crystal palace
day 10
alexandru cristian beșliu
aldo rossi’s famous “analogous city” panel from 1976 is, in many ways, an academically translated version of the architect’s innermost vital mechanism. in reality, rossi’s “analogous city” is a colossal imaginary instrument, a massive chimerical creature that feeds on everyday objects, rooms, people, buildings and cities with the passion of an industrious collector of things that identifies with the collection itself, a living museum, but also an imaginary theatre with intricate machineries, “the city within” staged as a plausible mirror image of “the city without”.
the most accurate depictions of this vast inventory of familiar things and beloved artefacts are to be found especially throughout the architect’s compulsive sketches; these are genuine postcards from rossi’s “analogous city” that distort the scale and the material essence of things confusing them to one another: the city of milan becomes new york, while the gallaratese seems to be mimicking the twin towers, archaeological fragments amalgamate with demolition debris, buildings appear to be shrinking while coffee pots and bottles become minarets and skyscrapers and finally, the blessing hand of the colossal bronze statue gets confused with aldo rossi’s greetings at the morning coffee, while the zeppelin hovering above the city magically transforms into the architect’s all-observing eye looking back at us from within this fantastic world… dieses ist lange her… ora questo è perduto…
architettura e immagini celesti, aldo rossi, 1974 _1
il caffè del mattino, aldo rossi, 1991 _2
la finestra del poeta a n.y. con la mano del santo lo stesso e altre situazioni, aldo rossi, 1978/1987 _3
le due città, aldo rossi, 1973_4
senza titolo, aldo rossi, 1977_5
studio per un'insula, aldo rossi, 1977_6
studio per un'insula, aldo rossi, 1977_7
studio per l'architecture assassinée, aldo rossi, 1974 _8
dieses ist lange her / ora questo è perduto, aldo rossi, 1975_9
l'architettura assassinata, aldo rossi, 1989_10