Rafael Urano

Frajndlich

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wo proj e cts:
th e formativ e y e ars of
manfr e do taf u ri

Abstract
Given his wide contributions as an historian, it seems easy to
forget that Manfredo Tafuri (1935 - 1994) briefly worked as an
architect in the first five years of the sixties. During this period
Tafuri, then still a young intellectual, reconciled theory and
practice, something that would later become unthinkable, until a
series of political conflicts led him to renounce this project along
with a whole historical framework. Far from being an auxiliary
practice in his studies, the designing of projects was for the
young Tafuri both a political front for transformation and a
decantation chamber for his studies in history and philosophy,
where many still-developing historiographical premises were put
to test. We begin with his first publications as a student in
Rome, 1960, and move toward Theories and History of
Architecture, 1968, where the author breaks off from the idea of
an architect-historian. This article intends to better understand
the theoretical transformations that take place in Tafuris works
in the 1960s, trying to reveal a movement between two political
poles and two interpretations regarding the uses of history in
architecture, revisiting research and drawings from the young
Tafuri and finding echoes of these in his later work.

Keywords
Modern architecture. History of architecture. Theory of
architecture. Tafuri, Manfredo, 1935-1994. Italian architecture.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-2762.v23i39p72-89
ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

DOS PROYETOS:
LOS AOS DE FORMACIN DE
MANFREDO TAFURI

Resumen

Palabras clave
Arquitectura moderna. Historia de la
arquitectura. Teora de la arquitectura. Tafuri,
Manfredo 1935-1994. Arquitectura italiana.

Resumo
Diante de sua ampla contribuio como
historiador, fcil esquecer que Manfredo
Tafuri (1935-1994) teve uma breve atividade
como arquiteto no primeiro quinqunio dos anos
60. Durante o perodo, o ento jovem
intelectual conciliou teoria e prtica, algo
impensvel posteriormente, at que uma
sucesso de conflitos polticos o levou
renncia, no s do projeto, mas de um
primeiro arcabouo histrico. Longe de ter sido
uma atividade auxiliar em seus estudos, a
prtica projetual foi para o jovem Tafuri uma
frente poltica de transformao, cmara de
decantao de seus estudos de histria e
filosofia, no qual testavam-se diversas hipteses
de suas premissas historiogrficas ainda em
constituio. Parte-se de suas primeiras
publicaes como estudante em Roma, em
1960, at o livro Teorias e Histria da
Arquitetura, de 1968, em que o autor rompe
definitivamente com a noo de arquiteto
historiador. Objetiva-se com este artigo captar a
transformao terica pela qual passa a obra do
autor nos anos 60, procurando revelar um
movimento entre dois projetos polticos e duas
interpretaes dos usos da histria na
arquitetura, revisitando os desenhos e pesquisas
iniciais da carreira de Tafuri, e como eles
ecoaram em sua trajetria posterior.

Palavras-chave
Arquitetura moderna. Histria da arquitetura.
Teoria da arquitetura. Tafuri, Manfredo, 19351994. Arquitetura italiana.

article s p. 072-089

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Ante su extensa contribucin como historiador, es

facil olvidar que Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994)
tuvo una breve actividad como arquitecto, en el
primer quinquenio de los aos 60. Durante ese
perodo, el entonces joven intelectual, haciendo
algo que posteriormente vendra a ser
impensable, concili teora y prctica, hasta que
una sucesin de conflictos polticos lo llev a la
renuncia, no solo del proyecto, sino de una
primera armazn histrica. Lejos de haber sido
una actividad auxiliar en sus estudios, la prctica
proyectual fue, para el joven Tafuri, un frente
poltico de transformacin, cmara de
decantacin de sus estudios de historia y
filosofa, en la que se probaban distintas
hiptesis de sus premisas historiogrficas an en
constitucin. Se parte de sus primeras
publicaciones, como estudiante en Roma, en
1960, hasta el libro Teoras e Historia de la
Arquitectura , de 1968, en lo que el autor rompe
definitivamente con la nocin de arquitecto
historiador. Con este artculo se pretende captar
la transformacin terica por la que pasa la obra
del autor en los aos 60, buscando revelar un
movimento entre dos proyectos polticos y dos
interpretaciones de los usos de la historia en la
arquitectura, en revisita a los diseos e
investigaciones iniciales de la carrera de Tafuri, y
cmo ellos resonaron en su trayectoria posterior.

DOIS PROJETOS:
OS ANOS DE FORMAO DE
MANFREDO TAFURI

In the sixties, Tafuri established himself as an intellectual. Toward the beginning

of the decade, the roman author was still an undergraduate, inside the political
debates that were growing in Italian universities, while also beginning to make
himself known within architectural circles, having contributed to such
publications as Casabella and LArchitettura. By the end of the decade he was
well established, professor ordinarius in Venice, collecting admirers and
detractors due to his book Theories and History of Architecture (1968),
meanwhile immersing himself more and more with venetian left-wing
intellectuals, culminating in the article Towards a Critique Of Architectural
Ideology (1969), that would define the terms of his trajectory as an historian.

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Manfredo Tafuri interviewed

by Franoise Very. I mercatti
della cultura, In: Casabella,
n. 619, 620, 1995, p. 38.
Manfredo Tafuri interviewed
by Luisa Passerini, History
as Project: An Interview with
Manfredo Tafuri, In: ANY:
Being Manfredo Tafuri, n. 25
and 26, 2000, pp. 30 e ss.

3 Vieri

Quillici interviewed by
Frederico Rosa In: ROSA,
Federico. Progetto e critica
dellurbanistica moderna: I
primi anni di attivit di
Manfredo Tafuri. Veneza:
IUAV, Tesi di laurea, 2003, p.
341.

The choice to become an historian of architecture can be seen as a particular

biographical moment, of lesser importance to the study of Tafuris work.
However, this choice is important because around it appear seminal themes
that will from then on accompany Tafuri, besides the fact that many architects
and movements persistently cited in his texts were equally important to his
professional output. Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Ludovico Quaroni, among
others, appear as reference-points in this short experience as a practicing
architect as well as in the long road ahead as an historian.
Furthermore, the character of Tafuris ruptures with the sixties appear as a
provocation toward better understanding his theories from the time when he
was still bent over the drawing-board. Books that would later be disavowed,
such as The Architecture of Mannerism in the European Cinquecento (1966) and
Modern Architecture In Japan (1962) demonstrate how years of practice
appear as tabus in the authors construction of himself in the following years. I
left [the field of architecture] behind in 1962, a long story,1 said Tafuri in 1976,
in an interview with Franoise Very.
Regardless of this statement, in the following years it would still have been
possible to see Tarufis name in the credits of the office founded with his
colleagues in Rome, Studio AUA, signing directional centers and other
programs. Near the end of his life, in 1993, the historian created another
version of his decision, dated 1964.
One tragic night I was miserable because I had to decide between practice and
history. I remember I was sweating, walking around, fell ill, had a fever, At the
end, in the morning, I had decided, and that was it! I gave up all the tools of
architecture and determined to dedicate myself entirely to history. What kind of
history I didnt know, but I knew at that moment that it should be history.2

A long night, lasting almost a decade. In this last statement, it seems

interesting how the author confesses the esprit of the times, according to
which his decision were made with more force and less clarity. In saying that
he did not know which history he would practice, Tafuri reminds us of the
intellectual setting of the time, in which all issues would revolve around a
historical reformulation of the Italian peninsula, that had just seen graduate
the generation that had spent its childhood suspended in the war and saw
itself, suddenly, living in an economic miracle. Tafuri was one more in this
period, engaged with various initiatives under way in his native city of Rome.
Vieri Quillici, a colleague of Tafuris around this period, spoke of the euphoria
of this period, during which there was a great fermenting.3

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

It is safe to say that Tafuri lived these times with this effort in mind. Following
the years of reconstruction, he gives himself to a number of activities,
practicing sculpture, painting, and making contact with the first translations of
foreign writers such as Camus, Sartre and Heidegger, while diving in the
theses of his countrymen, such as Croce, Paci and other philosophers.
Architecture then was another one of his investigations, with which he first
came into contact through Bruno Zevis History of Modern Architecture,
which, together with the writings of Giulio Carlo Argan, began to guide the
author toward this subject.4
The question we wish to answer is not so much that of how architecture came
to be Tafuris central interest (and how this interest became an historical
offshoot) since this question was put to rest by the authors activities as
historian in the following years of the sixties. The main question is: how did
Tafuris formative years, those in which he reconciled his activities as architect,
scholar, historian and politician, cast themes that would haunt his mature
years?
as Project, Op. cit.

p. 29.
5 Associazione

studenti e
architetti, In. LArchitettura
cronache e storia, n. 45, 1959,
p. 211.

In this sense, Tafuri and his

colleagues situated
themselves within an Italian
current opposed to the
immediate discussion
between historical continuity
and architectural vocabulary,
heralded by other architects
from the peninsula, as
Ernesto Nathan Rogers;
Gabetti & dIsola sustained
in the well known
controversy between the
british and Italian regarding
the overlapping of history
and architecture.

In 1959, toward the end of the 45th edition of LArchitectura, a founding

manifesto was published for the Association of students and architects of
Rome, signed by a number of students including Tafuri from the Valle
Giulia architecture school in the Italian capital. The main intention behind the
document was to make clear the wish to reconnect, in historical terms, to the
moral, social and cultural premises that inform the Modern Movement,
described in the preceding lines as being responsible for making architectural
culture evolve for more than half a century, in an effort to adhere to the
demands of the modern man in his society5 .
There was widespread dissatisfaction of the young students of the college
toward their professors, who appear in statements of students as well as
Tafuris as still tied to fascist ideas. A year later the Association stroke a direct
attack at the professor that most represented the fascist scenario at the
college: Saverio Muratori. Muratori worked along with many names in
architecture at the time, promoting modernist housing projects for the INA
Casa initiative. In his composition course, however, he advised his students to
build churches with roofs, markets with cornices and oculae. The pages of
LArchitettura were illustrated by students, compiled and exhibited at the
college with Tafuri and Giorgio Piccinato as curators. The publication created
space for the students, whose generalized apprehension revolved around the
lack of historical adherence and the anachronic character of the professors
proposals.
Modernist principles were, to these young students, the necessary remedy for
inserting architecture within the debates of the time and restoring a social
motivation to their profession: there was the strong belief that the recovery of
modern architecture could unify pragmatic and historical agendas against the
stagnant state of projects in the peninsula. Tafuri came into architecture from
this context, as a development from his activities in the student movement,
when many members of the Association came together to create Studio
AUA.6
The office was more than a simple business project, it was a political apparatus
through which so-called unitary action would be formulated. The collective

article s p. 072-089

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4 History

was established at a time when Italian architects were less restrained with the
inheritance of Italian rationalism and had to face new problems, such as rapid
post-war urban growth.
There was a will to bring into Italian context large international experiences,
like the commercial centers in downtown Philadelphia, by Louis Kahn,
Kenzo Tanges megastructures in Tokyo and, to an extent, the technological
phantasies of the british Archigram. The amplification of the scale of
intervention, support found in cutting-edge technology, the so-called
megastructures were the common ground that according to Tafuri in 1966,
inaugurated a new utopian internationale.7
Utopia takes its footing in situations of crisis or of linguistic transition, as the
tight effort in the search clearly directed toward burning stages in the difficult
path of creating a new language.8 In this way, depending upon a concern with
the present. These interventions act as statements, collaborating to the
establishment of new guidelines for planning large cities.

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7 TAFURI,

Manfredo. La
nuova dimensione urbana e
la funzione dellutopia, In:
LArchitettura cronache e
storia, vol. 124, 1966, p. 680.

Idem, p. 680.

AYMONINO, Carlo. Origini e

sviluppo della citt moderna.
Spanish translation: Orgenes
y desarrollo de la ciudad
moderna. Barcelona: Gustavo
Gili, 1972. p. 89.

10

Interview with Vieri Quillici.

Op. cit. p. 347

According to Tafuri, these urban planning designs find support in the

concepts of flexibility and mobility: they are not closed solutions for
admitting, in a strict sense, the inhabitants of the city. They consider a growth
that surpasses the demand they had initially foreseen. In Tanges projects
schemes of linear growth for his modules are presented in quinquennial
periods. The primary structures to which housing units would be connected
in Plug-in City by the british Archigram are ways of making viable, through
building, a direct forecast of efficient and rational ways of containing new
population in these new cities.
To the downtown-outskirt binome follows a relationship in which larger scale
would be involved: nearby cities and the entire region and location must be
considered. High-speed routes, blocks, neighborhoods, historical center,
mountains and rivers: all of these would have their uses recreated against the
absorption of city growth by the new structures, to a point where Carlo
Aymonino separates the recent past from the rest of the history of Italian cities:
Not to ignore the experience that was accumulated through almost two
centuries in the capitalist city might mean this: accepting the rupture of urban
form as physically recognizable while accomplished within a constant and
unitary design (the perimeters the of castle walls, the enormous volume of the
Duomo, the town-hall tower, etc.) to elaborate and identification of urban form
of a different kind, as organized around a distinct hierarchy of the destined uses
of cities and territory.9

The Studio AUA entered these questions by articulating proposals of

directional centers with the modernist-inspired vocabulary characteristic of
Tange, Kahn and Le Corbusier. The office achieved some success by winning,
right in its first years, a contest for the cultural, commercial and recreational
center in Fano, and an honorable mention for the directional center in Torino
(fig. 01).
Tafuri, in this team, was occupied with theory, as stated by Quilici, who says
his contribution was more general, involving critical control of the process of
decisions10. Giorgio Piccinato, another member of the Studio, also speaks of
this role, as the draftsmen [of the studio] were others, he, in his own right,

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

Fig. 01: Studio AUA, Torino

directiona center, 1963. In.
Casabella, n. 279, 1963.

11

Statement of Giorgio
Piccinato to the author on the
16h of November, 2010.

12

Idem.

13 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Il
problema dei centri storici
allinterno della nuova
dimensione citadina,In.
Citt territorio, Bari: Leonardo
da Vinci, 1963. p. 682. The
italics are Tafuris own.

theorized over what was being said.11 Piccinato clearly states Tafuris peculiar
position in the Studio, as a figure whose presence in the collective was
tensioned with his private career. Manfredo rapidly took an individual path. We
would write as a collective, he quickly began to personalize his writing.12
Even when taking part in publications regarding cities-territory, Tafuri draws
individual arguments, less similar to those by other architects of the period.
The roman author finds in the history of the avant-garde support for his instudio practice and by other architects in deepening the rupture through
conciliation. Tafuri ponders the affinities of these architects to the urban
projects of Bruno Taut, his garden-cities articulated in communication
networks: spatial models that would be expandable by the city. He considers
also the english New Towns and other procedures that depend upon the
founding of small cities around the capitals.
A negative point, pertaining to all these projects, according to Tafuri is the
abandoning of the procedure of urban phenomenology, where the patina of
time would mold the city on every one of its scales. In these interventions
there is an aproprioristic articulation rather than a direct intervention on the
existing fabric. Therefore, as a juxtaposition of interventions, we find in its
essence a cision between past and future already in place.
Total exorcism of urban mobility and its prevision through controversial
directional structures, decidedly archaic, in the confrontations arising from its
own self-insertion as islands, as alien objects in the dynamic of the city (where,
if one wishes, references to the compositional mode of pop-art may be found).13

This sort of juxtaposition creates, through time, a competition between urban

logics: the growth of the megastructures with their geometric reticules would
impose themselves upon the already extant so-called urban phenomena.
Mostly, Tafuri means historical centers and neighborhoods, the changes in
their use along with changing times, etc. Both the historical city and these new

article s p. 072-089

077

ps-

projects consider development through time: the severance between past

and present is made explicit.
Although involved in the offices efforts in this direction, Tafuris own opinion
on the matter is more contradictory. The notion of severance with the past as
an urban phenomenon which dilutes the forms of the older city led him
to write of the fragility of historical centers within this dichotomy, calling to
the urgency of giving a new meaning to historical fabric separating recent
from past history.

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14

dem, p. 683.

15

Idem, p. 683.

16

Idem, p. 683 .

On the other half of the equation Tafuri considered megastructures as

producers of a city of imagistic tendencies, whose modules and industrial
components create objects that are sealed on the landscape, suggesting and
planning its own reproduction, losing strength in becoming distant from the
time of urban phenomena. In its constitution through an extraneous process,
urban form cannot be determined through the architecture of
megastructures. It is no accident, therefore, that our ongoing projects still seem
like paradoxes reminiscent of a certain nihilism; in reality, with their apparent
emphasis on the figurative they destroy the concepts of urban form, architecture,
mobility and the availability for territorial organization.14
Such considerations appear in the logs from a congress regarding citiesterritory in 1964, when Tafuri is nearing his final decision of abandoning the
project. Given the tasks that the constructive effort of the architect faces solely
on the basis of hope stemming from his desire to design, ambiguity, to become
acceptable, must translate into communicative value, into semantic structure, a
figurative index closed within itself.15
This posture is placed as intermediary to a recovery of the power to interfere
in the present, as the conclusion of Tafuris text indicates:
Faced with a reality that seems not to admit hope or illusion not-accompanied
by the dramatic will for resistance and evasion of the tormentous dream full of
symbols, unique to present utopiae, modern architecture might again find its
positive route in a pitiless critical act that leads back to the first matrix of a
design: that has always been a construction of reality by men of the present, as
a contribution in the secular search for the sense of history.16

The anti-historical utopiae offered the necessary resistance to the recovery of

modern architectures positive route. Even as rhetoric, Tafuri sees a way of
facing cities able to reach new content, updating the modern impulse for
creating new categories for new problems within the city. Tafuris readings of
the designs of Kahn and Tange places them as a renewal of the historical

Fig. 02: Studio AUA, draft

for a hospital in Venice,
1964. In. Casabella, n. 289,
1964

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

dilemma faced by architects in the beginning of the twentieth century. Going

back to the history of the avant-garde, Tafuri attempts to contribute to the
debate reagarding large cities in the 1960s, where he sees the continuity of the
historical problem of utopian architecture in urban planning.
These personal ponderings took effect upon a young Tafuri on the occasion of
a contest for the Civil Hospital in Venice, 1963 (fig. 02). Two structures are
situated around the turf perimeter, resulting in a central space with two to
three-story programs, tracing a large promenade, like a venetian Campo, to
which follow little indoor patios between the wards.
In this project, extensive and complex in its treatment of the programs, a
cross-cut reveals the dynamics of the systems, with stairways accompanying
the discrepancies in the verandas, allowing for rapid access to different wards.
Sketches show how the construction in five stories which diverges from the
template of the venetian palazzi has its encounter with the citys alleys eased
along by the solution for the verandas.
17

18 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Teorie e
storia dellarchitettura,
Portuguese translation Teorias
e histria da arquitetura.
Lisboa/ So Paulo: Presena/
Martins Fontes, 1979. p. 103.
Authors italics.

It is possible that this venetian project came before Tafuris skepticism with
regards to the historical force of megastructures. The city of canals as
practically unitarian in its urban format and Studio AUAs hospital would
certainly have an impact that would literally convert into imagistic tendency,
throwing the parameters of intervention into a crisis, strengthening them
through the insoluble contrast that a project of this scope would bring to
Venice.
Tafuri has never spoken publicly about this project. According to Giorgio
Piccinato, his partner was, as usual, distant from the idiosyncrasies of projectmaking, having pitched in with the making of drawings in the days preceding
the deadline.17
In Theories and History of Architecture, however, some pages are dedicated to
analysing the project pitched by Le Corbusier for the same hospital, two years
later, in 1965. The swiss architect goes beyond the limits of the turf, making a
building spread across the urban fabric, creating internal patios, emulating in
modern vocabulary the typical typologies of the city of Venice. The modular
structures rest on pilotis on the canals or are built upon floating platforms.
Bridges connect some of the complexes and the spreading-out of sectors
mixes the building into the urban fabric.
The dialogue between the two structures [hospital and city] is taken up on the
level of these respective organisms, accentuating, with the new hospital, the
continuity and seriality of the various nucleii. Therefore, the specific environment
is submitted to a reorganization imposed by the articulated hospital machine.
The urban structure, on the other hand, acquires a newfound finish thanks to the
critical clarification that Le Corbusiers work achieves, requalifying an unfinished
fringe.18

The new meanings appear on a small scale in the design of this part of the
city along the lines of a modern Fondamenta. The character of this relationship
between distinct times, according to Tafuris reading, finds support in a
technological question that of the industrial modulation required for the
construction of the hospital wings. However, contrary to the megastructures,

article s p. 072-089

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Statement of Giorgio
Piccinato.

Fig. 03. Studio AUA, housing building in Latina, 1964. In. Casabella, n. 289, 1964.

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080

its contrast with the historical fabric is felt more in the very material of the
industrial pieces than in a contrast of scale.
19 The

credits for project

supervisor do not appear
separately from the rest of
the team in the credits to
Studio AUA projects
published in Casabella. With
support from Vieri Quilicis
statement: I remember Tafuri
executed a project on his own, or
rather, at least two since one
was a Regulating Plan [...] One
is a building in Latina, it was
published and still exists.
Interview with Vieri
Quilici, Op. cit., p. 347 and
in Giorgio Picinatos
statement: one of the first
projects we signed [Piccinato &
Tafuri] was a sort of Unit
dhabitation in Latina.

20 TAFURI,

Manfredo et alt.
Progetti di architetti

These considerations show the young historians preoccupation with a smaller

scale, more detailed and studied than that of the large directional centers that
interested and gave coherence to Studio AUA. Coherently, Tafuris activity as
an architect had only one chapter in which he was at the fore of a complete,
built project, in the role of general supervisor on a small-scale intiative: a
housing building in Latina19 (fig. 03).
The building has eleven floors, whose units are distributed in duplex typology.
The tipology and constructive vocabulary, like stacked boxes (although
without pilotis), with back-driven frames and opaque gables bear a strong
resemblance to Le Corbusiers Unit dhabitation from the late forties, the
first prototype having appeared in Marseille, 1952. Tafuris project did not
count on such free circumstances as those of the swiss architect, such as the
absence of a lot or legislative regulations. On a corner lot, Tafuri preferred to
dephase the units amongst themselves on the blueprint, creating the
impression of a succession of buildings, rather than a continual plane.
When publishing this project in Casabella, Tafuri participated in a debate with
the new generation of roman architects of which he was a part of in Studio
AUA. In his statement, Tafuri attempts to adopt a tone of critical recovery of
the modern movement, concentrating his argument upon two specific points:
the first of which was testing the possibility of a total architecture that would
unify methods of different scales, such as design and urban planning, in a
same modus of operation, which, according to him, should be reviewed given
the number of new post-avant-garde challenges. The second point is a
consideration regarding the political bonds of the masters of the modern
movement, mostly those of Gropius and Le Corbusier. According to the
roman author [Gropius and Le Corbusiers] political involvement was

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

superfluous in a way, given that their artistic effort assumed the ideological
battle.20
The architects work would require, according to the young Tafuri, being made
along the terms of a specific stance. His statement is filled with contradiction
when he goes on to situate himself as very critical of those who insist on
casting themselves beyond the limits of practice:
The architects transgression into fields for which he is not qualified presently
takes on a new meaning than the one in use during the 50s: then it was about
pushing toward a unity of culture, toward the introduction of the concept of
planification; today it is a dangerous illusion that confirms, when not coinciding
with, technocracy and superficiality.21

romani, In. Casabella, n.

289, 1964, p. 10.
21

Idem, p. 10.

22 TAFURI,

Manfredo.
Larchitettura moderna alla
luce dei problemi attuali,
Facolt di Architettura
dellUniversit di Palermo,
Corso di composizione
architettonica II: Palermo,
1966-67. Course first taught
at Rome in 1964. p. 39.

23

Idem, p.39.

24 History

p. 16.

as Project, Op. cit.,

However, the Unit was not seen as progressive in this grand arc. Rather, the
building is as a total and absolute definition of the city, a step back regarding the
pre-war experiments, perhaps because of an act of contingent realism.23
Tafuri disregarded the Unit mostly on the grounds of its position as a model.
He preferred the free monumental structures that the Le Corbusier had
planned for Chandigarh and Ronchamp as he would endorse throughout his
trajectory in the following years. If he thought this way, why did he prefer to
use the prototypical language of industrial parts and interacting modules,
typical of the technological research that Le Corbusier would carry out in the
sketches for his city designed by the Units, when designing his housing
complex in Latina?
This internal quarrel is a result of the conflicting intellectual filiations that
interested the young Tafuri. Given the complexity of the relationship between
designed and written work at the time, it is not enough to relate these
dilemmas to a preference for history that had always been in place, as the
author would like to attest in his last statement: All things considered, they
wanted to become architects in order to change society honestly. On the other
hand, I wasnt interested in becoming an architect because the practice of
architecture was not at the center of my interests.24
If we keep in mind the following chapters in Tarufis carreer the statement
seems valid, but how do we endorse it given the participation, manifestos and
direct engagements in the questions of city and projects that marked his
carreer? The Italian left-wing at the time, in general, had as a common ground
among its parts the will to organize around the effective possibilities for
radical transformation in a Europe that had recently renewed its relationship
with capitalism following the second world war. There was general

article s p. 072-089

ps-

081

This passage may be read as a past echo of Theories and History of

Architecture, but the main interest is seeing it published beside the authors
drawings that deliberately cited the Unit dhabitation, a project proposing the
unification and widening of the scales of architecture. These divisions become
deeper when keeping in mind the opinions put forth by Tafuri at the college
regarding the Unit. As an assistant in Ludovico Quaronis composition
course, the roman author gave a great lesson on the swiss architect at the end
of the semester, stating that the lecorbusian oeuvre in fact, along the whole arc
it describes, seems to constantly surpass the contradictions and impasses that we
found in preceding lessons...22

dissatisfaction toward the soviet terms of capitalist expansion, at the same time
that the teleological relationship seen by Marx between the advance of capital,
the strengthening of the proletariat and Revolution had begun to crumble.
Tafuri knew about the great political dilemmas of Italy and Europe at the same
time in which he aligned his interest with aesthetic discussions promoted by
architectural theory, nourishing himself, since youth, with an intelligence
interested in the frictions between art and politics. He had read various
authors, but his preference at the time seemed to be with the current most
interested in and aesthetic revision supported by Marxist categories, whose
leading figure at the time in the roman scene was Galvano Della Volpe,
philosopher and professor at the University of Messina.25
25

ps-

082

In a statement, Francesco Dal

Co said that in the formation
[of Tafuri, great importance is
given to] an historian with a
strong interest in the terms of
linguistics, with particular
attention to a marxist
philospher very well-known in
Italy named Galvano Della
Volpe. Statement of Francesco
Dal Co. Cf. COHEN, JeanLouis. La coupure entre
architectes et intellectuals, ou
les enseignements de
litalophilie. In: In Extenso,
v.1, 1984, p 187. The
statement of Tafuris venetian
colleague factually
corroborates what may
already be inferred in the
authors early writings,
mostly in Theories and History
when he admits that with
regards to Italian marxist
thought, Galvano Della Volpe
obtained a discreet success,
recognizing that figurative
structures might be attributed a
specific logic. TAFURI,
Manfredo. Teorie e storia
dellarchitettura. Op. cit. p.
236.

26 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Teorie e
storia dellarchitettura, Op.
Cit., p. 236.

27

PEREIRA, Wilcon J.
Introduo. In: Della Volpe,
So Paulo: tica, 1979, p. 35.

28

DELLA VOLPE, Galvano.

Sulla dialettica. In: Logica
come scienza storica. Roma:
Editori Riuniti, 1969, p. 281.
Grifo de Della Volpe.

29

Idem, p. 281.

To Tafuri, Della Volpe safeguarded arts autonomy given productive processes,

with a clear advantage: He freed marxist thought regarding art from the
margins of a vulgar sociology, reinserting it into the advanced debate occurring
in international studies about the problem of semantics26.
According to the Italian author, Della Volpe succeeded, in a way, in reconciling
history and art history and political engagement, subsidizing an artistic
practice without regressing into romanticism. Della Volpe fought for the finite
aspect of art, related to the present, but recognized the power of sensations, of
the meanings that art would acquire over time. The brazilian commentator
Wilcon Pereira argues that:
Della Volpe causes the project of giving marxism an aesthetics of expressive
mediums to evolve. The central idea resides in the confirmation that the work
[of art] is knowledge, but of a very specific and peculiar type, since it throws
into motion innumerable technical, material and formal procedures [...] A poem,
a film, a ballet or a drawing are modes of knowledge, but of a knowledge
achieved through its own signs, therefore irreductible and without substitute.27

This aspect of Della Volpes work justifies much of the content found in the
analyses of the avant-garde carried out in Theories and History of Architecture,
even the philology-obsessed research in Via Giulia and Interpreting the
Renaissance. However, in the sixties, it is possible to infer that Della Volpes
expressive realism seemed to the young Tafuri to be an endorsement of his
practice as an architect, with support in the force that the present would
acquire if the past were used as motor, as he wrote: the meaning of materialist
contemporaneity should be clarified, that is historical practice as production of
future history through realizations of instances of a present that takes in and
develops in itself the history of the past.28
This amalgamation of times throwing themselves onto the present take
footing in the past not through a priori judgement, but through the
establishment of model-criteria or types, which would be historical
abstractions comparable to the present so that one might actually reach for
possibilities of a future history29.
In the debate in which he presents his Latina project, Tafuri ends his speech by
stating that one of the main tasks of the architect today is the search for
expressive structures, capable of reinserting, on a different level from that of the
constructivist experiments, the problems between ideology and configuration,

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

stating that either the sheer identification of one term with the other or its
absolute distinction are no longer acceptable30.

30 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Progetti
di architetti romani, Op. cit.
p. 11.

31 TAFURI,

32 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Ludovico
Quaroni e lo sviluppo
dellarchitettura moderna in
Italia. Milo: Comunit,
1964, pp. 9 e ss.

In the introduction to his 1964 course on the history of architecture in light of

recent problems, Tafuris discourse revolves around recognition of the
historical power in working on projects. ... It is the necessarily constructive
character of architecture that leads it to offering horizons for overcoming the
crisis31.
This perspective comes mostly from the Italian scene, to whom the legacy of
the avant-garde was always put up against the vast Italian architectural
tradition, to whom the spoils of a relationship between rationalism and rightwing currents still had to be managed. In writing about his professor and for
a few years, his boss Ludovico Quaroni, Tafuri weaves an eloquent
introduction, where he seeks to give Quaroni a central position in the debates
of his time. There, he diagnoses the problem of architecture in history:
The recovery of history, within the complex problems of Italian reality, had to
deal with the intention, not that of the indifferent technician that accepts all
situations or programs, that models himself as resolver and rationalizer of the
problems put forth by society [...] but of giving to the word reality a
historical meaning, of an unstable situation in which choice is inevitable, if
frequently dramatic.32

This meaning of the present had to be sophisticatedly supported in the past

and by past Tafuri also considered the legacy of the avant-garde. This nexus of
questions inspired the young architect, who, finding himself anguishing over
his projects and his generation of colleagues, found solace in theory. Theory in
a wider sense than that of only architecture: Tafuris apprehension of the term
history of architecture first appears within a context that considers also the
project in question and its possibilities. The search for intellectuals,
philosophers and art historians that made an impression on the young Tafuri
will be taken up again in later years, but in the sixties they were of more use to
him as guidelines for intervening upon the present, and that included
designing projects.
In his work as an historian, Tafuri maintained an autonomous study of his
sources. His studies on humanism, in these first years, were mainly of an

article s p. 072-089

ps-

083

Manfredo. La storia
dellarchitettura moderna alla
luce dei problemi attuali, Op.
cit. p. 2.

The search for structures fits within Della Volpes model-criteria as much as
his historical research was full of this desire for legitimation. Le Corbusiers
typological sources used in the Latina building attempted to give a different
level, in the young Tafuris terms, to the swiss architects rationalism. Its
possible that Tafuri had had the intention of uniting the scale of the
megastructure from projects like Torino, Fano and Venice, to the scale of the
smaller interventions, therefore working in Le Corbusiers most legible
vocabulary: a housing building that expressively articulated different scales.
The fact is, given Le Corbusiers monumental sources, seeing the Unit as a
step back mattered less in the setting of Latina than the interplay of plasticity
in question. Philology and research regarding cities and histories appear in the
project in a non-literal manner. The references found in Tafuris architectural
practice were opposite to others that were favorites in the general scheme of
his theory.

academic quality, for the Quaderni dellIstituto di Storia dellArchitettura. In

these, Tafuri researches themes that would be dear to the historian in him,
such as the Italian baroque and the city of Rome. It might be said that at the
time Tafuri had an interest in more distant times than those of the avantgarde. However, his choices of study show an intention of bringing to the
present the force of the past.
In the 1966 publication The Architecture of Mannerism in the European
Cinquecento, there appears a clearer explanation regarding Tafuris
understanding of the past-present relationship. Mannerism, as studied by the
author, justifies itself in being an attempt to select specific values beyond
individual poetics and stylistics.

ps-

084

33

TAFURI, Manfredo.
Larchitettura del Manierismo
nel 500 europeo. Roma:
Officina, 1966, pp. 6 e ss.

34 TAFURI,

Manfredo.
Linformale e il design
contemporaneo. In:
Argomenti di architettura, n. 4,
1961, p. 94.

35

DELLA VOLPE, Galvano. La

questione cruciale
dellArchitettura odierna.
In: Critica del gusto, Milo:
Feltrinelli, 1966, p. 162.

36

Idem, p. 162.

Seen as a moment of crisis, the anxious period that followed the Renaissance
is chosen as an object of study through a strategic interest on Tafuris part,
something the author called historical actuality, based on the will to create a
colloquium with history, finally, based on semantically diverse, linguistically
open structures, at the limit of how these terms can be used to refer to the
cinquecento culture.33
This compacting of distinct historical periods already announces others Tafuri
would make in following years, although he still maintains a pragmatism that
would later become uncommon. If in Theories and history the dilemmas of
Brunelleschi and Alberti are taken up amidst research on contemporary
architecture, it was less with the intention of placing them as analogous
situations than as echoes of a same dilemma. Mannerism and modern
architecture do not go together, in the mid-sixties, as do humanism and the
contemporary. A change in the mediation between history and architecture
had taken place, and one of the steps in Tafuris transformation is the definite
removal of the project as an alternative.
One of the defining chapters in this crisis of Tafuris comes when Della Volpe
decides to respond to an article of his published in 1961 in the review
Argomenti di architettura, in which he defends that tending to define the
human condition of the architect in the fabric of the relations with the social
dimension toward which his making is directed, must, beginning in the present,
transform the past to later move from the past again departing from the present,
always from the present, to the future.34
Although this passage presents some concomitance with Della Volpe, the
philosopher decided to write a reply entitled The central question of modern
architecture, in which he contests this passage by contesting a poetics
founded in the past that end up contaminating his political involvement with a
large dose of romanticism and nostalgia. It seems permissible, wrote Della
Volpe, to give truly current advice to art theorists (in general) and architects: the
advice of taking care not to lose contact with the economic, social and cultural,
reality of our time and therefore avoid taking refuge in a reality reflected in
forms of a past culture, used, dated.35 The paragraph ends in a warning: If not,
we will remain aesthetic prisoners of aestheticism, or over-valuing of the image
(and therefore ornament of architecture) and evading the concept (therefore
useful and humanly functional), that has already been happily challenged by the
modern revolutionary movement in architecture.36

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

Della Volpe sees in the present a great focus of operation, in which modelcriteria and the historical search for the past would be obstructions for not
making philosophy neglecting the problem of the roots of the present, risking
losing oneself in an abstract, unreal and ultimately impotent present37.
Tafuris reply came in Theories and History of Architecture. Beginning with a
critical measuring of the philosopher, Tafuri admits that Della Volpes merit is
in the connection between semantic criticism and architecture. The opening
of meaning and the organic character of art were, however, relativized by the
young author when he found himself looking at non-organic, unorganized,
open artistic phenomena such as Dada, the formless, Pop Art or architecture on
an urban scale.38

37

38

Idem, p. 237.

39

Idem, p. 237.

40

Idem, p. 238. Tafuris italics.

41 TAFURI,

Manfredo.
Larchitettura moderna alla
luce dei problemi attuali, Op.
cit. p.58.

This controversy with Della Volpe occupies a central position in Theories and
History of Architecture. The roman authors argument, in giving as an answer
to the question of constantly shifting meaning in the city the study of minor
or forgotten works calls for an individualization of codes of reference. In
this procedure, Tafuri alerts us, one must be careful not to be seduced by the
present and run into deformations. The sense of this reasoning culminates in
the following well-known passage on operative criticism:
In this sense one may say that any type of criticism directed at casting light
exactly upon the relations that bind a work to the code implicit within it is
operative. In fact, it modifies the same relations it puts into question.40

Tafuri is speaking with his most specific interlocutors the previous

generation of historians of architecture, overall Zevi, who was a teacher in
the Course of operative criticism in architecture. However, one believes
that the real backdrop for his critical considerations regarding architects and
historians is his debate with Della Volpe, as well as his with himself and his
work as project-maker. This connexion between criticism to operative
criticism and his activity as an architect suggest a nodal point in Tafuris
reaction to a criticism such as Della Volpes: given the impossibility of
subscribing to the succession of the past by the present, since this implies an
arbitrary judgement of one over the other, the roman author prefers to take
sides with a more compact vision of the relationship between times. The
individualization of the pasts codes of reference serve to bring a
unicomprehensive meaning to the past-present relationship. In this sense,
Tafuri sees the power of Corbusiers plasticity at Chandigarh in weaving an
insertion of times and signs that reach for a frozen temporality41. Here,
more than the recurrence of model-criteria, stands the relation between

article s p. 072-089

ps-

085

DELLA VOLPE, Galvano.

Sulla dialettica Op. cit. p.
282.

The association between two of the most iconoclastic artistic currents of the
20th century and architecture favors the second term. The urban scale is a
constant shifting of meaning, reopened and re-read whenever there are new
constructions, regimes, etc. How do we account for this movement?
According to the author, there is a blind spot in this movement from the
present to the past, especially in the fact that the past is undergoing constant
revision of its meanings and systems of meaning. The codification of
deciphering systems may change and re-involve the whole history of
architecture toward the appearance of a work that, alone, clarifies an initially
little-evident process [...] or toward the critical evaluation of ignored or still
inadequately read works.39

times more closely related to an athymic notion. The quarrel with Della Volpe
helps to liberate Tafuris corpus from conjuncture, giving his political
engagement in the present less immediate terms and allowing him to build,
over the years, a history of architecture in which the relationship between the
modern and contemporary times is built upon the particularities of the past,
through the study of which one may reach a the present in a new way.
Without this modification it would become hard to think of Tafuris insertion
in Venice in the Contrapiano circle, but most of all, to consider that his work
as an historian could exist without support in a rigorous philological task.

ps-

086

42 TAFURI,

Manfredo. Teorie e
storia dellarchitettura, Op. cit.
p. 21.

43

PACI, Enzo. Tempo e relazione.

Milo: Il Saggiatore, 1965, p.
251.

The price for this theoretical swerve is well known: if past and present were
to be compacted together, one would have to adopt a non-successive vision
of times. This required the young Tafuris investigations on the drawing board
to come into direct opposition with his writings: building means putting in
the present something wholly alien to the past, severing the chain that unites
them, who can only be captured through written prose. When Tafuri writes,
in the beginnng of Theories and History that to critique is to apprehend the
fragrances of historical phenomena, submitting them to the filter of a rigorous
evaluation, revealing their internal mystifications, values, contradictions and
dialectics, to make explode their charge of meaning42 points toward the
maximum decay of the association between project tools and criticism.
In this sense, it makes no sense to speak of a personal choice for history. In
Tafuris statement regarding his professional decision, the most consistent
part is the one of not knowing what history was being made, since at the
time the ways of making it were constantly supplanting each other. Beyond
the decline of the project, it was necessary to break off from a generation of
Italian architects interested in designing projects informed by history.
Theories and History has an aspect of discussion of Italian problems, in trying
to investigate the eclipse of history as during the time of the avant-garde
and in seeking to show the harmful link between the architecture manuals
written by Zevi in which a point is made in defense of organic architecture.
However, Bruno Zevi is only the most significant intellectual in this tendency,
in which most of Italys architectural intelligentsia could be placed. Tafuris
option for a philological history places him beside the art historians of
modern and classical art, such as Sergio Bettini, and in a way causes Tafuris
approximation to the other antifascist current of a more phenomenological
filiation, such as Enzo Paci, whose reading of art in history had great affinity
with the possibility of a frozen time:
Positioned between the past and the future, between what was and what shall
be, the artist, hearing the voice that calls to him, is as if everything were
transformed into a question and an inquiry: it is as if the whole universal
process had previously conditioned him to discover and chose a new path. The
artist is under the impression of finding himself before infinite possibilities,
infinite paths, in infinite time and space.43

Theories and History is the final testimony of a change in Tafuris political

orientation in the Italian debates of the time. His decision for a determined
type of history that places itself at a distance from the conjuncture, opposed
to contemporary currents, guided by a philological deepening has as
substrate a shift in his notion of time or of how architecture and cities
participate in what is to come. Architecture participates in the present when

ps v.23 n.39 so paulo june 2016

coinciding with the dilemmas and themes of the past. This is the true choice
made by Tafuri during the sixties: the choice for a complex, long-lasting time.

44

45

Statement by Giorgio
Piccinato.

46

TAFURI, Manfredo. Ricerca

del Rinascimento: principi,
citt, architetti, Torino:
Einaudi, 1992, p. 164.

In the legacy of this brief period as an architect, there is still one loose end:
Tafuri, according to his colleague Piccinato, had a notable drawing skills45 .
A publication from the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea
Palladio shows some of the authors drawings made during his research. In the
exposition, drawings appear of the diagrams for the faade in the San
Giovanni dei Fiorentini church project, in Rome, designed by Antonio Da
Sangallo the younger. The architect of the cinquecento lost the contest
propposed by pope Leo X, and all that remains are his drawing information.
In his text on this project, published in Interpreting the Renaissance, Tafuri
shows how Sangallos original could take two different paths: one basilical
blueprint, and one central. This kind of approach is characteristic of Sangallo
and shows symptomatic indifference toward the chosing of principles.46
A scheme remade by an illustrator appears in the book, but the CISA
exposition shows the preceding sketches, made by the roman author.

Fig. 04: Manfredo Tafuri,

research sketches of the
church of San Giovanni dei
Fiorentini, projetada por
Antonio Da Sangallo, o
Jovem. In: BEDON, Anna,
BELTRAMINI, Guido,
BURNS, Howard, Questo:
disegni e studi di Manfredo
Tafuri per la ricostruzione
di edifici e contesti urbani
rinascimentali, Vicenza:
CISA, 1995.

article s p. 072-089

ps-

087

For a wider view of Tafuris

seminal contributions to the
history of architecture, see:
COHEN, Jean-Louis. La
coupure entre architectes et
intellectuals, Op. Cit. and
FRAJNDLICH, Rafael Urano.
Tafuri. Tempo da cidade
longnqua. So Paulo.
Doctoral thesis, 2014 e
LEACH, Andrew, Choosing
History : A study of Manfredo
Tafuris theorisation of
architectural history and
architectural history research.
Ghent. Doctoral thesis, 2005.

This was not the easier choice. Beside having to abandon a part of his
professional activity, Tafuri had to deal with a complete revision of how he was
to conduct his historical research culminating in with the studies of critique
of ideology in architecture, as well as another of his seminal works, Project and
utopia and other negative articles written toward engag architects written in
the 1970s.44

47

BURNS, Howard. Questo:

disegni e studi di Manfredo
Tafuri per la ricostruzione di
edifici e contesti urbani
rinascimentali, In: BEDON,
Anna, BELTRAMINI, Guido
and BURNS, Howard,
Questo: disegni e studi di
Manfredo Tafuri per la
ricostruzione di edifici e contesti
urbani rinascimentali.
Vicenza: CISA, 1995, p. 15.

48

Cf. LIPSTADT, Hlne e

MENDELSOHN, Harvey,
Philosophy, History and
Autobiography: Manfredo
Tafuri and the unsurpassed
lesson of Le Corbusier. In:
Assemblage, 22, 1994, p. 73.

ps-

088

49

COLOMINA, Beatriz. Le
Corbusier and
Photography,In:
Assemblage, n. 4, 1987, pp. 623.

50 TAFURI,

Manfredo, quoted
by por OCKMAN, Joan.
Venice and New York. In:
Casabella, n. 619-620, p. 67.

Tafuri took pride in his [...] capacity of assuming the roles of the architects he
studied47 wrote Howard Burns, a colleague of Tafuris and one of the curators
in the exhibition of his drawings, suggesting that even the handwriting of the
authors he researched were objects of his representation. The drawings give, in
this manner, support to the authors sober text, at the same time that it takes
him toward a reconstitution of Sangallos creative process (fig. 04). The drawing
procedures learned at Valle Giulia were indispensable to the philological persuit
of his themes, becoming not only a fundamental piece of his historical
contribution but also a provocative enunciation for understanding his written
prose. Excluding more didactic works such as Modern architecture in Japan the
drawings and photographs dont have a literal explanation throughout the text,
but a noisy presence in its content48 so that other readings may be available for
the authors prose, putting his elaborations into critical movement, existing as
the remains of his projectural work. The relationship becomes inverted: now,
the images, procedures and tools of drawing, exposition of concepts, are
auxiliary to philological practice and ideological criticism. In this sense, it would
not be enough for the image to complement argumentation in a literal manner,
but it should now counterbalance it. The drawing procedures in in the works of
the Renaissance are a radicalization of this process. In this moment, Tafuri
draws near to Le Corbusier, who had an obsession for drawing over
photographs landscapes that gave themselves directly to his vision, like
someone who attempted to capture the remote sight49, the past, necessary to
the freezing of time, causing the thread that goes through history to have the
least possible girth.
At the CISA exhibition, some drawings are not diagrammatical or technical.
There are perspectives done by Tafuri of spaces not-yet built, such as the
church by Santagallo. One may infer that there had been moments where he
had used the drawing board to solve details from projects of other times. [My
persona] works on history as profession, (not as an historian of architecture, but
also an historian of architecture)50, said Tafuri once. This avoidance of being
labeled a specialized professional might have been a way of going back to his
polyvalent childhood. Certainly, he was never able to escape his formation as an
architect, always present, echoing within his choices and in the time of his
approximations.

References:
Associazione studenti e architetti. In. LArchitettura cronache e storia, n. 45, p. 211, 1959.
AYMONINO, Carlo. Origini e sviluppo della citt moderna. Traduo para o espanhol:
Orgenes y desarrollo de la ciudad moderna. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1972.
BEDON, Anna; BELTRAMINI, Guido; BURNS, Howard, Questo: disegni e studi di
Manfredo Tafuri per la ricostruzione di edifici e contesti urbani rinascimentali. Vicenza:
CISA, 1995.
COHEN, Jean-Louis. La coupure entre architectes et intellectuals, ou les enseignements de
litalophilie. In: In Extenso, v.1, 1984.
COLOMINA, Beatriz. Le Corbusier and photography. Assemblage, Cambridge, n. 4, p. 6-23,
1987.
DELLA VOLPE, Galvano. La questione cruciale dellArchitettura odierna. In: Critica del
gusto, Milo: Feltrinelli, 1966, p. 161-162.

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DELLA VOLPE, Galvano. Sulla dialettica. In: Logica come scienza storica. Roma: Editori
Riuniti, 1969.
FRAJNDLICH, Rafael Urano. Tafuri: tempo da cidade longnqua. 2014. 199 f. So Paulo.
Tese (Doutorado em Arquitetura e Urbanismo) Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo,
Universidade de So Paulo, 2014.
History as Project: an interview with Manfredo Tafuri., Entrevista de Manfredo Tafuri
concedida a Luisa Passerini. ANY: Being Manfredo Tafuri, n. 25, 26, p. 10-69, 2000.
LEACH, Andrew. Choosing history : a study of Manfredo Tafuris theorisation of
architectural history and architectural history research. 2005. Tese (Doutorado) -Universitait
Ghent, Ghent, 2005.
LIPSTADT, Hlne; MENDELSOHN, Harvey. Philosophy, history and autobiography:
Manfredo Tafuri and the unsurpassed lesson of Le Corbusier. Assemblage, Cambridge, n.
22, p. 58-103. 1994.
I mercatti della cultura, entrevista de Manfredo Tafuri concedida a Franoise Very.
Casabella, Milo, n. 619-620, p. 36-45, 1995.,
OCKMAN, Joan. Venice and New York. Casabella, Milo, n. 619-620, p. 56-71, 1995.
PACI, Enzo. Tempo e relazione. Milo: Il Saggiatore, 1965.
PEREIRA, Wilcon J. Della Volpe, So Paulo: tica, 1979.

SEGURA, Manuel Lpez. Neoliberty & Co. The Architectural Review against 1950s Italian
historicism. Cuadernos de Proyectos Arquitectnicos n. 4, p. 136-139, 2013.
TAFURI, Manfredo. Larchitettura del Manierismo nel 500 europeo. Roma: Officina, 1966.
TAFURI, Manfredo. Larchitettura moderna alla luce dei problemi attuali, Facolt di
Architettura dellUniversit di Palermo, Corso di composizione architettonica II: Palermo,
1966-67.
TAFURI, Manfredo. Ludovico Quaroni e lo sviluppo dellarchitettura moderna in Italia. Milo:
Comunit, 1964.
TAFURI, Manfredo. La nuova dimensione urbana e la funzione dellutopia. LArchitettura
cronache e storia, vol. 124, p. 680-683, 1966.
TAFURI, Manfredo et al. Progetti di architetti romani. Casabella, Milo, n. 289, p. 2-49,
1964.
TAFURI, Manfredo. Ricerca del Rinascimento: principi, citt, architetti, Turim: Einaudi, 1992.
TAFURI, Manfredo. Teorie e storia dellarchitettura, Traduo para o portugus Teorias e
Histria da Arquitetura. Lisboa/ So Paulo: Presena/Martins Fontes, 1979.

Editors note
Date of submission: 06/01/2016
Acceptance: 06/03/2016
Translation: Pedro Koberle

Rafael Urano Frajndlich

Professor do Departamento de Arquitetura e Construo da Faculdade de Engenharia Civil,
Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Unicamp
CV:

http://lattes.cnpq.br/8717888176449255

[email protected]

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ROSA, Federico. Progetto e critica dellurbanistica moderna: I primi anni di attivit di

Manfredo Tafuri. 2003. Tesi di laurea - : IUAV, Veneza, 2003.