44 Wimei 1991 CITE A ldo Rossi preferred tradition to individual talent in architecture, as did his teacher and mentor Ernesto Rogers. Yet there is scarcely a school of architecture in the world today where the mention of an Aldo Rossi building is not readily understood as shorthand for a melancholic remem- brance of type, neoplatonic in form and poetic in feeling. I le was also, like Rogers, willing to challenge the architec- tural dogma ol the modern movement and to, as Rogers himself insisted, affirm the propriety of a "building's life being connected with the past," such thai ii might "breathe the atmosphere ol the place and even mtensih it." 1 If there was a single architectural intellect Rossi found most compelling, it was that of Adolf Loos, who admon- ished architects that "the best form is always already given and no one should be afraid to use it, even though it may have come almost entirely from someone else."- It was of the prompting of Rogers, as Rossi relates in his Scientific Auto- biography, that he "read l.oos for the first time around |S>59 in the beautiful first edition published by Hreiiner Verlag and given to me by Rogers . . . . Without doubt 1 owe to this reading of loos the profound contempt I have always fell lor . , . the confounding of form and func- tion. Through l.oos I discovered . . . also the great architecture of ancient Rome and an America which I would come to understand only much later."' Up to then, Rossi's ideas of what America might be like had come mainly from watching movies; in fact, he chose to study archi- tecture only after abandoning plans for a career as a filmmaker. Rossi became, in due course, "ihe most watched and discussed |architectur- al] 'case' both in Italy and on the interna- tional scene," as Manfredo Tafuri was obliged to admit.' Even so (or perhaps for that very reason), Rossi experienced a far more hospitable critical reception in America than at home, .is Kurt Forster noted when Rossi was awarded the IVilAcr I'ri/.e in I WO.' l.ifuri, his col- league on the (acuity at the University of Wmce, found in Rossi's oetn re onlj "MIIK indifference . . . resorting to . . . a geometric elementarism reminiscent of Durand's tables." Hut Vincent Scully at Yale discerned a laudable "passion for structural and spatial types, evolved from vernacular and classical traditions that make sense ot the environment and hold it together."'' Whereas Francesco Dal t o, Tafuri's occasional collaborator at the University of Venice, censured Rossi for "veer|ing| toward a mannerist practice, apparently replacing stubbornness with repetition," Peter Eisenman of the Insti- tute for Architecture and Urban Studies took a contrary view, commending the built evidence ot Rossi's search for "an alternative to functionalism |wbile| also looking tor an alternative to a rationalism that, based on reason and logic, simply replicates the progressivism of the Mod- ern Movement." Coming to America ALDO ROSSI (1931-1997) x ' Building lor Sttiolottk, Int.. New York (1994- ). Bmodwoy elevation. Rossi took comfort in the relative per- missiveness of the New World — "the fact that, in a large country such as America, all types of architecture exist without anyone complaining." What he found most debilitating in "the disease of modernism (or at least one ol lis diseases, resulting in the rum of large areas of our cities) is its moralising, thai is to say the intrusion of the ques- tion of morali- ty into the architectural sphere. .. . When I say thai I am not modern I am declaring my rejection of moralising in architecture, a moralising that rages like this in no other artistic ills cipline . . . . If one finds a Doric column beautiful or ugly, if one likes it or not, that is a decision that has nothing t<> do with morals . . . . Yet a supposedly demo- cratic Europe regards an architectural style as democratic (and it is moreover hideous!, simply bet a use it made use of glass and . . . flat roots . . . . I make use of what is good, wherever 1 can find it." K Architectural tourists from Loos to Le Corbusier have managed to find some- thing to marvel at in America, whether it be plumbing, grain elevators, or the Renaissance revivalism of lower Manhat- tan. Rossi was no exception. "In all my projects and drawings, I believe there ma)- be a hint of, . . naturalism which transcends their oddities and defects," lie wrote at the beginning of A Scientific Autobiography. "When I saw the com- plete work of Edward I iopper in New York [in a l l )H() retrospective at the Whitney Museum organized In (Jail Levin], I realized all this about my archi- tecture; paintings like Chair Car or Four 1 ane Road took me back to the stasis of . . . timeless miracles, to tables set for eternity, drinks never consumed, things which are only themselves." 1 ' Still later in the Autobiography, he reflected on Loos's project for the Chicago Tribune competi- tion as "his interpretation of America, and not, of course, as one might have thought, a Viennese divertissement: it was his synthesis of the distortions created in America by an extensive application of a style in a new context." 1 " Rossi's fascination with American places and themes is one of the persistent revelations in the Autobiography, "In this country," he wrote, "analogies, allusions, or call them observations, have produced in me a great creative desire and also, once again, a strong interest in architec- ture. I or example, 1 found walking on Sunday mornings through the Wall Street area to be as impressive as walking through a realized perspective by Serlio or some other Renaissance treatise-writer. I have had a similar experience in the villages of New England, where a single building seems to constitute the city or village, inde- pendent of its size."" lie found the "industrial archaeology " of Manhattan especially alluring, send- ing his srti dents to the no man's land "near the West Side I lighway, where . . . the old wood and iron piers enter the I lud-son and are separated from the city by the old and often col- lapsed highways," to design projects in which "houses are built on I lie piers, and at times the old buildings are left stand- ing, long warehouses of iron and brick with incredible Palladian beads." 12 At the lime of his death Rossi bad already, with Morns Adjmi, his American collaborator and former student at IAL1S, realized a large office complex i"i t ele brarion, the Walt Disne) ( ompany new town near Orlando, Florida (1991-95), and had completed plans tin n•> < span sum as well as the design ol a large back- lot building lor the Disney studios in Rurbank, California. Ihe American work also includes a ceremonial arch lor the Strand in (ialveston I I l >S^-^()i; vacation houses in the Pocono Mountains of Penn- sylvania (IWK-X^) and at Seaside, Flori- da (1996-97); and an unrealized addition to the School of Architecture for the Uni- versity of Miami (19Xf>-H9|, a diminutive acropolis-cum-rower with "colorful, geo- metric, Mediterranean forms" that Scully predicted would "go well with the more or less Spanish, limestone and stucco ver- nacular of the region," 1 ' But arguably the most impressive reminder of Rossi's intermittent visits to America, independent ol size, is destined to reside in the sliver of a building that will begin construction this summer at S57 Broadway, between Spring and Prince streets in the SoHo t ast Iron liis- toric District, to augment the offices ol the educational publishers Scholastic, IIK. 1 '' What Rossi and Adjmi devised is a ten-story duplexed vUgcrie, 50 by 200 feet, that will extend west through the block to Mercer Street — the very "syn- thesis of distortion created by the appli- cation of a style in a new context." On lis pilaster-gridded broad way front, the new Scholastic Building mediates between its nexi-door neighbors, the pre- dominantly masonry Rouss Building (Alfred Zucker, 1 KKH-W) and the terra- cotta and ironwork "Little" Singer Build- ing (Lrnest llagg, 1 1 *<U-(M). On Mercer, a street of warehouses, it manufactures irs own "industrial archaeology" with .in exo-skeleton of tapered, ribbed-steel, gantry-cranelike supports stacked one atop another. Paul Goldberget, reviewing the plans for the new Scholastic building in the New Ynrk l'mws, called it "a textbook example ot how to design in a historic district: subtle, brilliantly inventive ... a testament to the highest values of urban- ism." 11 Scholastic is at once a quintes- sential New York and Rossi building — no Milanese divertissement but an affec- tionate intensification of place, made to measure by an architect who [iked his cities "constructed out ot preexisting ele- ments that are then deformed by their own context"; by a traveler for whom "perhaps no urban construct in the world equals that ol a city like New York ... a city of monuments such us I did not believe could exist." "' • 0W Turner I. Ernesto Roger*, quixed in Oscar Newman ed., New frontiers >» Arcbitecturei ('JAM '59 m i Itterto, (New Y«rk: Universe Books, 1961), p. 93. 2. Atlnh Loos, "Hctmatkunstt" 1914, collected in I ..,„. Trotxdem 1900-19JO {1931; reprini ed., Vien- na: Prachnex, 19821, p. 130, 3. Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography, (Cam bridge, MA: MIT/1AHS, mil, \- -In. -t, Manfredo l.itnri. History of Italian Architec- ture, 1944-198S I lafini Giulio I inaudl, 1986; ( am- bridge, MA: MIT, 1989, lessica Lcvhw, ir.iml.i, p. 133. !, kmi Fonter, "Aldo Rossis Architecture ni Recollet n The Silence oi 1 hmns Repeated oi Stai ed lur Eternity," in lew Prittkei Architecture Prize - - 1990 Aula Roast. 6, Il-ti,l. p. I Is. Six .llvi Viiui-ni Siiillv. "Tin I ml nt the i encur) Finds .i I'iK't."" m Peter Arnvll and ltd Bickford, eds., \tda Rossi: Buildings and Projects {Nc* York: Rizzoli, 19851, p. II 7. Francesco Dal Co, "1945-1985: Italian Archi- tecture BVtwiTM Innovation and tradition," m A+V Italian Architecture: 1945-1983 (March 1988 cxci i edition), p, 21; Sec also Petet Eiserutuui, "The House cil tin- Dead .is the < ity <>l Survival," in Aido Rutsi in Americas 1976 i,, 1979 i M m York: Institute for Vrchitectun and Urban Studies, 1979), pp. 8-9. s. Aldo Rossi, interviewed b) Bernard Hurt, I ^2, in Aldo Rot» Architect it mulim: Acndi-tny Editions, 1994), pp. 16-17. l '. Rossi, Asstobiography, p. ^. It). Ibid., p. 76, II.Ibid. 12, Ibid.. |v 64 11. Vincent Scully, American Architecture and (IrbMinm. |1W; New Ynrk: I loll, l"XS. 2nd edi lion), p. 2hS, 14. Christophei Gray, "Streetscapesi i harks Rouss and 555 Broadway — Broadway, Hii Middle Name," New York Times (Augur 11, 1996), 9:7. Si>, also I'.nil Goldbergcr, "Architecture Vstwi Primers in t'rKinisoi — VCiiiu-n in I ..HI Imn." Hew I ... runes (Scptembei 11. 1996), 136. "Workto Si.in mi New Rossi Building," Architectural Ken"./ (Octobei 1996), p. I (, 15. Goldberget, <>p. dt., 9:7, Id. Rossi, "Introduction rn the lirsi American I d 1978)," ride Architecture of tl>r < rrv. H'Wih; ( smbridge, MA: MIT/IAl'V 1982), p. IS. fi SiholDitk, 1st, MPUPI Slirr-I devotion.