires some effort. To live together requires less individual freedom, although that may be no bad thing.

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