The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935--1994) invoked the productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a "project of crisis" ( progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, Marco Biraghi explores Tafuri's multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian's concept of a project of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporary architecture.

Mindful of Tafuri's statement that there is no such thing as criticism, only history, Biraghi carefully maps the influences...