“Aldo Rossi”
Miccah E. Harrison
Architecture Appreciation
Instructor Kivett
October 22, 2011

Aldo Rossi was born on May 3, 1931 in Milan, Italy. His parents were of Italian immigrant descent. When Aldo became of school age he began studying architecture at Politecnico di Milo. While studying at this prestigious school he became an columnist for the magazine “Cassabella” in 1955. In his articles he criticized the architecture of others and how they had a lack of understanding of how architecture has an influence on a city. He wrote for the magazine long after he graduated from the university in 1959. A few years later in 1964 Aldo Rossi became the head editor.
While writing for the magazine Aldo Rossi realized his passion for architecture. His writing were undeniably correct, in which lead him to pursue a career in architecture. Before beginning his masterpieces he felt that one must understand the city and how it is valued long after one has passed away. “Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time” (Aldo Rossi,www.Architecture.uk).
Aldo Rossi worked as an assistant to Ludovico Quaroni and Carlo Aymono before he became a famous architect. These two famous gentlemen help mold him into the fine architect he was later to become. They trained him on how to be able to teach other on the fundamentals of architecture. In 1965, he became an instructor at the School of Architecture in Milan, Italy and later on to instruct at the University of Venice. He felt that it was important to give back to his humble beginnings so he returned home to teach others. A few years later he began gaining fame for his extraordinary work as an instructor that he was promoted to professor and came to the United States to teach. A year later in 1966 Aldo Rossi published his first book, “The Architecture of the City”. His book was translated into seven different languages and was read internationally be millions of readers. Aldo Rossi was a major influence in the Modern Movement. He felt that monuments, buildings, and artworks give structure to a city. In this movement he depicts the rules and forms of a city's construction and how it revolves around architecture. With Aldo Rossi being such a theorist he looked at the wider outlook on a city’s architectural perspective when creating his master pieces.
Aldo Rossi has won many awards and prizes articles and works in both architecture and industrial design. In 1990 Rossi the Pritzker prize and in 1992 he was given the Thomas Jefferson medal. He was also dammed as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts. Even though, Aldo Rossi was a famous architect during the Modern Movement he gave off the impression that he would have rather been an architect critic rather than an architect, I say because Rossi criticized more than he constructed. He wrote many articles that depicted the faults of others rather than create works that reflected how he felt about his surroundings. Indeed, he created many memorable masterpieces and pleased a lot of people with his works, writing seemed to fit him best. The way his articles were arranged showed how he had an eye for faults of others and worked better writing down his thoughts and solutions to how others could fix their architectural faults. However, writing helped Aldo Rossi to become a better architect by allowing him to see how his works influenced others.
Aldo Rossi worked on many works in his him time. He has masterpieces in the Unites States, France, and Germany. My favorite two pieces that he constructed were the Quartier Schützenstrasse and the Carlo Felice Theatre. These two pieces gave him great fame and recognition for his innovations to modernism. The shape and form he used during this era was way ahead of this time.

The Quartier Schützenstrasse was constructed in Berlin, Germany. Rossi worked with Peter and Isolde Kottmair to complete the final project. This building is used as an apartment building and has a few commercial spaces. The use of color was very evident in this building. This building is constructed with colored metal and steel. The colors used suggested that this building was ready for the generations to come. The shades of blue, red, green, and yellow suggested that Rossi was thinking outside the box when he designed his building.
"The urge towards a multiplicity of forms is unmistakable, the efforts beyond variations in color and material impressive.The varying window shapes, the appointment of the attics, the plastic development of the facades through extroverted and reticent sections, through sills and parapet; the sometimes expressly horizontal, other times explicitly vertical division of the mostly axial-symmetric facades; and finally their own, lightly staggered order all contribute to this effect. The great pains Rossi took with the design of his city-within-a-city were only initially devoted to the plausibility of its lots structure. Rather, the "city" was mainly dedicated to what he called a monument, so that it may have sovereignty over its use, just as it is sovereign over its environment"( Mathias Remmele, Bauwelt,Berlin Annual 1997). A day before the grand opening of his beautiful building Aldo Rossi was killed in a car accident.

Pictured above is the Carlo Felice Theatre. It was rebuilt by Aldo Rossi in 1991, because the original structure was badly damaged in a bombing in World War Two. When Rossi was redesigning this building he added more windows to allow more natural light in. However, the old building is still in place and the new updated building was built around it. This building has a lot of stone work which tells that this building has a lot of dead weight. Rossi used “I” beams to support the structure, which was a major modern touch to this building. He also used oversized columns at the entry ways to create illusions of a much more open space. While this building was being constructed Rossi thought bout how it would withstand time and the ever changing aspects of architecture. Until this very day this theater is still being used.