A challenging and polemical argument about the Autonomia movement in Italy, a group of Italian intellectuals who produced a powerful and rigorous critique of capitalism and work in the 1960s and '70s, and its intersections with two of the most radical architectural-urban theorists of the day: Aldo Rossi and Archizoom. A part of the FORuM Project Publication series published in association with the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, The Project of Autonomy introduces English-speaking readers to major figures like Mario Tronti and Raniero Panzieri who have previously been little known here, especially in an architectural context; and draws on siginficant new source material, including recent interviews by the author and un-translated material. The book includes beautiful illustrations related to the context of these intellectual and architectural movements, with reproductions of rare publications of the 1960s as well as seminal projects and exhibitions.

In this work, architect and educator Pier Vittorio Aureli traces the influence of autonomia on architectural thinking. Aureli examines how post-1968 political events and a rethinking of Marxist theory by intellectuals like Mario Tronti influenced a variety of that era's architectural projects and writings.