The scales of Aldo Rossi

Central Image: Aldo Rossi, sketch | tumblr.com

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) constitutes a very distinctive figure in the history of design and architecture. He brings about a unique lesson on reason, sentiment and revision but also almost unexpectedly shocking consistency. He started with his book The Architecture of the City (1966), where he attempted to establish an independent and logical scientific field for architecture, and, after going through the shock of rationality and efficiency of America -like all of us-, he ended up writing A Scientific Autobiography, trying at this point to describe design and synthesis through his more personal stories, recollections, senses and moods to give us the bigger picture of the subject he dedicated his time to.

Aldo Rossi | designbest.com

A Scientific Autobiography | divisare.com

He was clearly a modernist at heart - for who could design a monotonous building of two hundred meters like the Gallaratese of Milan, if not a devoted modernist?- but he is generally categorised as one of the main representatives of European post-modernism. That’s quite possibly because he deals with the correlation between history and collective memory and expression, being a true intellectual descendant of Brunelleschi and Palladio. It’s particularly interesting that in the Architecture School of the Politecnico di Milano he was generally told that he is not fit for the field; he was a relatively bad student and ended up creating forms that merged architecture and design. He uses the form at its best, guided by a platonic perfection so that the same forms sometimes become buildings and other times coffeemakers. Besides, if something works well, it probably works well on all scales.

Galaratesse, Milan | inessabinenbaum.com

What is meant here is that when Rossi designs objects or furniture he applies the same design vocabulary that he uses in architecture. Using the same reasoning as his Italian designer counterpart Ernesto Rogers, who strove to design from spoons to whole cities, Aldo Rossi effortlessly switched from big-scale to small-scale designs, contemplating on them and with them, creating, in the end, “objects of affection”. Breaking free and enriching his relatively frigid platonic forms, he drew from memories and travels and places he favoured -like in the Elba cabins- cathedral cupolas and memorials, architectural crowns, the vocabulary of ancient architectures - towers, drums, columns and windows- and, of course, his favourite triangles, pyramids, cones and spheres. Thus, the immortal coffee pots La Cupola and La Conica were created among the products of Alessi.

La Cupola | pinimg.com

La Conica | hivemodern.com

He created tabletop urbanities with his design objects that constituted habitable constructions, with clear interiors and exteriors meant to be experienced, and the interchange of the user, coffee or human being, didn’t affect the final form. The title of the 1986 Milan Triennale, directed by Mario Bellini, ''The Domestic Project'' reveals the mass appeal that industrial design had -and still has- in Italy. In the exhibition, 26 designers and artists participate, interpreting the archetypes of a residency in the modern era. In Rossi’s display in the exhibition, the water kettle and coffeemakers are oversized and placed on a huge shelf: that’s how he chose to interpret the idea of a living space, where the objects are symbolic parts of the stage where man moves around, contributing to the creation of the plot of existence.

Aldo Rossi, sketch | molteni.it