A Little Miessunderstanding.

When Functional Design Ceased to Function

Abstract

Architectural minimalism emerged as an emancipatory strategy of formal reduction, became universalised through hygienism and functionalism, and was ultimately co-opted by neoliberal rationality as an aesthetic of control, operating as a spatial pedagogy of the universal subject. This article argues that this trajectory culminates when reproduction ceases to be an architectural procedure and becomes instead a form of power capable of homogenising space, naturalising a particular model of dwelling, and reproducing the logics of contemporary capitalism. As long as apparent alternatives remain embedded within the same regime, architecture will continue to reproduce the fiction of universal neutrality rather than responding to the irreducible diversity of those who inhabit it.