Cities as Projects with Pier Vittorio Aureli

What happens when architecture stops trying to solve the city and starts questioning it? 

In this episode, we speak with Pier Vittorio Aureli, architect, educator and co-founder of DOGMA, about the city as a project: a political and architectural proposition rather than simply a physical condition to be managed. DOGMA's work has consistently questioned the relationship between architecture and the city, exploring how specific architectural forms can operate as instruments of critique and political agency. 

From Stop City, a speculative project that proposes a city defined by its limits rather than its image, to the wall, the room, the villa and collective housing, Aureli's work explores the capacity of architecture to establish distinctions within an increasingly continuous process of urbanisation. We discuss the relationship between architectural form and political thought, and the role of drawing, writing and research as critical design methods. 

The conversation turns to the domestic realm and the politics of housing, ownership and property, considering how alternative models of collective living might challenge the conventions of the single-family home. We also reflect on the Australian suburban condition and the possibilities of translating DOGMA's thinking into the context of Melbourne. 

Finally, we consider the tension between architecture as a project and the contemporary city's growing reliance on optimisation, prediction and computation. As urban environments become increasingly shaped by forces beyond the discipline's traditional reach, what capacity does architecture retain to intervene, contest or propose alternatives? 

Pier was in Melbourne for The Future Suburb Symposium and we would like to thank the University of Melbourne, the Melbourne School of Design and Rory Hyde for connecting us with Pier Vittorio Aureli. 

SUP is hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips.  

This podcast is produced with support from the Alastair Swayn Foundation and the RMIT University School of Architecture & Urban Design.

We acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups on whose unceded Country we are recording this podcast.