OASE 62 is devoted to ‘Autonomous Architecture and the Project of the City’. In the late 1960s, the Italian design collective Tendenza brought the autonomous development of architecture into the limelight. Aldo Rossi and Giorgio Grassi, in particular, formulated the typological forms and basis elements that define the ‘European city’, in order to identify patterns that have proved enduring and can be turned into elements for a new design. Tendenza had a major impact throughout Europe and North America. OASE 62 examines the relevance of Tendenza’s operating practice using the practice model in the Netherlands, Carel Weeber’s Black Madonna. It also offers a contribution to the current discussion on the shelf life of ‘the European city’.