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Jo - Aldo Rossi - Architecture and Memory PDF
Jo - Aldo Rossi - Architecture and Memory PDF
Seungkoo Jo
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.
Introduction
Life is a continuous flow of experience; each act or artifacts, having value in the whole as well as individually
moment of time is preceded by a previous experience as form, in a particular place(Rossi, 1982). The primary
and becomes the threshold for the experience to elements in architecture become the means by which
come(Bacon, 1967). Every historical process is a the city can be understood in terms of its significance.
dialectical one in which one form of life generates its It is the relationships between architectural elements that
opposite. In a city, it is intriguing to see a dialectic of becomes important, not simply the elements themselves.
manifestations of different eras. Thus, buildings, towns Here lies the essence of how to deliver and infuse
and cities are much more than physical artifacts, but also meaning into architecture, and in turn, the city itself.
are reflections and incarnations of human aspiration and The city has always occupied a privileged place in the
ontological meaning. Since a specific architectural form architectonic dream—it is the place where all orders are
and style mainly depend upon the rate and pattern of possible(Agrest, 1991). It is within this set of ordering
human interaction in relation to environment, life- systems that the city takes form, reflective of those
perspectives is deeply rooted in time-perspectives, and respective senses of order and representative of them.
thus our society has dissected humanity and built for One of the conditioning factors which effect an
itself a mirror for its own reflection and architecture architectural intervention is locus. Aldo Rossi (1989)
reflect a society’s views of time and change. identifies locus as a relationship to the specific location.
Would a more severe emphasis on social context in The locus is related to the memory—the memory of the
the built environment from a reality with continuities of society. The remembrance—the ability to reminisce
meanings beneficial to society? Can we justify the selectively and to call to consciousness the significant
singular emphasis of a person or social attributes? Can biography and geography of one’s mind—is at the core
the city have totality of formal allusions and devices from of what makes us human. Through remembrance we
one needs to draw when designing in the city? The can inhabit the imagination with a symbolic environment
experience of the city is what permits the discovery of extending far beyond the spatial and temporal limitations
these elements, and identification of them as urban of individual existence. The development of
remembrance was not simply an inner mental event. It
*Contact Author: Seungkoo Jo, Professor, Tongmyong University required the creation of artifices—language, ritual, and
of Information Technology, #535 Yong-dang Dong, Nam Gu, artifacts.
Busan, Korea Few theorists have investigated the formal nature of
Tel: +82 (051) 610-8582 Fax: +82 (051) 610-8579 the city as extensively as Aldo Rossi has. Rossi described
e-mail: skjo@tmic.tit.ac.kr the city as an artifact that possesses its own history. This
(Received November 8, 2002 ; accepted February 21, 2003 ) artifact leaves traces of its history; these traces embody
Conclusions
Architecture is a part of the social history of man,
and as such, can be associated with events, places,
people, and ideals. With this association, time and space
is infused into the medium of memory. An object, place,
or event can become a richer experience for all who
participate with it. Time and space can exist in a single
architectonic structure in which past memories are
Fig. 1. Modena Cemetery
integrated, interpreted, and modified through new eyes,
or in a adjacent structure in which meaning is reinforced
In relation to the recovery of typology, Moneo by the contradiction.
mentions Modena cemetery: death is in this way To Rossi, architectonic structure can be always
incorporated in the graveyard, to an artificial social reinterpreted, for in this world there seems to be no longer
milieu whose meaning is found in ritual(Moneo, 1981). any universal truths, but rather a constant reinterpretation
Rossi performed the operations of dislocation of place of memory, the continuous juxtaposition of the fragments
and dissolution of scale on type-form to evoke new from one to other fragments, the constant alteration of
meanings from his own suggested readings. The typology which invests the monument with its ability to
columbaria which enclosed the cemetery were overscaled hold a discourse with the city. The memory represents a
for a prominence and for a dramatic sense of closure. highly personal confrontation with the city, and the built
This insistence on built form to house the dead brought form is an incredible example of how our lived
to full objectification Rossi’s underlying analogy of the experience in the city can be in one way a memory
cemetery as a house for the dead. Rossi employed the building. Rossi employed memory as a valuable means,
type that was well-established in the collective Italian a starting point for creating architectonic structure rich
memory and was in fact represented as a paradigm in with meaning and rich with potential which exploits
the adjacent Costa Cemetery. The analogical operation thinking, reading, and responding. The validity of Rossi
upon this type involved an allusion to the house as a today, is about the use of type and memory as an
microcosm of the city, hardly a new concept. Rossi instrument for operating in a city, offering tremendous
developed the Modena enclosed, complete, and interpretative flexibility, and allows the architecture to
autonomous in a relational manner by analogical read as a poem within our collective imagination. His
reference. The intervention of an urban artifact in the ability to modify the context and the system that the built
larger urban scale is an analogous process acting through environment reflects, is revealed in his projects and
typology, and thereby memory, with which Rossi writings, and his autonomous architecture, in addition,
transcended from as merely archaeological artifact and is expressed in the development of a typology of
brought the “process of architecture into the realm of relationships between architecture and the city.
the psychological, transforming both subject and object
(Rossi, 1982).”