Aldo Rossi: Representing Life

The first surprising quality of the book is the deep understanding that the American historian and theorist Diane Ghirardo shows towards an enigmatic and quintessentially European architect like Aldo Rossi. Perhaps more than others, Rossi organically reinterpreted the values of the second half of the twentieth century, and not only used them as the foundation of his architecture but, following on the steps of a few “masters” and along with some colleagues, inaugurated a theoretical reflection similar to the one undertaken by other important figures of the past in periods of crisis. Two core issues, both deply embedded in the European and particularly Italian culture, constantly emerge in the work of Aldo Rossi. Diane Ghirardo enlightens them with particular precision and clarity: the relationship with history, a part of Europeans’ own genetic heritage, and with the city, and the cities of history of which everyone is inevitably heir and continuator. The European modern age started in the eighteenth century, when cities developed along and around their Roman, Medieval and Renaissance cores. Italian architects grow and develop their works within such issues, implicitly inherent in their culture – they necessarily confront and address them in their work. At the same time, the relationships with history and the cities are also, I believe, the grounds on which European culture most deeply diverges from American culture that, if anything, appropriated them through education. In this respect, Ghirardo’s ability to understand, supported by her explicit and full concurrence with Aldo Rossi’s idea of architecture, is as admirable as the ocean that separates Old and New world is vast.