Tafuri sees the history of urban design during the capitalist epoch as a series of individual and symbolic statements about society. Materials and ideas were rapidly produced as new kinds of buildings replaced old, used-up ones, and the architect became the speculative businessman. The architect of the modern period came to link building to a technology whose goal (ideology) was to create “progressive” forms using continually new and continually replaceable materials. The grid made it possible continually to erect and dismantle buildings without destroying the order or functioning of the city. In the American city, absolute liberty is granted to the single architectural fragment, but this fragment is situated in a context that it does not condition formally: the secondary elements of the city are given maximum articulation, while the laws governing the whole are rigidly maintained. IN BOTH THE MODERN AMERICAN and the modern European city historical roots are replaced by an abstract neutral grid that situates architectural forms within the urban fabric.Īccording to the European critic Manfredo Tafuri, it was the grid structure that rationalized and controlled the pattern of economic investment and building(s)-which were forced toward rational, self-contained, fragmentary forms within the overall grid.
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