“The Architecture of the City”

• First published as
L’architettura della citta
in 1966
• Proposes a return to
reason & logic, history
& memory, & the city
• The city must be valued
as a construction over
time
 Themes
• Critique of Functionalism and
Modernism’s utilitarian basis
• Autonomous monuments and the
permanence of form
• A city of fragments, a city of monuments
• The memory structure of the city
Permanence of Form
Palazzo della Ragione
Padua, Italy
• A City Hall from the
1200’s, converted
into a marketplace
• Form is permanent
and complex
• Form can be
adapted to new
uses
• Not “form follows
function”
 Project for the Coliseum
Rome, Italy
• Project to transform the
Coliseum into a forum for a
centrally planned church
• Proposed by Carlo Fontana,
1707
• Unrealized
• Maintains the idea that existing
artifacts can be adapted for new
uses
• “Whereas the Functionalist
seeks the greatest possible
suitability to the most specific
purpose, the Rationalist desires
to obtain the greatest potential
of adaptation to the largest
number of needs”
Type and Elemental Forms
 Teatro del Mondo
Venice Biennale 1979-80
• “Theatre of the World”
• Simple, unornamented
forms
• Recalls floating theatres
characteristic of Venice
in the 18th century
• Based on Rossi’s
childhood memory of a
puppet theatre
Type and Memory
• Reminiscent of
De Chirico
• The city composed of
recognizable types
• Types allow people to
connect through
collective memory
• Autonomous forms as
archetypes
• Form follows memory
Fagnano Olona Primary
School, Italy 1972-76
• A “little city”
• The idea of theatre in the central space
• Large stair sets up view with class portrait in mind
• Rossi alludes to the time of childhood, as a memory
 Time
• The presence of clocks indicates an event is over
• Roland Barthes saw this fixation in photography
• Like De Chirico’s paintings, Rossi’s architecture
possesses a haunting, melancholy quality
San Cataldo Cemetery
Modena, Italy 1971
• Rossi won the competition
for the project of extending
the existing cemetery
• A city for the dead
• Strips detail
• Unbound by the constraints
of time
• Here he subverts the
corridor “type” to reflect on
the silence and loneliness
of death
• Ossuary building’s absence
of windows marks the
absence of inhabitants
Memory Structure of the City
• Nolli Map of
Rome, 1748
• The city designed
as links from one
monument to the
next
• Mimics how our
memories work
• Monuments and
memory are
fundamental to
the city structure
Conclusion
• The city and its
architecture are
inseparable
• Permanence of form
• Type and elemental
forms
• Type and memory
• Time
• Memory structure of the
city
“The architect masters meaning and, through it, he is
able to enter into the process of society’s transformation”