Issue 12
ISSUE
STORY TYPE
AUTHOR
13
BOOK REVIEW
November 25, 2024
A Mind-Body Experience of Architecture, Delivered in a Photo
by Marianela D’Aprile
13
PERSPECTIVE
November 18, 2024
Seeing Chinatown as a Readymade
by Philip Poon
13
PEOPLE
November 11, 2024
The Place of the Handmade Artifact in a Tech-Obsessed Era
by Anne Quito
13
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
November 4, 2024
How a Storied Printmaker Advances the Practice of Architecture
by Diana Budds
12
PEOPLE
October 21, 2024
Sounding Out a Better Way to Build
by Jesse Dorris
12
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
October 7, 2024
What It Means—and What It’s Worth—to Be “Light”
by Julie Lasky
12
PERSPECTIVE
September 23, 2024
Redefining “Iconic” Architecture and Ideals
by Sophie Lovell
12
PERSPECTIVE
September 9, 2024
Surrendering to What Is
by Marianne Krogh
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
August 26, 2024
Sometimes, Democratic Design Doesn’t “Look” Like Anything
by Zach Mortice
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
August 19, 2024
What Does Your Home Say About You?
by Shane Reiner-Roth
11
BOOK REVIEW
August 12, 2024
Is Building Better Cities a Dream Within Reach?
by Michael Webb
11
PEOPLE
August 5, 2024
The Value of Unbuilt Buildings
by George Kafka
11
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
July 29, 2024
Future-Proofing a Home Where Water Is a Focus and a Thread
by Alexandra Lange
11
BOOK REVIEW
July 22, 2024
Modernist Town, U.S.A.
by Ian Volner
11
PEOPLE
July 15, 2024
Buildings That Grow from a Place
by Anthony Paletta
10
URBANISM
June 24, 2024
What We Lose When a Historic Building Is Demolished
by Owen Hatherley
10
PERSPECTIVE
June 17, 2024
We Need More Than Fewer, Better Things
by Deb Chachra
10
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
June 3, 2024
An Ode to Garages
by Charlie Weak
10
PERSPECTIVE
May 28, 2024
In Search of Domestic Kintsugi
by Edwin Heathcote
10
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
May 13, 2024
The Perils of the Landscapes We Make
by Karrie Jacobs
10
PERSPECTIVE
May 6, 2024
Using Simple Tools as a Radical Act of Independence
by Jarrett Fuller
9
PERSPECTIVE
April 29, 2024
Why Can’t I Just Go Home?
by Eva Hagberg
9
PEOPLE
April 22, 2024
Why Did Our Homes Stop Evolving?
by George Kafka
9
ROUNDTABLE
April 8, 2024
Spaces Where the Body Is a Vital Force
by Tiffany Jow
9
BOOK REVIEW
April 1, 2024
Tracing the Agency of Women as Users and Experts of Architecture
by Mimi Zeiger
9
PERSPECTIVE
March 25, 2024
Are You Sitting in a Non-Place?
by Mzwakhe Ndlovu
9
ROUNDTABLE
March 11, 2024
At Home, Connecting in Place
by Marianela D’Aprile
9
PEOPLE
March 4, 2024
VALIE EXPORT’s Tactical Urbanism
by Alissa Walker
8
PERSPECTIVE
February 26, 2024
What the “Whole Earth Catalog” Taught Me About Building Utopias
by Anjulie Rao
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 19, 2024
How a Run-Down District in London Became a Model for Neighborhood Revitalization
by Ellen Peirson
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 12, 2024
In Brooklyn, Housing That Defies the Status Quo
by Gideon Fink Shapiro
8
PERSPECTIVE
February 5, 2024
That “Net-Zero” Home Is Probably Living a Lie
by Fred A. Bernstein
8
PERSPECTIVE
January 22, 2024
The Virtue of Corporate Architecture Firms
by Kate Wagner
8
PERSPECTIVE
January 16, 2024
How Infrastructure Shapes Us
by Deb Chachra
8
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
January 8, 2024
The Defiance of Desire Lines
by Jim Stephenson
7
PEOPLE
December 18, 2023
This House Is Related to You and to Your Nonhuman Relatives
by Sebastián López Cardozo
7
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
December 11, 2023
What’s the Point of the Plus Pool?
by Ian Volner
7
BOOK REVIEW
December 4, 2023
The Extraordinary Link Between Aerobics and Architecture
by Jarrett Fuller
7
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
November 27, 2023
Architecture That Promotes Healing and Fortifies Us for Action
by Kathryn O’Rourke
7
PEOPLE
November 6, 2023
How to Design for Experience
by Diana Budds
7
PEOPLE
October 30, 2023
The Meaty Objects at Marta
by Jonathan Griffin
6
OBJECTS
October 23, 2023
How Oliver Grabes Led Braun Back to Its Roots
by Marianela D’Aprile
6
URBANISM
October 16, 2023
Can Adaptive Reuse Fuel Equitable Revitalization?
by Clayton Page Aldern
6
PERSPECTIVE
October 9, 2023
What’s the Point of a Tiny Home?
by Mimi Zeiger
6
OBJECTS
October 2, 2023
A Book Where Torn-Paper Blobs Convey Big Ideas
by Julie Lasky
6
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
September 24, 2023
The Architecture of Doing Nothing
by Edwin Heathcote
6
BOOK REVIEW
September 18, 2023
What the “Liebes Look” Says About Dorothy Liebes
by Debika Ray
6
PEOPLE
September 11, 2023
Roy McMakin’s Overpowering Simplicity
by Eva Hagberg
6
OBJECTS
September 5, 2023
Minimalism’s Specific Objecthood, Interpreted by Designers of Today
by Glenn Adamson
5
ROUNDTABLE
August 28, 2023
How Joan Jonas and Eiko Otake Navigate Transition
by Siobhan Burke
5
OBJECTS
August 21, 2023
The Future-Proofing Work of Design-Brand Archivists
by Adrian Madlener
5
URBANISM
August 14, 2023
Can a Church Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis?
by Alex Bozikovic
5
PEOPLE
August 7, 2023
In Search of Healing, Helen Cammock Confronts the Past
by Jesse Dorris
5
URBANISM
July 31, 2023
What Dead Malls, Office Parks, and Big-Box Stores Can Do for Housing
by Ian Volner
5
PERSPECTIVE
July 24, 2023
A Righteous Way to Solve “Wicked” Problems
by Susan Yelavich
5
OBJECTS
July 17, 2023
Making a Mess, with a Higher Purpose
by Andrew Russeth
5
ROUNDTABLE
July 10, 2023
How to Emerge from a Starchitect’s Shadow
by Cynthia Rosenfeld
4
PEOPLE
June 26, 2023
There Is No One-Size-Fits-All in Architecture
by Marianela D’Aprile
4
PEOPLE
June 19, 2023
How Time Shapes Amin Taha’s Unconventionally Handsome Buildings
by George Kafka
4
PEOPLE
June 12, 2023
Seeing and Being Seen in JEB’s Radical Archive of Lesbian Photography
by Svetlana Kitto
4
PERSPECTIVE
June 5, 2023
In Built Environments, Planting Where It Matters Most
by Karrie Jacobs
3
PERSPECTIVE
May 30, 2023
On the Home Front, a Latine Aesthetic’s Ordinary Exuberance
by Anjulie Rao
3
PERSPECTIVE
May 21, 2023
For a Selfie (and Enlightenment), Make a Pilgrimage to Bridge No. 3
by Alexandra Lange
3
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
May 8, 2023
The Building Materials of the Future Might Be Growing in Your Backyard
by Marianna Janowicz
3
BOOK REVIEW
May 1, 2023
Moving Beyond the “Fetishisation of the Forest”
by Edwin Heathcote
2
ROUNDTABLE
April 24, 2023
Is Craft Still Synonymous with the Hand?
by Tiffany Jow
2
PEOPLE
April 17, 2023
A Historian Debunks Myths About Lacemaking, On LaceTok and IRL
by Julie Lasky
2
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
April 10, 2023
How AI Helps Architects Design, and Refine, Their Buildings
by Ian Volner
2
PEOPLE
April 3, 2023
Merging Computer and Loom, a Septuagenarian Artist Weaves Her View of the World
by Francesca Perry
1
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
March 27, 2023
Words That Impede Architecture, According to Reinier de Graaf
by Osman Can Yerebakan
1
PEOPLE
March 20, 2023
Painting With Plaster, Monica Curiel Finds a Release
by Andrew Russeth
1
PERSPECTIVE
March 13, 2023
Rules and Roles in Life, Love, and Architecture
by Eva Hagberg
1
Roundtable
March 6, 2023
A Design Movement That Pushes Beyond Architecture’s Limitations
by Tiffany Jow
0
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
February 7, 2023
To Improve the Future of Public Housing, This Architecture Firm Looks to the Past
by Ian Volner
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
The Radical Potential of “Prime Objects”
by Glenn Adamson
0
PEOPLE
February 20, 2023
Xiyadie’s Queer Cosmos
by Xin Wang
0
PEOPLE
February 13, 2023
How Michael J. Love’s Subversive Tap Dancing Steps Forward
by Jesse Dorris
0
SHOW AND TELL
February 7, 2023
Finding Healing and Transformation Through Good Black Art
by Folasade Ologundudu
0
BOOK REVIEW
February 13, 2023
How Stephen Burks “Future-Proofs” Craft
by Francesca Perry
0
ROUNDTABLE
February 27, 2023
Making Use of End Users’ Indispensable Wisdom
by Tiffany Jow
0
PEOPLE
February 7, 2023
The New Lessons Architect Steven Harris Learns from Driving Old Porsches
by Jonathan Schultz
0
PERSPECTIVE
February 7, 2023
The Day Architecture Stopped
by Kate Wagner
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
The Overlooked Potential of Everyday Objects
by Adrian Madlener
0
ROUNDTABLE
February 7, 2023
A Conversation About Generalists, Velocity, and the Source of Innovation
by Tiffany Jow
0
OBJECTS
February 7, 2023
Using a Fungi-Infused Paste, Blast Studio Turns Trash Into Treasure
by Natalia Rachlin
Untapped is published by the design company Henrybuilt.
PEOPLE
08.05.2024
The Value of Unbuilt Buildings

Assessing the quiet influence of Dogma.

Portrait shot of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara standing side-by-side in front of book case.
Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara. (Courtesy Dogma)


“We don’t receive many awards,” says Pier Vittorio Aureli, taking to the lectern at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) alongside Martino Tattara, with whom he founded the architecture practice Dogma, in 2002. Dogma was the recipient of the 2023 RIBA Charles Jencks Award, which is named after the late influential theorist and architect Charles Jencks and that is awarded annually to architects for making a significant contribution to theory and practice in architecture. Alongside a £3,000 (about $3,800) cash prize, the winners are invited to give a lecture.

And a Dogma lecture is a hot ticket. The partners have built almost nothing in their 22 years of practice, yet can pack the institute’s auditorium with thirtysomethings in technical sneakers and trendy workwear, as they did on a rainy evening this past May.

The lecture flows out of them like an impassioned exhale. Rather than a career retrospective that might befit such an awards ceremony, the pair give an in-depth analysis of the urban villa— and its history as a multifamily housing typology—leading to Faux Corbu, their own reinterpretation of a Le Corbusier project, produced for an exhibition in Tunis. Historical research folds seamlessly into Dogma’s design proposal, its technical details (floor plans across six floors, wall and structural core placements) comfortably explained in relation to the building’s social implications (shared spaces that will bring together the villa’s various imagined social groupings). Aureli is full-faced and animated; Tattara, tall and slender, is more nonchalant. He leans back and checks his watch while waiting his turn to pick up the narrative thread. Both speak from memory; there’s not a note in sight.

“Everything we do, we do always together. There has never been a division of labor between us,” Aureli says via video call a week or so after the RIBA lecture. The pair met in Venice in the late 1990s before moving to Rotterdam and later Brussels, where the office is still based.

Today Dogma occupies a peculiar place in the European architecture scene. Its principals are well known and well liked—they are rigorous researchers, politically forthright, and produce projects steeped in architectural history. Yet the vast majority of their work exists in the form of drawings and texts in books, exhibitions, and online. “We never thought, and we don’t think, that Dogma is a paper architecture practice. In our projects, we really think architecture is about building,” Aureli says. “We don’t want to build at all costs, though.”

Digital architectural drawing of Faux Corbu, a prototype for cooperative housing developed by Dogma in 2023.
Faux Corbu, a prototype for cooperative housing developed by Dogma in 2023. (Courtesy Dogma)


If not uncompromising, then Dogma’s approach to architecture might best be understood as unflinchingly critical. All of their dozens of works seem to take seriously the meaning of the word project as in “throw forth”—in the sense that they propose ideas that critique an architectural, urban, or otherwise built status quo. Characteristically precise in his choice of words, Aureli describes this as “a tension with what exists and what goes on,” but is reluctant to describe the practice as explicitly political, citing the limited impact an architect can have on “serious structural problems.”

Housing is the serious structural problem that has most consistently occupied the attention of Dogma, as evinced in projects exploring various housing typologies in considerable depth, including the single room (Loveless, from 2018) and cooperatives (Do you hear me when you sleep?, from 2019), up to megastructures for 16,000 inhabitants (Live Forever/The Return of the Factory, from 2013). That European cities face multiple scales of housing crisis does not need repeating, yet Dogma’s engagement with the specifics of the problem—unaffordability, social isolation, lack of green space—reflects both a respect for residents and the limitations of the role of the architect confronting these concerns.

For example, Do you hear me when you sleep? and Do you see me when we pass? (2019) are collaborations with community land trusts in London and Brussels, respectively. The projects are materially lightweight, with simple engineered timber structures to allow residents to self-build and to accommodate “all the seasons of life”—meaning that they are easy to internally reconfigure according to the needs of various domestic groups. Similarly, Faux Corbu features a communal kitchen and rooftop terrace, as well as generous balconies extending from each floor. All three serve as prototypes, not just as what Dogma’s website describes as “beautiful one-off villas,” but as case studies “towards a more general idea of housing.”

Colorful architectural drawing of Dogma's exterior for the housing prototype Do you see me when we pass?
Exterior for the housing prototype Do you see me when we pass? (2019). (Courtesy Dogma)


What use are these projects, you might ask, if they exist only on paper—if no one can live in them?

There is a considerable gulf between what an architect can imagine and what can be built in an economic system that is market-led but that treats housing as a commodity rather than an inalienable right. And yet Dogma’s persistent, rigorous work may well play a role in narrowing that chasm.

Aureli describes “incredible efforts in the field of housing” over the past five years, naming two Barcelona-based practices—Lacol and H Arquitectes—as ones that have managed to construct exemplary social and sociable housing projects. (Aureli is too humble to claim any direct influence from Dogma on these projects, but it’s not hard to at least see the spirit of Dogma in Lacol’s La Borda or H Arquitectes’ Social housing 1737.)

“It feels good that what we thought ten years ago, which sounded very counterintuitive, now is becoming something which also produces real stuff,” Aureli says. “Ten years ago, even to mention the words ‘public housing’ would put people in a disbelief mode. Now I see politicians, not even radical politicians, considering that commodified housing has been a major failure. So I think we are part of a movement that is a major political change in architecture, and I hope it can be acknowledged as such.”

Back at the RIBA hall, Aureli and Tattara round out their lecture with a Q and A, chuckling about how they were not trying to be influencers and declaring the “importance of protecting students.” Despite their critical stance, Dogma are far from po-faced or solemn. There is a warmth to their approach that can be hidden beneath the surface of their sober project drawings, but that is quickly apparent in their demeanor and their popularity with students. Both Aureli and Tattara have taught extensively and schools are arguably where their influence will have the strongest ripples, even if it is hard to discern.

There may not be many awards and there may not be many buildings, but a look back at Dogma’s career might trace a route for the future of building homes. “The benefit of history is [in] putting things in a continuum,” Aureli told the rapt audience, “giving you a sense of what to do next.”