Aldo Rossi’s Transatlantic Cross-fertilization: American ‘Urban Facts’ and Reinvention of Design Methods

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of Aldo Rossi’s encounter with the American context with the tension between architecture as art-object manifestation and architecture as reflection of reality in Rossi’s work, which becomes particularly apparent during the period of his stays in the United States, and the impact that the American “urban facts” had on his experience of architectural objects as objects of affection. Rossi’s encounter with New York is interpreted here as an expression of the ambiguity between the individual and collective dimension of his approach. The comparison of Rossi’s approach with Oswald Mathias Ungers and John Hejduk’s modus operandi is useful for understanding his thought. Rossi shared with Hejduk an interest in individual memory and poetic imagination and with Ungers his concern about collective memory and genius loci. The way Rossi’s concern about individual expression and architecture’s civic effectiveness evolved during his teaching in the United States should be interpreted in conjunction with the transformation of the status of architectural drawings, and the redefining of architecture’s role in the city. Given that for Rossi “[a] knowledge of the city [...] enables us not only to understand architecture better, but also, above all as architects to design it”, it would be thought provoking to examine the impact that his encounter with American urban artefacts, and especially, with Manhattan, had on his compositional process. According to Rossi, “no urban construct in the world equals that of a city like New York”. He underscored that “New York is a city of monuments such as I did not believe could exist” and that his experience of America confirmed his theory in The Architecture of the City. He said to Agrest, in 1979: “in no other city are monuments more present than in New York. They witness the city’s history and underline its personality [...] the city grows, changes, and renews itself around them”. The idea that a city’s knowledge enables new design methods “has never appeared so clearly to” Rossi as when he “saw the city of New York, and above all Manhattan”.