1. PIONEERS OF POST -MODERN ARCHITECTURE
“ALDO ROSSI”
History of Architecture –IV, AP-224
Ar. Seema Sharma
Assistant Prof. SOA, DTC
Pervious lecture:
• Works & Philosophies' Of BV Doshi
• Works & Philosophies' Of Charles Correa
Topic Covered in this Lecture:
• Works & Philosophies of Aldo Rossi
3. • Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of
achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and
product design.
• Rossi was born in Milan, Italy on May 3, 1931. In 1949 he started studying architecture at
the Politecnico di Milano where he graduated in 1959. Already in 1955 he started writing for
the Casabella, an architectural magazine, where he became editor between 1959 –1964.
• Aldo Rossi died in a car accident on September 4, 1997 in Milan.
• His book “L‘Architettura Della Città”, “The Architecture of the City” was published 1966.
• Starting in 1975, Aldo Rossi taught at the faculty of architecture in Venice and in the
following years he also held lectures regularly at several major American universities.
• In 1983, Rossi was nominated Managing Director of the Department of Architecture for the
Biennale di Venezia. Aldo Rossi has won many awards for his research in both architecture
and industrial design.
• In 1990, he won the The Pritzker Prize
• In 1992, he was given the 1991 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture as well as the
“Campione D‘Italia” Nel Mondo prize. Aldo Rossi died the 4th of September in Milan in
1996.
ALDO ROSSI (May 3, 1931 – September 4, 1997)
4. HIS PHILOSOPHY…
• Rossi’s design theory evolved from a wide range of influences: from architect and theorist
Adolf Loos, to early Italian modernism, to surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico.
• His book, L’architettura della città (The Architecture of the City), is to this day considered a
pioneering work in urban theory. The book argues that architects should be sensitive to
urban/cultural context, making use of historical design precedent rather than trying to
reinvent typologies. Rossi held that the city remembers its past through monuments. This
position is called neonationalist, since it updates the ideas of the Italian rationalist
architects of the 1920s and ’30s, who also favored a limited range of building types.
• In his book, A Scientific Autobiography, he describes an auto accident that occurred in 1971
as being a turning point in his life, ending his youth, and inspiring a project for the San
Cataldo Cemetery at Modena. It was while he was recuperating in a hospital that he began
thinking of cities as great encampments of the living, and cemeteries as cities of the dead.
• He engages in a determined search for essential forms based on what is referred to as
“repetition and fixation.” Aldo Rossi attempts to recover the “immovable elements of
architecture,” not as empty catalogs of forms but as a search for an ageless originality found
in formal types.
5. • He argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of
particular interest are urban artefacts that withstand the passage of time. Despite the
modern movement polemics against monuments, for example.
• He held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that
is, monuments give structure to the city.
• He engages in a determined search for essential forms based on what is
referred to as “repetition and fixation.” Aldo Rossi attempts to recover
the “immovable elements of architecture,” not as empty catalogs of
forms but as a search for an ageless originality found in formal types.
• Inspired by the urban landscapes of Italian painters Mario Sironi and
Giorgio Morandi, Aldo Rossi produces haunting images in which his
buildings and others in the city shrink.
6. PRODUCT DESIGN…
• In the 1980s Rossi designed stainless steel cafetieres(coffee press)and other products for
Alessi, Pirelli and others.
Stainless steel kettle Il Conico, 1986 Aldo Rossi La Cupola Espresso
Maker 1988, produced by
7. EXHIBITS…
• For the Venice Biennale in 1979 Rossi designed a floating Teatro del Mondo that seated 250
people.
• For the Venice Biennale in 1984, he designed a triumphal arch at the entrance to the
exhibition site.
8. Teatro del Mondo -Venice Italy,
1979-80
• Built earthily on the edge of the water, it is a light floating octagon theatre.
• Its structure expresses the solid certainty of inert matter, against the fluid, watery agitation
of life around.
• Determined to survive in memory the way its masonry withstands time, and it hides its
timeless monumentality behind a casual conjunction of schematic pieces bordering on the
picturesque in the coloristic cube of the seaside tavern.
• The mineral impassivity of its geometry is what freezes its forms in a still landscape.
• The idea was to recall the floating theatres which were so characteristic of Venice and its
carnivals in the 18th century
9. • He often employed archetypal forms in an attempt to re-establish a connection with the collective
memory of the urban environment.
• The form includes a conical dome, and a composition of basic geometry, often seen in all his designs
• Simplified architectural elements give a sense of longing.
• volumes – cube, cylinder, and prism – and their elemental identities as towers, columns, … out of
his theoretical base came designs that seem always to be a part of the city fabric, rather than an
intrusion
Teatro del Mondo -Venice Italy,
1979-80
10. HIS WORKS…
San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena,
Italy
• Located in Modena,Italy
• The building was built in 1971
• He fused ideas from the Costa and Jewish cemeteries of the 19th century to design his
cemetery for a competition with Gianni Braghieri in 1972, winning the competition.
• Rossi took fragments of formal composition found within these cemeteries and transformed or
reduced specific elements to represent them in his own plan. Rossi uses a bounding wall to
define an axis and break down the rectangle into a series of zones.
• The Rossian cemetery has no roof, floors, windows or doors; instead it is only a shell with
openings. Some of the openings are for light, others for views, access, and even containment of
cremated bodies.
• Many do not hold this building in high esteem, as they find it depressing or ugly. But Rossi
has found a way to make architecture metaphysical; the visitor is inevitably confronted with
13. • The Teatro Carlo Felice is the principal Opera House of Genoa, Italy, used for performances of
opera, ballet, orchestral music, and recitals. It is located on the The first stone of the building
was laid on 19 march 1826 Piazza De Ferrari
• The inaugural performance of Bellini's Bianca E Fernando took place on April 7, 1828, even
though the structure and decoration were not quite finished.
• It was damaged during the Second World War by incendiary bombs and an attack by British
Warships. Additional damage was caused by looters Reconstruction plans began immediately
after the war's close. The first design by Paolo Antonio Chessa (1951) was rejected; the second
by Carlo Scarpa was approved in 1977 but brought to a halt by his untimely death.
• Aldo Rossi ultimately provided today's design, in which portions of the original facade have
been recreated but the interior is entirely modern. The hall officially reopened in June 1991,
with a main hall holding up to 2,000 seats and a smaller auditorium holding up to 200 seats.
Teatro Carlo
Felice
15. • The museum was founded in 1884 as the historical and archaeological museum of the Dutch
province of Limburg.
• The name Bonnefanten Museum is derived from the French 'bons enfants' ('good children'),
the popular name of a former convent that housed the museum from 1951 until 1978.
• In 1995, the museum moved to its present location, a former industrial site named
'Céramique'. The new building was designed by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi. With its
rocket-shaped cupola overlooking the river Maas, it is one of Maastricht's most prominent
modern buildings.
• Since 1999, the museum has become exclusively an art museum. The historical and
archaeological collections were housed elsewhere. The museum is largely funded by the
province of Limburg.
Bonnefanten
Museum
17. • Built from 1996-1998
• The Story that Rossi wanted to tell was based on the idea of transition
• The architectural ensemble-consisting of an eight- storey brick wing and a six-storey stone-clad
cube resting on a wide balustrade base – marks the transition between land and sea, creating a
pivotal point of reference between the railway station and a ferry dock that connects the
island of Moji with the Japanese Mainland
Mojiko
Hotel
19. • Quartier Schützenstrasse consists of a classical Friedrichstadt block defined by the
Schützenstrasse, Markgrafenstrasse, Zimmerstrasse, and Charlottenstrasse.
• Aldo Rossi used the historical urban structure of the division of land into small plots as his
concept.
• The individualized houses signal individual plots but the total number of facades exceeds the
number of houses standing independently of each other. While two of the buildings are reserved
exclusively for residential apartments the rest provide for a mixture of residential and commercial
use. It is a collage of icons and archetypes with several obvious references to other Rossi buildings
as well as historical references, for example, Schützenstrasse 8 is a copy of the courtyard facade of
the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, built in 1516 by Antonio Sangallo, that was modified by
Michelangelo. The court yard facade copies three of the centre line of windows of the Palazzo
Farnese.
• The plan, inspired by the building blocks of 19th century Berlin, is organized around two large
and two small interior courtyards that fill the block with light. The intense colorfulness, inspired
by the colors of antique architecture, tie the block together and draws attention to the allotment
structure, which distinguishes the individual houses. Rossi used particular colors for particular
facade materials; the more "artificial" the material, the more "vivid" the color.
Gallaratese Quarter II, Milano,
Italy
22. • Located in the city of Milan, the Gallaratese II housing complex has the capacity to house
2400 inhabitants.
• Aldo Rossi designed the complex at the 'Gallaratese Quarter II' to be a self- contained
village which was even dubbed a 'Palais social' by its tenants.
• Built between 1953 and 1955
• Rossi's building, by contrast, is entirely repetitive and white
Monte Amiata
Complex
24. • It was a more livelier building and more
to do with existence and nurturing of
life.
•Cast in rough cement and composed of
the parts of an ancient coffin, its
roof-shaped lid having slid off and come
to rest on a stump of a column and a thin
access.
•Design also shows recessed windows
with cornices.
•Flat roof with conical tower tops
Sudliche Friedrichstadt Housing Complex, 1981, Berlin, Germany
26. •Built in 1987 in Japan
•Built in Post-Modern style in an urban context
•Comprises mainly of brick masonry with expressed steel lintels
•Reinterpretation of classical orders again with cornices and
recessed windows.
•Flat roof, Squarish plan and red in color (like the Ossuary in San
Catalado)
Floor Plan
Section Detail
Hotel IL Palazzo, Fukuoka,
Japan
28. Casa Aurora, Headquarters, 1884,
Italy
• Use of corner columns and design of entrance from within.
• Blank façade at entrance
• Red façade-exposed brick
• Use of various geometries in the same complex
• Octagon block (Teatro del Mondo)
• Portico (Casa Aurora)
• Tower (San Catalado)
• Triangular skylights (Berlin Housing)
• Square design with recessions (Centro Torri Centre)
30. • This was his last architectural project.
• The whole area measures 67,00 mc. He was asked to create
a district with shops, offices and apartments.
• This project has been based on three main elements: the
green open space of the hills, the hierarchy among
residences and offices, and finally the reference to, not the
copying of, Venetian Architecture.
• The idea is that the entire district is constructed with local
materials.
• Semi circular and triangular roof top
• Use of cornices and columned portico
• Recessed windows
Ca’ di cozzi, Verona,
Italy
Section Elevation
Sketches by
Rossi
View
32. • It was built in 1989.
• The walls are clad with corrugated metal, which contrasts
the two 26ft tall doric columns.
• Behind this grand portico is the stucco facade, framed by
two brick fin walls.
• Inside are two floors of open display space. It is built to
stand for only three years.
• A semi circular roof also seen in his earlier works like
Bonnafanten Museum and cultural centre in Milanti
Art Gallery Fukuoka, 1989,
Japan
Entrance, The
Doric Columns
Stairwel The gallery in its Vie
