Chicago, Illinois, USA

On the occasion of the retrospective exhibition “Aldo Rossi: The architect and the cities” at the National Museum of 21st Century Arts (via Guido Reni 4A – 00196 Rome, Italy) open now through May 2021, the editors of GDN publish this interview conducted by Architecture Critic, Christian Narkiewicz-Laine with Aldo Rossi.

In 1980, as architecture critic for The Chicago Sun-Times, I was given an assignment to spend the day with the Italian architect Aldo Rossi who was visiting Chicago for a Graham Foundation lecture. 

At that time, Rossi was one of the most influential architects during the period 1972-1988.  He had achieved international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture.

In 1966 Aldo Rossi published the book The Architecture of the City, which subsequently was translated into several languages and enjoyed enormous international success.

Spurning the then fashionable debates on style, Aldo Rossi instead criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice.

Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that with-stand the passage of time.

Despite the modern movement polemics against monuments, for example. Aldo Rossi held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city.

So, I asked Rossi what he wanted to see in Chicago. There was nothing that sparked his interest or his enthusiasm concerning the “Chicago as a Metropolis of Modern Masterpieces,” except that he asked that I drive him to Oak Park, Illinois to see the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio and other Wright houses in Chicago’s West suburbs.

His disinterest in the vast collection of Chicago’s new looming modernist skyscrapers reminded me of his famous quotation: “I cannot be Postmodern, as I have never been Modern.”

So, we ventured to Chicago’s West side and paid the usual homage to the usual Wrightian monuments all European architects love to venerate. 

Afterward, we stopped and had a lunch where I conducted our interview.

Question: I know that you do not approve of the word monumental to describe your work, but the Fountain at Segrate has a prevailing monumental scale with a mix of classical elements.  Your premise is, however, that this work is influenced by surrealism.  Could you explain?

Rossi: Surrealism has been my interest for many years, but not only in architecture.  My first interest was for surrealist poetry and films, especially the work of André Breton.  It might be that the architecture of surrealism is apart, the other side of reality. It is difficult for American culture to understand.  In Italy, realism is ore clear when you speak of the movies of the neo-realist filmmakers: Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti.  It is more clear than in architecture.  But, there are architects like Ridolfi in Rome and Gardella in Milan who have made an architecture similar to this movement for Italian culture after the demise of fascism.

In that case, your primary interest in architecture is for realism?

Yes, for me, the translation of realism in architecture began with the study of typology.  A typology reflects the real way of life of one people, or one nation.  The type of tower in New York, the single-family house in Northern Europe and America, or the big courtyards of Spain or in the North of Italy are a typology.  It is the interpretation in architecture of the traditional conditions of life.  It is clear in my book, The Architecture of the City, where I researched the structure, the construction, and the architecture of the city. 

But surrealism in art was a movement starting in the study early 1910s and was never manifested in the physical art of architecture.  Though, there were architectonic concepts expressed in the works of Duchamp, Magritte, or the Dadaists; it was limited to painting and sculpture.

It is difficult to explain surrealism in architecture.  In architecture, it is a combination of many different elements; for example, classical or industrial imagery.  Also, it incorporates the technique of drawing and the system of collage.  These are elements that developed within the surrealist movement in both art and poetry.  The use of collage is typical of that methodology.

Yet to me, a surrealist painting or scene appears nihilistic and not suitable for architecture.  It resembles a tragedy—angst in the creative imagination.  It is subject to the subconscious—something that is not real, but beyond.

This might be true, but surrealism is a definite part of my architecture.  For example, in Luis Buñuel’s films, Buñuel shows the reality of the subject, but with a particular eye or from a particular point-of-view.  I think to parallel my work to that of Buñuel’s would be most interesting.  It is not a revival, but the many points of view in the study of realism.  This afternoon, when you mentioned the monumental quality of the Fountain of Segrate.  I meant to say, that this work reflects a completely different context.  It is not a reconstruction of classical ideas.  It is the use of those elements in a very different way.

How does politics fit within the structure of realism?

Politics is a very important process in the making of architecture.  It is not possible to study the city and its architecture without understanding the political aspects of culture and modern life.  It is not possible in Europe or in America to understand the concept of the city without some knowledge of culture and modern life.  It is not possible in Europe or in America to understand the concept of the city without some knowledge of the political changes or transformations.  I think here, like Europe, we have problems with the suburban worker’s housing.  This is a political question.  One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city.

Earlier, we both agreed that Karl Marx was the most critical philosopher in our time.

I think Marxism is a very important concept in modern culture.  Modern culture and the condition of the city would be impossible to understand without studying this leading intellectual of our age.

How does Marxism fit into the context of your work?  Do you create a Marxist architecture?

There is no direct relationship between architecture and Marx, or, for that matter, with any other philosophy.  The relationship, on the other hand, between culture and the architect is very complex.  It is absurd to translate, in a mechanical way, the general concepts of engineering and architecture—in any way or in any camp.  It is so mechanical. I think the culture of modern man is terribly complex.

But, philosophy or ideology does affect architecture.  A perfect example would be Christianity and its spiritual relationship to Gothic architecture.

This is true, but in an indirect way.  Yes, the idea of the church is important in architecture.  That concept, however, changed throughout the centuries with the development of the Romanesque, Gothic, and Byzantine churches.  It seems to me, that architecture is free from the religious idea.  It was, simply, the development of architecture.  It is a big aesthetic problem.  It is very different from the ideology of Catholicism.  The mechanical relationship between ideology and architecture, simply, does not exist.

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