NO REFERENCE IS A REFERENCE

Book Review of Non-Referential Architecture, written by Markus Breitschmid and ideated by Valerio Olgiati. Fall 2022.

Oswald Spengler (pg 8), Friedrich Nietzsche (pg 10, 35), Martin Heidegger (pg 19, 74), Robert Venturi Complexity and Contradiction (pg 21, 32), Aldo Rossi (pg 21), Peter Eisenman (pg 21, 79), Bernard Tschumi (pg 21), Peter Zumthor (pg 22), Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (pg 22), Rem Koolhaas (pg 22), Marxism (pg 23), Alberto Giacometti (pg 29, 66), Hal Fos- ter The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture (pg 36), Peter Bürger Theory of the Avant-Garde (pg 36), Zapotec Temple of Mitla, Oaxaca (pg 47, 69), Johann Sebastian Bach (pg 64), Ludwig van Beethoven (pg 64), Immanuel Kant (pg 65, 109), Abbey of Le Thoronet (pg 67, 96), Barnett Newman (pg 75), Francesco Borromini (pg 77), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (pg 77), Frank Ghery (pg 90), Antoni Gaudi (pg 90), Basilica in Apulian city of Ruvo (pg 96), Fatehpur Sikri (pg 97), Aristotle (pg 107), Mark Rothko (pg 109), Gottfried Semper (pg 112).

In a book about non-referentiality, there are a lot of references. Non-Referential Architecture purports to advance past reference, but cannot do so without containing the very thing it wishes to denounce. Valerio Olgiati and Markus Brietschmid’s 141 page pamphlet-sized manifesto contains no footnotes, in- stead, uses these external references as support to explain Non-Referential Architecture; acting as benchmarks in preparation for the departure away from the established cultural order. This list contains philosophers, architects, artists, political theories, books and buildings to construct a crash course in canonical theory and culture before the authors claim “the world is void of commonality.” This list, albeit exclusive and intellectually ostracizing, becomes the groundwork from which they build an argument upon— this is their common world.

Full text available upon request.