Autonomous Architecture, Postmodernism and Álvaro Siza

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, several authors—drawing, whether directly or indirectly, upon the aesthetic legacy of Immanuel Kant—sought to bring architecture closer to the realm of “pure” art. They advanced the view that architecture constitutes an autonomous discipline, governed by an internal logic independent of practical function or social circumstance. This conception of autonomy left a lasting imprint on architectural theory, particularly from the 1960s onwards, when its translation into architectural practice revealed enduring tensions between the freedom of form and the constraints of material and social reality. In the following decade, autonomy emerged as one of the defining themes of postmodern discourse, as various thinkers radicalised the notion by proposing a self-referential architecture—one that explored the inner logic of space and form as an autonomous system of meaning. Yet this Kantian understanding of architectural autonomy did not remain without its critics. Theorists such as Peter Bürger and Manfredo Tafuri argued that the idea of absolute autonomy is, in itself, an illusion, for architecture is unavoidably enmeshed in economic, political, and social contexts. This article argues that the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza occupied a singular position within the architectural culture of those years, participating in the debates on autonomy that, at the time, animated the postmodern controversy led by figures such as Colin Rowe in the United States and Manfredo Tafuri in Europe. It is a debate that, even today, continues to define the essential question of architecture’s role and its ethical responsibility.