Manfredo Tafuri (

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, 4 November 1935 –

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, 23 February 1994) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Marxist architect, historian, theoretician, critic and academic. He was described by one commentator as the world's most important architectural historian of the second half of the 20th century.''2006 The Assassin: The Critical Legacies of Manfredo Tafuri''
in Radical Philosophy 138 July/August 2006 He is noted for his pointed critiques of the partisan "operative criticism" of previous architectural historians and critics like

Bruno Zevi Bruno Zevi (22 January 1918 – 9 January 2000) was an Italian architect, historian, professor, curator, author, and editor. Zevi was a vocal critic of "classicizing" modern architecture and postmodernism. Early life Zevi was born and died i ...

and

Siegfried Giedion Sigfried Giedion (sometimes misspelled Siegfried Giedion; 14 April 1888, Prague – 10 April 1968, Zürich) was a Bohemian-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture. His ideas and books, ''Space, Time and Architecture'', and ''Mechaniza ...

and for challenging the idea that the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

was a "golden age" as it had been characterised in the work of earlier authorities like

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ar ...

and

Rudolf Wittkower Rudolf Wittkower (22 June 1901 – 11 October 1971) was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, who spent much of his career in London, but was educated in Germany, and later moved to the Unite ...

Career

For Tafuri, architectural history does not follow a teleological scheme in which one language succeeds another in linear sequence. Instead, it is a continuous struggle played out on critical, theoretical and ideological levels as well as through the multiple constraints placed on practice. Since this struggle continues in the present, architectural history is not a dead academic subject, but an open arena for debate. In his view, like other cultural domains, but even more so, due to the tension between its autonomous, artistic character and its technical and functional dimensions, architecture is a field defined and constituted by crisis. Though Tafuri was caught up in the debates of his era, he inserted the task of the architectural historian into a framework combining critical participation and historical distance. Tafuri explored every era of architectural history in the West from the medieval period to the present and made an important contribution to the study of Japanese modern architecture. In the last decade of his career he undertook a comprehensive reassessment of the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture, exploring its various social, intellectual and cultural contexts, while providing a broad understanding of uses of representation that shaped the entire era. His final work, ''Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects'', published in 1992, synthesizes the history of architectural ideas and projects through discussions of the great centres of architectural innovation in Italy (Florence, Rome, and Venice), key patrons from the middle of the fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century, and crucial figures such as

Leon Battista Alberti Leon Battista Alberti (; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. H ...

, Filippo Brunelleschi,

Francesco di Giorgio Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501) was an Italian architect, engineer, painter, sculptor, and writer. As a painter, he belonged to the Sienese School. He was considered a visionary architectural theorist—in Nikolaus Pevsner's terms ...

Lorenzo de' Medici Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (; 1 January 1449 – 8 April 1492) was an Italian statesman, banker, ''de facto'' ruler of the Florentine Republic and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Also known as Lorenzo ...

Bramante Donato Bramante ( , , ; 1444 – 11 April 1514), born as Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio and also known as Bramante Lazzari, was an Italian architect and painter. He introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style ...

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...

Baldassare Castiglione Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico (; 6 December 1478 – 2 February 1529),Dates of birth and death, and cause of the latter, fro, ''Italica'', Rai International online. was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissanc ...

and

Giulio Romano Giulio Romano (, ; – 1 November 1546), is the acquired name of Giulio Pippi, who was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-cent ...

. Tafuri held the position of chair of

architectural history The history of architecture traces the changes in architecture through various traditions, regions, overarching stylistic trends, and dates. The beginnings of all these traditions is thought to be humans satisfying the very basic need of shelt ...

at the

University Iuav of Venice A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. He was a member of the Communist Party.

Books and articles by Tafuri

*''Teorie e storia dell'architettura''. Bari, Laterza, 1968. *:''Theories and History of Architecture''. Translated by Giorgio Verrecchia. London, 1980. *« Per una critica dell'ideologia architettonica ». ''Contropiano, Materiali Marxisti'', no. 1, 1969. *''Progetto e utopia: Architettura e sviluppo capitalistico''. Bari, Laterza, 1973. *: ''Architecture and Utopia. Design and Capitalist Development''. Translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976. *w/

Francesco Dal Co Francesco Dal Co (born 29 December 1945) is an Italian historian of architecture. He graduated in 1970 at the University Iuav of Venice, and has been director of the Department of History of Architecture since 1994. He has been Professor of Hist ...

. ''Architettura contemporanea''. Milan, Electa, 1976. *''La Sfera e il labirinto : Avanguardia e architettura da Piranesi agli anni '70''. Turin, Einaudi, 1980. :''The Sphere and the Labyrinth. Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970's''. Translated by Pellegrino d'Acierno and Robert Connolly. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. * ''Venezia e il Rinascimento''. Turin, Einaudi, 1985. :''Venice and the Renaissance''. Translated by Jessica Levine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. *''History of Italian Architecture, 1944-1985''. Translated by Jessica Levine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1989. *''Ricerca del Rinascimento''. Principi, Citta, Architetti. Torino, Einaudi: 1992. *:''Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects''. Translated with an introduction by Daniel Sherer. New Haven, Cambridge. MA: Yale University Press/Harvard GSD Publications, 2006

Notes

References

* *

*CACCIARI, Massimo. ''Architecture and nihilism: on the philosophy of modern architecture''. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993. * COHEN, Jean-Louis. « La coupure entre architectes et intellectuels, ou les enseignements de l'italophilie ». ''Extenso'', no. 1 (1984), pp. 182–223. *DAY, Gail. ''Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory''. New York, Columbia University Press, 2010. *DE SOLÀ-MORALES, Ignasi (editor). « Being Manfredo Tafuri: Wickedness, Anxiety, Disenchantment ». ''ANY'', no. 25-26 (février 2000). *Special issue of ''Casabella'', no. 619-620 (jan.-feb. 1995). *GINZBURG, Carlo, SAFRAN, Yehuda, SHERER, Daniel. "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg by Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer." Potlatch 5 (2022), special issue on Carlo Ginzburg. *HEYNEN, Hilde. « The Venice School, or the Diagnosis of Negative Thought ». '' Architecture and Modernity: A Critique''. Cambridge, Ma., MIT Press, 1999, pp. 128–148. *HOEKSTRA, Titia Rixt. « Building versus Bildung. Manfredo Tafuri and the construction of a historical discipline ». Ph.D. dissertation, Groningen, University of Groningen, 2005. Online : https://web.archive.org/web/20061009200007/http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/arts/2005/t.r.hoekstra/ *KEYVANIAN, Carla. « Manfredo Tafuri's Notion of History and its Methodological Sources: From Walter Benjamin to Roland Barthes ». MArch dissertation, Cambridge, Ma., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992. *LEACH, Andrew. « Choosing History: A Study of Manfredo Tafuri's Theorisation of Architectural History and Architectural History Research ». Ph.D. dissertation, Gent, Universiteit Gent, 2006. Online : https://web.archive.org/web/20060824225725/http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00003989/ *LEACH, Andrew. ''Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History.'' Ghent, A&S Books, 2007. *LEÓN CASERO, JORGE, El Tiempo del Aion. Una lectura de Manfredo Tafuri como rizotopía de la historia, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, 2012. https://www.academia.edu/2585425/El_Tiempo_del_Aion._Una_lectura_de_Manfredo_Tafuri_como_rizotopia_de_la_historia *LEÓN CASERO, JORGE,“Aion e historiografía en la obra de Manfredo Tafuri”, Daimon. Revista de Filosofía, n. 56, 2012, pp. 173–193. *LEÓN CASERO, JORGE, "Contra Foucault: Interdisciplinariedad y posición estructural del intelectual en el sistema según Manfredo Tafuri”, Undécimo Congreso Internacional sobre Nuevas Tendencias en Humanidades, Universidad de Eötvös Loránd, Budapest, 19 - 21 Junio 2013. https://www.academia.edu/3682762/CONTRA_-_FOUCAULT_Interdisciplinariedad_y_posicion_estructural_del_intelectual_en_el_sistema_segun_Manfredo_Tafuri *LEÓN CASERO, JORGE, "Esquizofrénicos y monomaníacos: Interdisciplinariedad y metodología historiográfica en Manfredo Tafuri”, Primer Congreso Internacional de Jóvenes Investigadores en Humanidades, Barcelona, 18-20 Abril 2012.https://www.academia.edu/2568499/ESQUIZOFRENICOS_Y_MONOMANIACOS._Interdisciplinariedad_y_metodologia_historiografica_en_Manfredo_Tafuri. *BIRAGHI, Marco. ''Progetto di crisi. Manfredo Tafuri e l'architettura contemporanea.'' Milan, Marinotti ed., 2005. *TOURNIKIOTIS, Panayotis. « History as the Critique of Architecture ». ''The Historiography of Modern Architecture''. Cambridge, Ma., MIT Press, 1999. *SHERER, Daniel. "Progetto and Ricerca. Manfredo Tafuri as Critic and Historian," Zodiac 15 (1996), 32-56. *SHERER, Daniel. "Translator's Introduction," to Manfredo TAFURI, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects (New Haven/Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press/Harvard GSD Publications, 2006), trans. by D. SHERER with a Foreword by K. Michael HAYS, pp. xv-xxvi. *SHERER, Daniel. "Un Colloquio Inquietante. Manfredo Tafuri e la critica operativa 1968-1980," in L. Monica, ed. La Critica Operativa e l'architettura (Milan: Unicopli, 2002), 108-20. *SHERER, Daniel. "Architecture in the Labyrinth: Theory and Criticism in the United States, Oppositions, Assemblage, Any, 1973-1999," Zodiac 20 (1999), 36-43. *SHERER, Daniel. "Review of Andrew LEACH, Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History," Journal of Architecture 14, 6 (2009), 731-741. *SHERER, Daniel. "The Architectural Project and the Historical Project: Tensions, Analogies, Discontinuities," Log 31 (2014), 115-132. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tafuri, Manfredo 1935 births 1994 deaths Italian architecture writers Italian architectural historians Architecture academics 20th-century Italian historians 20th-century Italian male writers Writers from Rome Italian male non-fiction writers Italian communists Italian Marxist historians

Career

Books and articles by Tafuri

Notes

References

Further reading