Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) achieved success as a theorist, writer, artist, teacher and architect, not only in his native Italy, but also abroad. The famous critic and historian Vincent Scully compared him to the artist-architect Le Corbusier. Ada Louise Huckstable, an architectural critic and member of the Pritzker Prize commission, described Rossi as "a poet who turned out to be an architect."
Biography
Rossi was born in Milan, Italy, where his father was engaged in the production of bicycles. This business, he said, was founded by his grandfather. As an adult during the Second World War, Rossi received his early education on Lake Como, and then in Lecco. Shortly after the end of the war, he entered the Polytechnic University of Milan with an architect degree in 1959. Rossi was the editor of the architectural magazine Casabella from 1955 to 1964.
Architectural projects
Although his early aspirations for cinema gradually shifted to architecture, he still retained a strong interest in drama. He himself said: "In all my architecture, I always conveyed the charm of the theater." For the Venice Biennale in 1979, he designed the Teatro del Mondo, a floating theater, built jointly by the theater and architectural commissions of the Biennale.
Rossi described the project as "the place where architecture ended and the world of imagination began." One of his last projects was the main building for Genoa, the Carlo Felice Theater, which is the National Opera House. In Canada, the first Rossi project in the Western Hemisphere was completed in 1987 when the Lighthouse Theater in Toronto was built on the shores of Lake Ontario.
In his book, Scientific Autobiography, he describes a car accident that occurred in 1971 as a turning point in his life, the end of his youth and an inspiring project for a cemetery in Modena. While he was recovering in the hospital, he began to think of cities as great living camps, and cemeteries as dead cities. Aldo Rossi's project for the cemetery in San Cataldo received the first prize in the competition in 1971.
Residential Construction
Almost at the same time, the first residential complex of Aldo Rossi was being built on the outskirts of Milan. Called Gallaratese (1969-1973), in structure it is actually two buildings separated by a narrow gap. Rossi said of this project: "I believe that it is important, first of all, because of the simplicity of its design, which allows it to be repeated." Since then, he has developed a range of housing solutions, from individual to apartment buildings and hotels.
The Pocono Pines House in Pocono, PA, is one of its first completed buildings in the United States. In Galveston (Texas) completed a monumental arch for the city. In Coral Gables, Florida, the University of Miami commissioned Aldo Rossi to develop a new school of architecture.
Other housing projects include a residential building in the Berlin-Tiergarten area in West Germany and another project called Sudlice Friedrichstadt (1981 - 1988). In Italy there have been numerous residency projects. His hotel and restaurant complex Il Palazzo in Fukuoka, Japan, built in 1989, is the implementation of his other residential solution.
