Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, ‘The question of autonomy in architecture’

Firm believers in the idea of the ‘autonomy of architecture’1 see architecture as having its own problems and way of thinking. They conceive it as determined by purely formal norms and assume that such norms are the only suitable criteria for judging the quality of buildings. Sociological, economic, political, and technological concerns are taken as necessary evils that must be tamed, compromised, or exploited by the designer to be able to concentrate on the central problem of architecture, which is form.