Less Is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism by Pier Vittorio Aureli

Author:Pier Vittorio Aureli
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Strelka Press
Published: 2013-08-27T22:00:00+00:00

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Minimal design has evolved precisely from the transformation of the moral imperative of restraint into an easily recognisable aesthetic. The most obvious example is the architecture of John Pawson, whose minimal design ranges from luxury villas and boutiques to a monastery in Novy Dvur, Czech Republic. Made only of white plastered walls and simple shapes, Pawson’s architecture is minimal to the point of inadvertently denouncing itself as cliché. In a hilarious conversation, which is also one the best critiques of minimalist design, a monk living in Pawson’s monastery reveals that the commission came about after one of the monks visited the Calvin Klein store in New York, designed by the British architect. Faced with the spectacle of simplicity, the monk was ecstatic: ‘It was so pure nothing distracted from the product, it was shopping taken to a religious level. Wouldn’t it make a wonderful monastery, we thought, if we replaced Fashion with God?’32

Here we see how easy it is to turn asceticism into a disingenuous caricature. Ascetic restraint is easily interchangeable with marketing, especially in times of recession, when there is a rush to embrace the rhetoric of anti-consumerism and the return to core values. As a counter to the phenomenon of ‘starchitects’ – the architects who participated in the frenzy of architectural spectacle over the last 20 years – many critics invoke the reclusive architect who refuses to participate, who is able to refrain from openly market-driven commissions.

In recent years, the personification of this type of architect has been Peter Zumthor, who coincidentally was awarded the Pritzker Prize only a few months after the beginning of the recession. Often viewed as a quasi-hermit, Zumthor produces architecture with an aura of abstinence. The most blatant example of this caricature of asceticism is his 2011 pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery, a temporary structure for one of the most exclusive sites in London: Kensington Gardens. Both through its name, ‘Hortus Conclusus’, and its arrangement, an open-air garden enclosed by a rectangular wooden gallery, the pavilion was immediately reminiscent of a monastery. One interesting formal aspect was the double enclosing wall with staggered entrances, which meant that visitors wishing to access the garden were forced to walk within the narrow and dark corridor between the two walls. This extremely ritualistic entrance was staged in order to amplify the experience of passing from the ‘profane’ outside to the ‘sacred’ inside. The pastoral setting of the park and the simplicity of the pavilion presented an aura of ‘humility and redemption’ in opposition to the profane restlessness of the city. And yet, as Andrea Phillips noted in a review, the pavilion’s pretended humility was ‘at odds with the speculative machinery of transnational architectural financing that the commission otherwise represents’.33 She concluded that Zumthor’s Pavilion was an ‘austerity pavilion’, representing what she called the ‘pastoral politics’ that capital has embraced in the wake of the recession. These pastoral politics operate by ideologically smothering growing economic and social inequality with images of contemplation and reconciliation with nature. Here

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