ARLIS/NA Reviews

ISSN 2374-4723 | arlisna.org/arlisna-reviews

The latest in art publishing, reviewed by art information
professionals and published on a bimonthly basis.

Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture

by Diane Y.F. Ghirardo. Yale University Press, May 2019. 280 p. ill. ISBN 9780300234930 (h/c),
$65.00.

Reviewed September 2019 Kathy S. Edwards, Research Librarian, Emery A. Gunnin Architecture
Library, Clemson University, kathye@clemson.edu

In this brilliant revisiting of an iconic architect’s

legacy, the author--a professor of the history
and theory of architecture at the University of
Southern California and an established
authority on Rossi’s work--is on a mission. With
tactical precision, unimpeachable scholarship,
and one tour-de-force formal analysis after
another, she dismantles any lingering critical
misapprehensions of Rossi as a postmodernist,
a Neo-Rationalist, a bloodless formalist--and
sets things straight. Along the way, she names
names and takes no prisoners. The Aldo Rossi
that emerges is a profound theorist and deeply
spiritual humanist whose design genius
transfigured histories and traditions into
architecture that captivates without
constraining and resonates without repressing.

The author’s excavation of her subject’s

motives, architectural references, and design
thinking draws upon his writings and personal papers [particularly The Architecture of the City
(1966), A Scientific Autobiography (1981), and the notebooks he kept throughout his life] along
with his extensive ouevre of sketches, paintings, and graphic illustrations. The book’s real
momentum, however, is the skill, insight, and authority Ghirardo brings to looking at and
talking about the buildings and projects themselves, each time addressing the question “What
did he mean?”

The book’s first chapter is a brief intellectual biography, situating the architect’s professional
emergence in relation to the political and architectural currents of early post-WWII Europe,
beginning with Loos, Schinkel, and Boullée as early influences. Each of the next five chapters

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To
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Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
 ARLIS/NA Reviews
ISSN 2374-4723 | arlisna.org/arlisna-reviews
The latest in art publishing, reviewed by art information
professionals and published on a bimonthly basis.

addresses a specific building type or context within Rossi’s overall body of work: commercial
and other urban-based projects (office buildings, mixed-use blocks, hotels, transit facilities,
shopping mall); monuments; cultural buildings (schools, libraries, museums, municipal
complexes); theaters and stage sets; and cemeteries. The structure of each chapter is similar,
beginning either with an overview of major projects of the type or a singular, exceptional one,
then an exploration of Rossi’s ideas about the type and its themes (drawn from his biography,
writings, and graphic works) and, finally, the specific forms, resources, and precedents he drew
upon in designing each cited project.

In the final chapter, the author challenges Rossi’s critics and delves more deeply into the
intellectual and spiritual underpinnings of his design philosophy, along the way invoking Jung,
Wordsworth, Dante, Palladio, St. Augustine, T. S. Elliot, and more—the list is daunting.

This is a well-designed, high-quality publication, beautifully illustrated with color photographs

of built and unbuilt projects, reproductions of Rossi’s sketches and presentation drawings, and
photographs of specific observed and remembered design elements he transformed into tools
for his creative process. A bibliography, index, and comprehensive chronology of Rossi’s work
(1959 to 1997) complete the book.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To
view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO
Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.