ABSTRACT
Can architecture today play a role in confronting the reactive nihilism engulfing contemporary society? Can it think through Nietzsche’s active nihilism to what Badiou calls a necessary ‘rupture of the traditional figure of the bond, un-binding as a form of being of all that pretends to be of the bond’? To the extent that it is Project-less and lacks an ‘emancipatory hypothesis’, the answer, in either case, must be an emphatic No. In order to possess such a Project, architecture would have to display the aspect of authenticity that only comes from its being conditional to an ‘emancipatory hypothesis’, the same hypothesis whose failure and repetition is necessary today. The chapter strongly argues that politically, ethically, historically and philosophically, the architectural project today lacks these necessary conditions for its reenactment. And because architecture does not have a program to confront passive nihilism it is condemned to reproduce it.
