NEO- RATIONALISM IN EUROPE

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
SEMESTER 6

LECTURE 12
•Refers to an architectural current which mostly
developed from Italy in the 1920s-1930s.
• Vitruvius had already established in his work De
Architectural that architecture is a science that can

INTRODUCTION
be comprehended rationally.
•This formulation was taken up and further
developed in the architectural treatises of
the Renaissance. Progressive art theory of the
18th-century opposed the Baroque use of
illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and
reason.
•Twentieth-century rationalism derived less from
a special, unified theoretical work than from a
common belief that the most varied problems
posed by the real world could be resolved by
reason
•In that respect it represented a reaction
to historicism and a contrast to Art Nouveau and
Expressionism.
• Practitioners include Carlo Aymonino (1926-

ARCHITECTS OF THIS
2010), Aldo Rossi (1931–97), and Giorgio
Grassi. The Italian design magazine Casabella
featured the work of these architects and
theorists.
• Rossi's book  The Architecture of the City
published in 1982, explored several of the ideas Aldo Rossi

PERIOD
that inform Neo-rationalism.
• Architects such as Leon Krier, Maurice Culot,
and Demetri Porphyries took Rossi's ideas to
their logical conclusion with a revival of
Classical Architecture and Traditional Urbanism
.
• In Germany, Oswald Mathias Unger's became
the leading practitioner of German rationalism Maurice Culot
from the mid-1960s. Unger's influenced a
younger generation of German architects,
including Hans Kollhoff, Max Dudler,
and Christoph Mäckler.

 Leon Krier
TEATRO DEL MONDO

ALDO ROSSI
3D Model
QUARTIER SCHUTZENSTRASSE

ALDO ROSSI
QUARTIER SCHUTZENSTRASSE
MODENA CEMETERY

The ‘house of dead’

is made more

ALDO ROSSI
haunting because it is
given a flat top (no
roof) and voided
windows- as if it had
burned.
MODENA CEMETERY
DICKES HOUSE, LUXEMBOURG

ROB KRIER
DICKES HOUSE, LUXEMBOURG
RITTERSTRASSE APARTMENTS

ROB KRIER
HOUSE AT VIGANELLO, TICINO, SWITZERLAND

MARIO BOTTA
OFFICE BUILDING, LUGANO, SWITZERLAND

MARIO BOTTA
FRANKFURT FAIR HALL & GALLERIA

OM UNGERS
ECHTERNACH PROJECT

LEON KRIER
LA VILETTE COMPETITION

LEON KRIER