THE

ARCHITECTURE
OF THE CITY

ALDO ROSSI
 INTRODUCTION
 “The Architecture of the
City” was first published at
the time when
functionalism
predominated over form
i.e. 1966.
 In this book Rossi puts
forward an idea to rethink
architecture with the
respect to the city as a
meaning of collective life,
history and reality instead
of just a functional aspect.
 His works are considered to
be starting a new
movement – Neo
Regionalism in 1960s.
 CHAPTER ONE
THE STRUCTURE OF URBAN ARTIFECTS
• In this chapter Rossi states the form of the
city is determined by the architecture of the
city
• It is the architecture of the city which is the
concrete data of real experiences through
out time and it is this data that allows him
to approaches the city’s problems.
• He divides the architecture of the city in 2
categories:
1. Gigantic man-made object growing over
time.
2. Urban artefacts having their history and
form.
• Both this aspects relate to the quality and
uniqueness of the urban artefacts.
• For example, Pallazo Della Ragione in Padua
whose form shapes the city regardless of the
functional aspect.
• The urban artifact as a work of art intimately relates to a specific place, event and
form in the city.
• According to Rossi , functionalists overlook various aspects, except for function.
For Rossi, the city is a totality, in other words, all urban artifacts and the city are
a collective.
• Hence, concerning the urban artifact in its totality gives us a complete picture of
the city. 
• He also mentions permanence and classifies it into two sections :
1. Historical or propelling permanence
2. Pathological permanence.
• According to him, persistence changes urban artifacts into monuments, which
take part in the process of a city’s development as a catalyst.
• Conclusion: Rossi underlines that the value of the city and the urban artifact is
estimable not by their functions but by their permanent forms, since the form of
the city is closely bound up with time of the city, while the functions are
changeable and can be lost over time.
CHAPTER TWO
 PRIMARY ELEMENTS AND THE
CONCEPT OF AREA
• According to Rossi there are
specific and different qualities
within parts of a city due to its
sociological, formal, and spatial
characteristics that are formed
by time and space. 
• Proper understanding of a part of
the city could be derived from
overall aspects such as
psychology, linguistics,
geography, history and their
relationships.
• Rossi describes the dwelling area
due to its close relationship with
urban structure.
• For example, the change of
Berlin’s urban structure was as a
result of police regulations and
the segmentation of dwelling
types.
• Rossi refers to the urban elements collectively as
“primary elements”.
• Primary elements not only participate in the process
of a city’s development in a permanent way, but
also constitute physical structures of the city along
with area.
• Rossi supports his opinion by a practical example:
the amphitheater in Nimes changed into a fortress
then became a little city.
• A city develops according to the dynamics within urban elements and it can be
analyzed by its form.
• There is an unbreakable connection between the urban history and its geography
since entire parts of the city specifically indicate their own form, their own way of life
and the trace of their memories, and in turn it raises the concept of the locus.
• Conclusion: All the cities have their own individuality, derived from a specific
destiny and a life of each urban artifact, and furthermore urban artifacts and
primary elements participate in the process of evolution of the city.
 CHAPTER THREE
 THE INDIVIDUALITY OF URBAN ARTIFACTS; ARCHITECTURE
• According to Rossi, the locus is a relationship
between a certain location and the buildings
within it.
• The entire urban artifact acquires its singularity
from its locus
• The author describes the difference between the
architecture and urban artifact as the former
constitutes new urban artifacts and its form
presents the urban form when the architecture
coincides with the actual situation of the city.
• The difference between them depends on its
meaning, reason, style and history with regard
to the connection between the event and sign at
a particular moment
• For example the Roman Forum ,though its
functions have changed many times according to
social demands, its primary characteristics as a
meeting place and the center of Rome have
never been changed within its original form
which was shaped by its topographic conditions.
• Conclusion: The form of the architecture in the city is revealed in its various
monuments, and each of the monuments shows us the sequence of the city and
finally, it shows us the history of the city.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE EVOLUTION OF URBAN ARTIFACTS
• In the final chapter, Rossi focuses on the
process of evolution of the city and how
various forces are applied within it and
how their application causes different
changes.
• According to him, the forces could be
economic, political, or of some other
nature.
• In the first part he describes the economic
forces: expropriations and land
ownership, and in the last part, he refers
to political force.
• He classifies these variations into two
parts; first, the expropriation relates to
the role of the individual; second, it is
bound up with the order of succession of
a given series of artifacts.
• For instance for the former, the structure
of Paris is defined as an overlapped image
of Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I and
Baron Haussmann. 
• For the latter, he refers to the nationalization of clerical property in Paris, since the
nationalization affected the road system and finally it changed the form of Paris
• He also refers to reducing metropolitan problems, which are not the problem of
scale and the changes in scale have nothing to do with the quality of urban
artifacts.
• Conclusion: He says that politics reveals its own semblance in the urban artifacts
when we consider everything in the city as a sign of the city’s progress.

PARIS: PRE-HAUSSMANN

PARIS: POST-HAUSSMANN
ROSSI’S URBAN THEORIES
• City as an Artifact
• Type over form and function
• Continuity and Permanence
• Concept of Space – Locus and Locus Solus
• Analogous City