Aldo Rossi (1931–1997)

This is one of about a handful of highly influential, must-have books on architecture and urbanism from the second half of the 20th century (I'd lump it with Learning from Las Vegas, A Pattern Language, and Delirious New York, at the very least). It was required reading in architecture school, but for some reason I got rid of my copy before or shortly after graduation, only to buy a used copy a few years ago to make sure I have the indispensable book in my library. Originally published in 1966 as L'architettura della città, with the first printing in American English coming in 1982, Rossi's book argues for the relevance of urban artifacts and the importance of history, among other anti-modernist positions that found form in some of Rossi's buildings, particularly the Rebuilding of the Carlo Felice Theatre in Genoa and the large mixed-use project in Perugia. Of course, when I think of Rossi, his Teatro del Mondo and the cemetery in Modena — two highly unique projects that can only be born from some sort of rich analysis of the city, one that sees its ephemeral pieces as important and its places for the dead on par with the places for the living — come to mind. This book did not influence me as much as his A Scientific Autobiography, but given its broader influence I'm more apt to reread this one again ... something I really need to do all these years later.… (mehr)

In my fourth year of architecture, I spent one semester in Italy, at a study center in a Tuscan hill town. My classmates and I took a lot of field trips — day trips in Tuscany (San Gimignano, Siena, Pienza, Montepulciano, etc.) or longer trips to Rome and Venice — but we also had design studios and other classes. In other words, it wasn't all fun, travel and cheap wine ($1 for a bottle of red at the restaurant just up the hill). One of the classes was a seminar in which we read Aldo Rossi's A Scientific Autobiography, a book that has lingered in my head since. On some days we talked together inside, but on others we headed out into the courtyard or the nearby piazza, the last a particularly fitting place to discuss Rossi, an Italian architect known for his thoughts on memory and the city. This being 1995, Rossi was in much more favor with our professor than us students, since we preferred Tschumi, Libeskind, Hadid and other now-famous architects. But Rossi's personal and meandering book is something I found appealing — now and then. It is full of short and long paragraphs that can be detached from the text and analyzed at length, and that is how we read the book, both as a group and individually in our notebooks. It is one of those books that all architects and students of architecture should read, hopefully before they turn 30 (those who read it will know what I mean).… (mehr)