BERNARD RUDOFSKY

This study examines the designed and built architectures, the published works and the theoretical contribution of architect Bernard Rudofsky. Following a chronological order, his complex and multifaceted work is to be considered as one unique reflection on architecture and on the idea of living. Rudofsky is an interior and fashion designer, an essays writer, a columnist and an exhibition curator. He ponders on subjects traditionally excluded from the discipline of architecture and he privileges themes which are to place him right at the margins the academic research world, both in terms of publishing and in terms of exhibition curatorship, addressing, preferably, audiences of laymen rather than those ones made of experts. From a methodological point of view his works imply an examination of the condition and the significance of architecture and the role of the architect. He introduces a scenario much vaster than the traditionally recognised one, in which he brings together not so much different disciplines, but above all the idea of a complex architecture, able to merge varied, different areas normally considered not to belong to architecture itself, such as design, fashion, and domestic way of life, which, to Rudofsky, in a relationship of reciprocal exchange, shape and are all shaped by architecture.