Manifesdo Tafuri's Utopia in Relation to the Architecture of Capitalism - Book Report/Review Example

The author has a negative dialectic approach where he uses the Marxian ideals in architecture with relation to the city. There is the pessimistic approach in which history has shown the way modern architecture has failed to integrate the social transformation which remains to be the main architectural tool.The project in this case becomes useless, and the only way to present architecture is through critique. People view Tafuri’s standpoint differently, some of them see the views be driven from radicalism while others argue that they should be analyzed carefully.

Tafuri’s ideas make many people question the nature of the architecture and its relationship with the capital. The proposals by Tafuri were raised three decades ago when the logic of capitalism was different. In the seventies, there were significant events that took place from neo-liberalism, the fall of communism and even the rise of the internet. Analysis of the views by Tafuri will be based on four axes. The main ideas present in Architecture and Utopia include the city as the superstructure, architecture, ideology and capital.

It is valid to say that forty years later Tafuri's ideas are valid in the lens of both the architecture and the metropolis.There is one visible factor that makes it possible to differentiate between the city and the rural place; the architectural density. Architectural density defines whether the place is urbanized or rural, for instance, the wild has no architecture. Cities or urban centers arise from human creation and, therefore; they are the product of an idea2. Cities being the contingent of human creation, as Tafuri argues; they have remained and persisted as the form of organization within the territory.

Cities remain functional to something and using this as a solid argument; they are ways of organizing the movement of people and minimizing logic. Cities are, therefore, functional to the capitalistic logic.