Less Is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism

An essay that sets the idea of asceticism against modernist minimalism, arguing that today's austerity chic is a corruption of the real thing.

Aureli traces asceticism from early Christianity through medieval monasteries and examines how the monk's cell became a foundation of private property. He argues that under capitalism minimalism has been aestheticized into lifestyle branding, and he holds that a radical idea of "less" can still be recovered. A passage on Walter Benjamin's modern "barbarian", who starts from nothing and makes a little go a long way, connects the argument to minimally furnished living. Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow, released it in August 2013, first as an ebook; the paperback runs 64 pages.

Aureli is an architect and theorist who teaches at the Architectural Association in London and has been a visiting professor at Yale. His earlier books include The Project of Autonomy (2008) and The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (2011).