The Architecture of the city written by Aldo Rossi in 1966 reflects a new critique and reactive position to the Modern Movement Functionalist theory as the predominant and wide accepted way to understand the city until that period of time. As Peter Eisenman describes on the editor’s introduction of the book, Rossi was “part of a generation progressively more distanced from the positivism of modern architecture by the collapse of historical time and left drifting into an uncertain present”.1 Acknowledging the different topics that this book covers, this essay focuses on Aldo Rossi’s theory of architecture as a critique to functionalism widely used among architects in the Modern Movement and the introduction of his theories to the American context. In order to question this specific critique and make a more accurate analysis of Rossi’s theory, this essay grasp parts of the book, exposing the intentions of the author and helping to have a critical understanding of how Rossi’s theory operates.
The book is composed of a series of parts, but I will focus on the cover, the editor’s preface, the editor’s introduction (both written by Peter Eisenman), the introduction to the first American Edition (written by Aldo Rossi), the introduction to the theory (Urban Artifacts and a Theory of the City), and parts of the four chapters that relates to the critique of Modern Movement. With the book’s complex structure, we can state that Rossi’s theory is a continuous research, a “collective artifact” itself, as Peter Eisenman states “a singular and parallel record of ideas that Rossi has been developed in both drawing and writing over the last fifteen years” 2. The book is not just a concrete moment in time, in addition, it is a collection of complex layers of information that could be continually developed until today’s contemporary moment. Rossi states that this book works as a continues research and not as a simple confirmation of results. With this statement, he justifies the series of editions of this book and as a collective knowledge presents a new framework for future studies of the city that modern movement had limited.
First, to understand Aldo Rossi’s architectural theory is important to clarify the context of the architecture and how it operates at the time that Rossi practice. In the post-war welfare, Rossi found that architecture was instrumentalized by the pressures of the market, therefore the city had to be built under the production model, meaning at a great speed and in mass construction. The consequence was an architecture design based on repetition and a complete ignoration of the concept of place as a unique form, with its own identity and relation to the context. We can see as an example, the suburban city of Levittown, NY, constructed between the 1947 and 1951. The mass-production model was clear: same houses built together, side by side, following a masterplan that shapes them in the same patron of size, design, and coloring, putting the same distance from each other, fomenting the use of cars and the distance to the crowded city. That was the modern suburbia in the United States. In the case of Europe, he was against of Modern Movement urbanist operations of tabula rasa on the city as an act of elimination of the condense collective memory of the place, for example, Modern Movement urbanist projects as Le Corbusier Plan Voisin for the center of Paris, Ville Radieuse for cities like Antwerp, Moscow, Algiers and Morocco or Kenzo Tange Tokyo bay masterplan.
In this context, Rossi understood the loss of the historical city and its complexity. Because of these, in The Architecture of the City, he puts in value this historical city and the Urban Fabric as a way of structure the city, in which urban artifacts and fabric crisscross each other and continues transforming in its multiples meanings. As consequence, Rossi rejection to the Modern Movement urbanism that proposed an abstract planning of the city, which eliminates the city’s complex Urban Fabric.
According to the text, Aldo Rossi bases its theory principally on individuality, locus, memory, and design itself, rejecting function as one of the characteristics to explain urban artifacts. Moreover, he states that function on urban artifacts can change over time or even a specific function could not exist for a specific urban artifact. As an example, he brings the idea of monuments, a building with no specific function in the city, but an essential element for preserving cities history, art, memory, myth, and rituals, something that the Modern Movement could never explain in its theories. As an example, Rossi claims how in almost all European cities there are large palaces, building complexes, or agglomeration of structures that constitute whole pieces of the city and whose function now is no longer the original one. He develops the idea using the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, “one is struck by the multiplicity of functions that a building of this type can contain over time and how these functions are entirely independent of the form” 3. For Rossi The Roman Forum is the most representative urban artifact: “bound up as it is with the origin of the city; extremely, almost unbelievably, transformed over time but always growing upon itself; parallel to the history of Rome as it is documented in every historical stone and legend” 4. Furthermore, it is the form of the building that impresses us, the one that shapes our experiences and meaning, and from which it structures the city. We can state that for Rossi’s theory unbuild projects are as important as the built ones because they also represent the changes in meanings of urban artifacts through history. Some of the projects that that Rossi references in the book are examples of how a monument can change its meaning over time. One is built and the other is unbuilt. The Roman monument in Arles, France (image 55), originally a theater and amphitheater was transformed and trade to different proprietors and at the same time the structure of the monument has been maintained in the city. The building has changed the meaning but it continues structuring the city (image 57). The other is the unbuilt projects for the Roman Coliseum, the project changes it uses into a forum for a centrally planned church in 1707 (image 58) or another project of Popes Sixtux V that transform the Coliseum into a wool factory with worker’s apartments in it, 1590. (image 60)
Aldo Rossi’s theory main critique was made on Modern Movements functionalism due to its limitations on explaining the city and the complex relation between the meaning of different artifacts and the city, as a result, Modern Movement simplification of the urban artifacts to simple schemes of organizations, diagrams of circulation routes, that results in an architecture without autonomous value. Functionalism has limited the studies of the cities and a deep understanding of architecture, resulting in obvious and superficial classifications: commercial cities, cultural cities, industrial cities, military cities, etc.
According to Aldo Rossi, with a classification of cities based on functionalism, “the permanence of buildings and forms would have no significance, and the very idea of the transmission of a culture, of which the city is an element, would be questionable. None of this corresponds to reality” 5. Here we have to understand Rossi’s context as something that the book presupposes: the possibility of understanding the limitations of functionalism is based on the imposition of these force scheme to cities with history or memory, such as Rossi’s Italy, where function could leave behind deep layer of information, “history as the structure of urban artifacts is affirmed by the continuities that exist in the deepest layers of the urban structure, where certain fundamental characteristics that are common to the entire urban dynamic can be seen” 6. But what is the case in cities without history or memory? What are the roles of multifunction artifacts in the city today? Acknowledging the complexity of cities that Rossi states, a function could be balanced in different cases, contemporary residential cities connected just by car to the city center could be created just for a functional reason without the Urban Fabric that Rossi puts in value. On the other hand, multifunction artifacts can be identified in the cities of today, and how this change the classification of the cities not as a fixed concept and more as a dynamic one. As an example, we have the Atelier Bow-Wow Tokyo’s urban idea of combinational functionalism, where the same building is design by its multiples functions all at the same time, and not by an aesthetic concept.
On one hand, Aldo Rossi recognizes and develops the idea of function as an intrinsic part of the architecture and he identifies it as one more of the complexities and characteristics that shape buildings. On the other hand, he completely rejects the cause and effect relations, and the ingenuous empiricism which holds that “function bring from together”, and themselves constituted urban artifacts and architecture. Moreover, he accepts the validity of functionalism to create an elementary classification of the city but recognizes that function as a simple instrumental fact has its limitation to grasp deeper and more complex understandings of the city. This statement is a direct rejection to the Modern Movement, in which function has created disconnection with the history and memory, looking forward to a more technological and surgical relation to the city, also in this context, Walter Gropius elimination of the history courses in the Bauhaus curriculum. “But in the view of the polemicists of the Modern Movement, this natural time had run out, and in its place succeeded the time of historicism” 7. Aldo Rossi proposes a return to the definition of type. On Rossi’s point of view, the definition of type, first proposed in the Enlightenment, allows an accurate classification of urban artifacts, and ultimately includes the function as part of the complexities. As Rossi states, “The architecture of the city summarizes the city’s form, and from, this form we can consider the city’s problems” 8.
As Aldo Rossi claims, The Architecture of the City is a collective artifact, a work in progress. This is why he presents 3 interpretations of architecture and the city, that challenge the actual functionalism that has had a great influence in the architects around the world with a new and holistic approach that includes sociology, urban geography and imaginary. In contrast to functionalism that breaks the present and the past, these theories are based on a continuous reading of the city and its architecture. First, the social geographer Jean Tricart which include a social content to the city, second the theory of persistence of Marcel Poete as a formal study of city plans, and finally the Enlightenment theory establishing principles of architecture that understands a single element as a part of a system and distinguishes the form as the final manifestation of structure. Is important the influence on Rossi’s theory of Maurice Halbwachs idea of collective memory, “The soul of the city, becomes the city’s history, the sign on the walls of the municipium, the city’s distinctive and definitive character, its memory” 9 and Kevin Lich’s idea of the image of the city and how the city is remembered and read by fragments or elements that our mind compose in a virtual map. Rossi’s objective is to change from a structural way of classification related to the Modern Movement to a dialectical thinking that acknowledges the complexities of cities and architecture.
As a critic of the Modern Movement and the introductions of categories for understanding the city, the use of structuralism has limited and homogenized the understanding of the city itself. Aldo Rossi acknowledges the complexity that the city involves, and he uses dialectical thinking to open the discussion and compare concepts in a way that creates new possibilities of analysis. As an example of this urgency, he repeated the word ‘complex’ in the text 82 times and the word ‘dynamic’ almost 40 times. As the most commons words in the text, we can understand the idea of change, urgency, and shift from something old to something new. Aldo Rossi, identifies the problems of structuralism and classification used by the Modern Movement to understand cities, “the most difficult historical problems of the city are resolved by dividing history into periods and hence ignoring or misunderstanding the universal and permanent character of the forces or the urban dynamics” 10 Here he identifies the importance of using a comparative method, a collective knowledge or a dialectical thinking.
Rossi’s teaching Typology at Venice Universities led him to use a scientific framework base on tendencies that he further develops in his theory of type with the cities. He describes typologies not as a program, not as a function, neither as a layout. For him, it is a formal organization of a building. This formal organization could just be read by comparison with other buildings, creating a family or a typology. Rossi states that this comparison is just allowed by the city or locus as “the relationship between a certain specific location and the building that are in it. It is at once singular and universal” 11 the collective fabric in which the typologies are related. At the same time, he defines in his Theory of Type that, “Type is thus a constant and manifests itself with a character of necessity; but even though it is predetermined, it reacts dialectically with technique, function, and style, as well as with both the collective and the individual moment of the architectural artifacts”.12 This is an example how types are modified dialectically by different elements resulting in many variations of the same theme in the city. Moreover, one typology is not just one building, but one building is just one typology.
This allows the creation of the paradox of the Architecture of the city, in which Rossi, calls for a general reading of the city as an Urban Fabric that collect multiples typologies that are merged together. But at the same time, the reading of the typologies could only be made in isolation of the artifact, they as architectural elements self-contained in its own dimensions and forms, as monuments with its own architectural characteristics. This is transformed into a new argument against Modern Movement urbanism, in which he states that the modern city could never exist, just because the city is always based on a previous and existent urban fabric, with social relations, preexisting buildings, and history that relate them and work as its structure merging them together. This is connected again with Kevin Lich idea of reading the city, in which Rossi changes the reading of buildings from authors or styles as in Modern Movements to a reading as a collective memory based in typologies.
What issues The Architecture of the City leaves behind? The connection between Rossi’s architectural theory and a design strategy’s that incorporates its theory is not mentioned in the book. We can read Rossi’s architectural projects as an exaggeration of the typological aspect of architecture, leaving behind this premise all other aspects. Examples are the Gallaratese Quarter in Milano 1972 and San Cataldo Cemetery 1971. The connection from the theory of The Architecture of the City and Rossi’s design methodology could be presented in Rossi’s Citta Analoga 1976. Created after The Architecture of the City, the Citta Analoga is a collage of different existent references composed together as a non-plan. Preexisting elements that had dimensions, forms, and different scales are merged with the existent city. This is a critic of the abstract Modern Movements masterplans and his non-plan transform his projects into a real manifestation of form based on examples.
In relation to the structure of the book, the first interaction that the audience has with the book is the cover image. Eisenman in his introduction mentions the image on the cover of the last edition, the fourth Italian edition of Aldo Rossi’s L’ Architectura della città, that showed a horizontal section of the Mausoleum of Hadrian in the Castel Sant’ Angelo in Rome. He explains that this image summarizes in a condensed form not only the ambivalent nature of Rossi’s work, but also the idea of city which this book proposes. “first, in terms of the spiral as a mausoleum, as representing a symbolic place of death, in this case -even if unconsciously on his part- that of humanism; and at the same time, in terms of the spiral as labyrinth, as representing a place of transformation”. In relation to the cover of this English edition, a wooden armature for the construction of vaults, from “Principj di Architettura Civile” Francesco Milizia in 1932, we can ask, what concept or ideas this image transmits? If this book is a critique of the Modern Movement, why is this bridge similar to the image of Pont de Garabit, designed by Eiffel that appears in the first chapter of Towards a new Architecture of Le Corbusier? The difference between the edition’s cover is quite relevant, despite this, the English edition cover is not referred in the book, so we must interpret its meaning. This could be a reference to the book as a continues process of construction, an artifact itself with past, present, and future. As we can see in the book, images are fundamental for Rossi’s theory development. First, the images display through the book are an important part of the theory that Rossi transmits, because all of them are tied to the text as a reflection of architecture and the city, based in his research through history. Second, Rossi doesn’t include any of this own build project or any image related to the stylistics or esthetic representation of his theory. All of them, ancient monuments or artifacts in the city, for example, the already mentioned Roman monuments in Arles, France or the project for the transformation of the Coliseum in Rome. We can understand this as a reaction to the futuristic images of the radical Italian movements groups of the same period. Superstudio, Archizoom, Zzoggurat, Ufo and 9999 that were born in 1966 in Florence and were proposing a new theory based on technology and a post-urban context. As a contrast with the international style, where images of buildings were displayed as models, transforming what originally was a theory to a style. Rossi’s statement with the selection of images in the Architecture of the City is that theory is independent of any design method. We can assume that this is part of his rejection of the International Style where projects are displayed as objects and models to follow. We could state that Rossi’s theory could be read as incomplete on the idea, on how the theory could be transformed into a design method, giving no answer to this in the book. Finally, only a few images in the introduction to the first American edition are from America, all the rest are European historical references. That shows that the original intention of the book is given by the European context, and the American introduction is a forced way to achieve new audiences in a new geographical context.
We can assume that Peter Eisenman’s first intention in the preface was to introduce the tradition of architecture writers in Italy, as an entry point to this book. The long story of Italian treatise from the Renaissance, Vitruvius, Alberti, Serlio, and Palladio to the nineteenth-century writers gives Aldo Rossi and the Architecture of the city a justification based on the architectural theories tradition. Furthermore, Eisenman gives us a socio-political context where the first Italian edition was originally written in 1966. Based on Aldo Rossi’s lectures and notes, this book reflected the critical context of Italy between 1960 and 1969, where students discontent was generalized against the Modern Movement’s position for the city. Rossi’s theory gives to this agitated audience a new framework post-Modern Movement, and persuade architects and architecture students, into a new way of thinking the city. One thing to consider in this explanation is that the text isolates Italy social movements of a broader context. We have to consider that this was part of a global social discontent in Europe, especially Paris in which a general student and workers protest reaches its climax in May 1968.
The difference between the European and the American context at the time the English edition was released in 1984, generate the question of the importance of this theory in that socio and geopolitical moment. Had the English edition lost the urgency that the first edition had? Is not a coincidence that a strategic preface and introduction were written by Peter Eisenman, edition by Kenneth Frampton and the back cover written by Mary McLeod, all of them, American architects from the academia. Having well-known architects validating Rossi’s theory opens the door for a new debate in America at a time that the original urgency already was lost. The overall intention of this part of the book, the preface and the introduction, is a collective effort to make Rossi’s theory accepted in the American context, and transmit to the readers, quoting Mark Wiggly a “good, good, good” to Rossi’s theory and a “bad, bad, bad” to the old Modern Movement. Moreover, we can assume the importance of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and their magazine Opposition funded by the Museum of Modern Art and Princeton University, for the production of ideas connected to the context of the time. In which both, Peter Eisenman and Aldo Rossi where involve, and as result of this relation, the publication of The Architecture of the City in the English version.
Rossi’s first edition of the book was originally written in Italian in 1966, with notes and parts of Rossi’s lectures, and translated in English in 1984 by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman, long after its first publication. Furthermore, according to Eisenman’s introduction, the book the “The Architecture of the City” is not a literal transcription of the original text “Architettura della città ”. With the objective to provide the same style and flavor of the original, the translation has removed the repetitive passages which were part of the original text. This editorial decision opens a series of questions, does the elimination of the repetitive passages had modified the sense of importance and urgency to what Aldo Rossi states? Has the text become flatter losing part of its original intentions? The editor’s intention to give more relevance to the clarity and simplicity over
the original translation into this English edition ultimately has affected the original idea and narrative. With the elimination of the intentional repetitive passages of the original book, the sense of urgency and intentionality of Rossi’s text has been lost. In this sense, we have to be aware of this through the reading of the book.
Rossi wrote a new introduction to this first American edition, in which he states the importance of this book to the United States context. This is based on two arguments that let him apply the Architecture of the city to American cities. First, Rossi discovers that the American architecture is composed of primary elements, monuments, and parts. Second, the application of style in the American cities is influenced by the European cities. He presents this edition as a paradox, as a rediscovery of the American city and countryside, and as result, the confirmation of the concepts in the book. At the time the first edition was written, the interest of Rossi’s concept to American city was null. We can see in the text a new interest, and a justification of preexisting concepts to a new location. Aldo Rossi states “America is by now an ‘old’ country full of monuments and traditions, or because in America the city of parts is a historic and dynamic reality”13. We can argue that at the time the first edition was written, American cities were old enough to be an interesting point of study of this theory, but in 1966, the real focus of the social conflicts were in Europe, and this transforms the argument in just a justification for a new application of this theory to the new American audience.
The argument of an intersection of Europe and the American cities, and the creation of the “Analog City”, as Aldo Rossi states “cities with unexpected meaning, as unexpected as the meaning of the style and orders that have been applied to it” 14. An example of this is Adolf Loos project for the Chicago Tribune competition, an enormous Doric column, is the synthesis of the distorting effects of scale and application of style in an American framework. Aldo Rossi is giving us a framework of the Architecture of the City to the American context, which generates assumptions that we could argue. On the one hand, Rossi’s argument acknowledges the complexities of cities, and on the other, he presents basic examples of the influences of Europe in America, such as he states “Spanish corral and the patio in Latin America, and the English country house in the United States” 15. So, isn’t this a simplification in the understanding of American cities? Is it not an elimination of the complexities between monuments, history, external influences, geography, climate, economic and migrations between others that creates the urban fabrics of the American cities? We could agree that the influences that Aldo Rossi identifies are correct, but at the same time, these relations are too limited to the real complexities that he defines.
Another critique to Aldo Rossi’s argument is the use of the term America as the United States and America as a continent as an interchangeable concept creating confusion to the reader. For example, on one side his talks about the United States: “America… for this country I have decided to write a special introduction” 16. On the other side, referring to the continent, as: “the American house has maintained two fundamental European typologies: The Spanish corral and patio in Latin America, and the English country house in the United States”17. This could be a problem of mistranslation of the English edition or evidence that this book was translated just for the United States’ audience, leaving behind the other countries in America.
In conclusion, in this book, we can find a double objective. On one hand, is Aldo Rossi’s theories of the Architecture of the city that rejects the functionalism of the Modern Movement. Also, he understands the complexities of the cities using his Theory of Types as the connection to history and a dialectical way of thinking of cities and architecture. On the other hand, Peter Eisenman and Kenneth Frampton, as Editors of the book and members of The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, intended to connect Aldo Rossi’s theory with America, giving a sense of urgency that the actual context of the theory had been lost because of time. But if the Architecture of the City as Rossi declares, is a continuous process of research, which are the applications of the Architecture of the city today? Can we use Rossi’s theories for architectural design or his theories are just a way to understand the complexities of the city? We can identify the isolation and individualism of the actual towers, as a parallel to the Modern Movement clinical intervention of the city, now based on their verticality. How we can return to understand the complexities of the city, that privatization and capitalism have hidden? Self-named public buildings that isolate themselves and open their doors just to their best customers. This is why I think that The Architecture of the City is relevant today, not as a treaty of style, fashion, or beauty but as a way to understand the complexities of our contemporary cities, and a challenge for architects to work with the city as found. We just need to find the parallels.
1 Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City; introduction by Peter Eisenman; translation by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman; revised for the American edition by Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1982. pp. 03.
2 Ibid. pp. 01. 3 Ibid pp. 29. 4 Ibid pp. 120. 5 Ibid. pp. 47. 6 Ibid. pp. 128. 7 Ibid. pp. 03. 8 Ibid. pp. 29. 9 Ibid pp. 130. 10 Ibid. pp. 27. 11 Ibid. pp. 103. 12 Ibid. pp. 41. 13 Ibid. pp. 13. 14 Ibid. pp. 15.
15 Ibid. pp. 13. 16 Ibid. pp. 13. 17 Ibid. pp. 13.
Bibliography
Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City; introduction by Peter Eisenman; translation by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman ; revised for the American edition by Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1982.