Aldo Rossi: Architecture and Memory

Abstract

Architecture has a long tradition of evoking memory, one that goes beyond the memory of shelter and dwelling. To imagine an architecture of memory is to understand the relationship that can exist between physical reality and mental meanings. Individual memory collects experience about the meaning of typology of fragments within a city. The memory shows a highly personal confrontation with the city, and the built form is an incredible example of how our lived experience in the city can be in one way a memory building. Rossi argues that the city has existed continuously through time as the basis for an attitude of exclusion that limits his formal repertoire to the most architecture of forms. Rossi employed memory as a valuable means, a starting point for creating architectonic structure rich with meaning and rich with potential which exploits thinking, reading, and responding. Based upon Rossi’s projects and writings, this study shows how Rossi elaborated instruments of typology and analogy, and reinterpretation of memory for operating the formal autonomy of architecture and architectural meaning on the city. Finally this paper argues that type can be operated through memory, individual and/ or collective, to convey meaning from the original context to the new site and situation. © 2003, Architectural Institute of Japan. All rights reserved.