
Why is Aldo Rossi so famous?
When you look at Aldo Rossi’s work, His product design through to his architecture, you see a passion for heritage but a nod to the future that is distinctly his own. Born in Milan (1931-1997), he is considered by many to be the greatest Italian architect of the second half of the 20th century.
What influenced Alessi Rossi's design?
Aldo Rossi La Cupola Espresso Maker 1988, produced by Alessi. His earliest works of the 1960s were mostly theoretical and displayed a simultaneous influence of 1920s Italian modernism (see Giuseppe Terragni), classicist influences of Viennese architect Adolf Loos, and the reflections of the painter Giorgio de Chirico.
What did Giuseppe Rossi do for architecture?
From 1971 until 1975, Rossi served as the chair of architectural design at the science and technology school ETH in Zurich. In 1973, he was the director of the International Architecture Section at the XV Triennale di Milano (Milan Triennial) Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Architecture.
What is the MAXXI Museum in Rome doing for Aldo Rossi?
While Molteni & C celebrates the furniture design of Aldo Rossi, MAXXI Museum pays tribute to the postmodernist architect through a series of sketches, photographs and models, on show in Rome until 17 October 2021 Conceived in 1991 by Aldo Rossi and Luca Meda, the ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase was inspired by a building Rossi had designed in Perugia.

Who is Aldo Rossi?
Full Article. Aldo Rossi, (born May 3, 1931, Milan, Italy—died September 4, 1997, Milan), Italian architect and theoretician who advocated the use of a limited range of building types and concern for the context in which a building is constructed. This postmodern approach, known as neorationalism, represents a reinvigoration of austere classicism.
What was Rossi's most famous design?
Rossi gained international attention at the Venice Biennale in 1979 when he designed the Teatro del Mondo, a floating theatre. The wood-clad structure, featuring an octagonal tower, recalled the Venetian tradition of floating theatres and, Rossi believed, tapped into the collective architectural memory of the city.
Why was Rossi considered a postmodernist?
Rossi was also sometimes classified simply as a postmodernist because he rejected aspects of Modernism and utilized aspects of historical styles. The complex nature of Rossi’s ideas meant that throughout the 1960s and ’70s he was more a theoretician and teacher than an architect of built works.
What is Rossi's postmodern approach?
This postmodern approach, known as neorationalism, represents a reinvigoration of austere classicism. In addition to his built work, he is known for his writings, numerous drawings and paintings, and designs for furniture and other objects. Rossi received a degree in architecture from the Milan Polytechnic in 1959.
What was Rossi's first work?
Among Rossi’s first works to be built was his winning competition design (with Gianni Braghieri) for the Cemetery of San Cataldo (1971–84) in Modena , Italy. Rossi’s design for the sanctuary of the cemetery, a heavy cube standing on square pillars with raw square windows carved out in symmetrical layers, stripped architecture down to its essence. While in some ways reminiscent of Greek and Renaissance models, it had a severity and total lack of ornamentation that made it of its time. Reflecting in many elements the style of local factories, the building also fit into its context. Rossi’s Gallaratese housing scheme (1969–73) in Milan is an enormous concrete structure built to house 2,400 people. Its design, like that of the cemetery, utilized simple primary forms and repetitive elements in the facade. The structure’s uniformity and timelessness again made it fit within, rather than detract from, the urban fabric. Rossi gained international attention at the Venice Biennale in 1979 when he designed the Teatro del Mondo, a floating theatre. The wood-clad structure, featuring an octagonal tower, recalled the Venetian tradition of floating theatres and, Rossi believed, tapped into the collective architectural memory of the city.
What is Rossi's modern city?
To Rossi the modern city is an “artifact” of these architectural constants. Rather than disrupt this fabric with shockingly new, individualistic architecture, Rossi maintained that architects must respect the context of a city and its architecture and tap into these common types.
Where did Rossi get his degree?
Rossi received a degree in architecture from the Milan Polytechnic in 1959. He began a nine-year collaboration with the Italian architectural magazine Casabella-Continuità in 1955, and in 1959 he opened an architectural office in Milan. During the early 1960s he began his lifelong career as a teacher, working for a time at the Polytechnic of Milan and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice (IUAV).
Who influenced Aldo Rossi?
Through Aldo Rossi's drawings and paintings, we can see how he has been greatly influenced by the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico for being able to explore the mysteries of remembrance . Both are also able to create a metaphysical and dreamlike atmosphere by creating very simple paintings with very complex underlying meanings.
Why does Aldo Rossi admire Adolf Loos?
Both of them want to capture the reality of their works by avoiding the use of ornaments (Adolf Loos wrote "Ornament and Crime") and emphasizing on the relationship between architecture and the society whilst maintaining historical and traditional values. Aldo Rossi also admires Loos for his concept of having reason behind everything he does with his projects.
Who was the architect who helped revive the Italian Modernist movement?
Aldo Rossi also shows his admiration for the Italian architect Giuseppe Terragni who worked under the Fascist (opposite to Nazism) regime and also pioneered the Italian Modernist movement under rationalism. Like Aldo Rossi, Terragni wanted to revive the classical and vernacular traditions of Italian culture but Rossi was more successful in doing this because he was "operating through memory rather than ideology" .
What was Aldo Rossi's most famous project?
During the 1960s, Rossi’s professional career was dedicated almost entirely to architectural theory, but it took a different direction in 1970 when he designed, for Carlo Aymonino, an important part of the Monte Amiata housing complex in the Gallaratese quarter of Milan, and, independently, when he designed part of the San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena, Italy (1971-1984). The Cataldo Cemetery is one of Aldo Rossi’s larger-scale projects, and is considered one of the first and most important postmodern buildings in the world. In 1979, Rossi designed a more discrete, but equally important work for the Venice Biennale: the floating Teatro del Mondo, an homage to 18th-century Venice. Regarding the Teatro del Mondo, Rossi said “ The theater, in which the architecture serves as a possible background, a setting, a building that can be calculated and transformed into the measurements and concrete materials of an often elusive feeling, has been one of my passions.”
Where did Aldo Rossi teach?
In 1975, Aldo Rossi returned to Italy to teach architectural composition in Venice. Rossi’s work as an architectural theorist and urban designer is best exemplified in two of his books: The Architecture of the City ( L’architettura della città, 1966) and A Scientific Autobiography ( Autobiografia Scientifica, 1981).
What book did Rossi write about the city?
These were topics that Rossi himself had focused as a main concern in his books The Architecture of the City and A Scientific Autobiography. In 1987, The House of Architecture in Moscow organizes a solo exposition, and Rossi wins the international prize La Villet in Paris.
Where is Aldo Rossi's retrospective?
On December 17, 2020, the MAXXI museum (Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo) in Rome opened a major retrospective, Aldo Rossi. The Architect and the Cities.
Who is Aldo Rossi?
Aldo Rossi (born May 3, 1931, Milan, Italy–died September 4, 1997, Milan, Italy) was an Italian designer and architect who achieved international recognition as a theorist, author, artist, teacher, designer, and architect. Rossi was the first Italian architect to receive the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1990.
Who was the president of the Venice Architecture Biennale?
Aldo Rossi’s Exhibitions. Aldo Rossi was selected by the then Venice Biennale Architettura (Venice Architecture Biennale) president Paolo Portoghesi to direct the Venice Architecture Biennale on two different occasions.
What is the idea of Aldo Rossi?
Aldo Rossi starts from a personal interpretation of Boullè’s architecture, in which he finds the roots of what he calls “exalted rationalism”. And then, using the concept of “autonomous architecture” postulated by Kauffmann and concerning the purification of forms, he elaborates a fundamental concept: the autonomy of architecture.
How to understand Aldo Rossi's architecture?
And for this reason it is hard to distinguish his literary production from the architectural one. Aldo Rossi starts from a personal interpretation of Boullè’s architecture, in which he finds the roots of what he calls “exalted rationalism”. And then, using the concept of “autonomous architecture” postulated by Kauffmann and concerning the purification of forms, he elaborates a fundamental concept: the autonomy of architecture.
What is Aldo Rossi's collage called?
In fact, in the realization, Aldo Rossi shows an absolute subjectivity derived from those primary forms that he could well represent in the collage called “The analogue city”, at the Biennale of Venice in 1976.
What are the main points of Roger's teaching?
The main points that characterize that movement are: Roger’s teaching, the distance from the rigidity of the modern movement, an architecture more open to the complexity of the reality. And also, the undertaking as a guideline an idea of reason that is far away from being mere rationalization and function .
Who was Aldo Rossi?
Aldo Rossi was a great thinker, a critic who could debate about architecture even beyond rational boundaries, a benchmark with which every other critic or designer have had to compare with.
Is Aldo Rossi's architecture theoretical?
He has not been able to translate at his best those thoughts in buildings, being his architecture really theoretical. It is so dense in meaning and of memories from the past, but it is also far away from the people, meant as social collectivity. It is hard to empathize and share those architectures, apart from a deep understanding of the architect that made them. In fact, in the realization, Aldo Rossi shows an absolute subjectivity derived from those primary forms that he could well represent in the collage called “The analogue city”, at the Biennale of Venice in 1976.
What is the meaning of the structure of Aldo Rossi's work?
Its structure expresses the concrete certainty of inert matter against the fluid, watery agitation of life around.
Who is Aldo Rossi?
Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. His theoretical and practical work made him an influential name in the second half of the 20th century. Rossi is considered one of the founders of the Neo-Rationalist movement known as “La Tendenza.” In his Teatro Del Mondo, for the Venice Biennale of 1979, he created his career’s most imaginative building. Ada Louise Huxtable, an architectural critic, described him as “a poet who happens to be an architect.” In this article, we’ll find out the poetic and imaginative side of Aldo Rossi, the Neo-Rationalist architect of Teatro Del Mondo!
How did Aldo Rossi explain the geographical transformation of space?
To explain the geographical transformation of space, Aldo Rossi used Canaletto ‘s perspective plan of Venice as an example. This timeless composition presents three works by Palladio (Ponte di Rialto, the Basilica of Vicenza, and the Palazzo Chiericati). These three Palladian monuments, none of which are actually in Venice (one is a project; the other two are in Vicenza), constitute an analogous Venice. The artist depicts them in one place, giving the impression that he captured the city’s natural landscape. These monuments’ geographical transfer creates a familiar city, which does not really exist. Canaletto placed Palladio’s architecture in a collage and created an image of a Venice that is analogous to the real one.
What is the name of the theater of the world that Aldo Rossi created?
The Theatre of the World “singular building.” Tribute to Aldo Rossi “marking the 30th anniversary of the creation of his Teatro Del Mondo ( Theatre of the World).
What is Aldo Rossi's second book?
In 1981 Rossi published his second book, entitled A Scientific Autobiography. Rossi’s work was based on the rereading of rational models, such as Giuseppe Terragni’s 1920s Italian modern movement and the “logical system” of the works of Boullée, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Adolf Loos. Correlations have also been drawn between Aldo Rossi’s drawings and Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings.
What was Rossi's contribution to La Tendenza's ideology?
Rossi’s contribution to the development of La Tendenza ‘s ideology was crucial. His theoretical thinking greatly influenced the logic of its architects. The introduction to Rossi’s book “The Architecture of the City” summarizes the basic idea of the Neo-Rationalists:
When did Rossi start writing?
He started writing while studying architecture in 1955, and by 1959 he had become the editor of an architectural magazine named Casabella-Continuità and served this post until 1964. Even though Rossi started his professional career as an architect in 1963, he deviated from his current career to the teaching profession serving as an architecture professor at different institutes in Europe and the USA.
What was Aldo Rossi's first project?
It was during that hospital stay that he came up with inspiration for the competition project he was taking part in those days, to build Cemetery of San Cataldo (1971–84) in Modena, Italy. This cemetery won him first prize and is also counted as the very first built project of Aldo Rossi. This time period proved to be quite fruitful for him professionally and another of his project, his first housing complex also embraced the stages of completion. By the end of this project Rossi stated, “I believe it to be significant, above all, because of the simplicity of its construction, which allows it to be repeated.” This project can be regarded as a starting point for his exuberant contributions towards solutions regarding housing problems. Later on he worked on all types of housing from single units to apartment buildings and hotels.
When did Rossi start his career?
Even though Rossi started his professional career as an architect in 1956 but in 1963 he deviated to teaching profession and served as architecture professor at different institutes including the School of Urban Planning in Arezzo, the Institute of Architecture in Venice and Polytechnic University of Milan.
What university did Rossi graduate from?
He graduated from Polytechnic University of Milan in 1959. Rossi was not only a famous architect but he earned a lot of fame as a theorist, author, artist and teacher as well. He started writing while studying architecture in 1955 and by 1959 he had become the editor of an architectural magazine named Casabella-Continuità ...
What is Rossi's design rule?
It is said quite often that initial works of Rossi had this tinge of Italian Modernism in them. An important design rule, valued much by Rossi was repetition . A repetition of basic architectural elements was quite evident in all his designs. He regarded this process as a search for the essential forms.
Where did Aldo Rossi teach?
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 ...
What did Aldo Rossi seek to recover?
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. Some of his designs were heavily inspired by the works of de Chirico and Sironi.
What awards did Aldo Rossi win?
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.u000b Aldo Rossi died the 4th of September in Milan in 1996. Philosophy.
What was Rossi's idea for the city of the dead?
Rossi envisioned for the “city of the dead”- a free standing red ossuary at the entrance in form of a cube; positioned between the two repositories .
What is Rossi's bridge?
Rossi is syncretic, a human bridge between objective history and sublime subjectivity, rational consciousness and the irrational-unconscious, collective and personal memory—a man whose reconciliation of diametrically opposed imperatives finds him, to borrow his words, “somewhere between logic and biography.” Much like his façades and interior spaces, Rossi’s syncretism is deceptively simple
What is Rossi's syncretism?
Much like his façades and interior spaces, Rossi’s syncretism is deceptively simple. Despite the vigour, and, at times, sheer chaos of colour, line and form, they reveal a deliberateness and consistency characteristic of a man developing a code language.
Where was Rossi born?
Rossi was born in Milan the 3rd of May 1931.
What is Rossi's bookcase?
Rossi’s ability to think in big and small scales is clear in furniture designs such as the ‘Piroscafo’ bookcase (the name meaning ‘steamship’ in Italian), conceived in 1991 for Molteni & C, with his friend Luca Meda, who then served as art director of the Italian company. Molteni & C and its sister company, UniFor, are sponsoring the exhibition, and contributed original pieces from its archives as well as creating the museum’s display cases.
What is the exhibition of Rossi?
The exhibition explores Rossi’s extraordinary influence, both practical and theoretical, and particularly of his ideas around urban vitality and renewal. His 1966 masterpiece, The Architecture of the City, is still a canonical text for architects and urban planners. Rossi had a special sense for cities: having experienced the horrifying destruction of the Second World War, he felt a real commitment to rebuilding his country – but applied the same passion and ideas all over the world and in diverse cultural contexts. Ferlenga adds that Rossi had ‘the sensitivity of a poet and the depth of a scholar’.
What is the Piroscafo?
The ‘Piroscafo’ could be regarded as a floating palace in which imagination and fantasy can sail free. Its design, featuring long, unbroken, windowed walls of wood and glass, references the houses on the rocky, windy Atlantic coasts of Portugal and Galicia, which Rossi discovered during one of his trips. The idea of a boat interested the architect, who, in his creations, was keen on abstract associations: a charming object in the middle of the ocean, able to move people and things. Conceived like a building, it becomes host to objects, clothes, displaced memories, dreams and hopes. After 30 years, Molteni & C is now re-editing it in a warm spice colour with eucalyptus interiors.
What is the name of the floating palace that Rossi discovered?
The ‘Piroscafo’ could be regarded as a floating palace in which imagination and fantasy can sail free. Its design, featuring long, unbroken, windowed walls of wood and glass, references the houses on the rocky, windy Atlantic coasts of Portugal and Galicia, which Rossi discovered during one of his trips.
What is the epigram of Rossi?
The epigram appears in the Blue Notebooks, a personal and professional journal Rossi started in the late 1960s. It was a discipline he maintained over three decades, filling 47 volumes, which continue to offer an insight into his unique take on the poetry and practicalities of architecture and a wider creative life.
Where is Aldo Rossi's UBS?
Aldo Rossi’s project model for the UBS office building in Lugano. In 2001, the museum acquired 2,000 graphics and drawings, 1,895 photographs, 11 models and 30 files of documents from his archive for its permanent collection, which now form the backbone of the retrospective. ‘We are proud that such an extensive and comprehensive exhibition is ...
Who was the first Italian architect to win the Pritzker Prize?
In that time, he established a reputation as one of the 20th century’s leading architectural voices, and was the first Italian to win the Pritzker Prize, in 1990. Rossi cut a distinctive figure with his expansive creativity, passion for any kind of talent and virtuosity, and solid belief in the vital role of the architect within society. He had an appreciation for film, theatre and books, which informed his take on architecture and the city as an organic environment. ‘One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city,’ he stated.
