Given the rupture of modernist autonomy project and the exhaustion of the deconstructivist debate in the 1980s, there is now the production of a contemporary architecture indifferent to the critical dialogue of the discipline and more concerned about the possibilities of design and construction in spectacular and self-indulgent buildings. In this context, the conception of critical autonomy of the architecture’ by Peter Eisenman appears as a voice of resistance to the historical cultural impositions of space and power. Starting from the idea of insideness of architecture’ the author proposes a critical autonomy of paradoxical character, which points to both the interior and tradition of the discipline and it unfolds beyond its limits. The approach to this subject depends on an updated reading of the architect’s work which leads us to the recognition - since his first projects and writings - of his critical strategies regarding the autonomy of architecture and its rasion d etre.