K.

MICHAEL HAYS: Rossi spent his entire career thinking

about the relationships between individual elements of architecture
and architecture as a discipline, the very beginnings of architecture
and the ends of architecture.
And he spent his career exploring the relationship
between architectural practice and the kind of everyday level and architecture
as a theoretical intellectual project.
He came to the conclusion that what he called the architectural type was
the beginning and the end of architecture,
but that the architectural type could never
be exhausted either by architectural practice or by architectural theory.
That the type, this unavailable, but real object
that both generated and, sort of, became the reference for all of architecture
was itself inaccessible and inexhaustible.
When Rossi thought about type, he was considering architecture
as its manifest in history in various examples
and, sort of, recurring patterns and recurring forms
that emerge at different times in history but seem correlated.
But he was also thinking about architecture in the city.
For him, the architectural elements constitute the city.
But at the same time, the city is this, kind of, determinant matrix or fabrics
that bring the elements into being.
In his book "Architecture of the City,"
he emphasizes the continuity of these urban types.
He uses the word "permanences" to convey the sense of persistence
of types over time through various different kinds of uses.
One of the examples he gives is the Roman coliseum
at Lucca, which first of all, in medieval times
was used as a, kind of, quarry.
The stones from the Roman
coliseum were taken as spoils
to construct medieval churches,
and then it later became a market, and then later housing,
but, as you can see in the photograph, the diagram
or the "type" of the coliseum remains over all those functional changes.
This is an example of what Rossi calls a "propelling permanence."
The form remains, but it carries us through changes in history,
changes in function, and even changes in the way
that the coliseum is inhabited.
In his own work, the idea of architectural type
and its relationship to city can best be seen in his most famous project, which
is a cemetery, the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena
for which he won the competition in 1971.
The site for the cemetery is exactly adjacent to an existing 19th-century
cemetery by Cesare Costa.
In between Rossi's cemetery and Costa's cemetery
is a much smaller Jewish cemetery,
and so the three cemeteries together make up this set.
Rossi's cemetery is almost exactly the same size and shape
as Costa's cemetery.
It's about 325 by 175 meters.
It's surrounded by a two story wall, which
later was changed to three stories.
You can enter at either south gate or the north gate.
Along this north/south axis, Rossi's places
three distinct architectural types.
First of all, very like the monument of Cuneo, is a large cube:
a large empty -- Rossi even said, abandoned cube.
It doesn't have a roof.
It's open to the sky.
Rather than the strip windows or the narrow windows of Cuneo,
it now has these punched repetitive square windows.
There are no mullions, no frames to the windows.
If we continue along the axis, we confront another feature:
this triangular shape in plan, but consists
of vertical rectangular slabs that increase in height
as they decrease in width.
These would be the ossuaries, which would house the remains of the body,
and we can walk through those ossuaries along the axis
until we finally come to the third feature, which
is a large truncated cone.
The cone is higher than any of the other features.
The cube was intended by Rossi to be used for funeral ceremonies, but also
civil ceremonies.
As I said, the slabs were intended as ossuaries,
and then the top part of the cone is a chapel.
But then in a room, at the bottom part of the cone,
would be a place for the ashes, for the remains of the indigent.
Now this is an important feature.
If we compare this to the cemetery of Costa, certain contrast arise.
In the cemetery of Costa, which is typical of 19th-century
Italian cemeteries, usually in the center would be a chapel,
and this chapel would be where the remains of the upper-class families
would be buried.
Along the porticoes to the side of the chapel
would be for other, perhaps not noble families,
but other upper-class families,
and the indigent who may not have been even known
or who may not have had families would be placed in the earth.
But, of course, the earth, the graves of the earth filled up very, very quickly,
and it was allowed that, every eight years, the bones
could be taken out and put in a common grave.
So Rossi in a way has reversed that hierarchy.
The truncated cone, which is higher than any other feature,
now houses the remains of the indigent, and exactly along the axis,
along that central axis where previously the noble families and the upper class
would have been buried.
And I think that contrast is very intentional and very sharp.
The walls around the cemetery are very, very stark.
Again, they have openings without muntins or mullions or window frames.
It reminds you of some of the German architect Ludwig Hilberseimer work,
except that Rossi places a kind of sharply
steeply pitched triangular roof on top of these otherwise austere walls.
Rossi talks about the tops of Etruscan funerary urns,
which have a similar triangular shape.
So he's getting multiple references, references to Etruscan urns,
references to modern architecture, but also he's
making references to his own work.
Rossi compared the walls to his own housing project
called the Gallaratese just outside Milan,
and he makes the point that, in very, very early times,
the grave was just thought of as a kind of house for the dead,
or the tomb was thought of as a room for the dead.
So for him, this contrast between the housing of living bodies,
the housing of dead remains, is part of what
he means when he thinks of the cemetery as an "analogous city."
The graves are analogues of houses, houses for the dead.
The monuments are analogues of the permanent monuments
that would take place in a city, though in a city there
would be inhabited monuments.
So the cemetery is a city of the dead, but it's also
what Rossi calls an "analogous city."
In this aerial perspective, which Rossi uses
to show both the elevational perspective of the building
and also, at the same time, its plan, you can
see that that triangular feature in the middle
almost takes on the characteristics of a stepped pyramid.
It seems to be rising up from the ground.
And I think this reference somehow is--
there are other references that are to architecture
in its most primitive state.
I even think of Hegel who thought of the pyramid
as a very beginning of architecture,
and I can't imagine that this reference to Hegel
and to the beginnings of architecture is lost on Rossi.
Look at the way Rossi cast the shadows.
It's very interesting that he cast the shadows toward the viewer.
I think what he's thinking of here is something
that he referred to in his own essay on the French architect Étienne Boullée.
He's thinking about Boullée's own funerary architecture,
and he says, "It does not seem possible to me
to conceive anything sadder than a monument composed
of a smooth, naked and unadorned surface, of a light absorbent material,
absolutely bare of details, and of which the decoration is
formed by a composition of shadows, drawn by shadows still darker."
Look again, at Rossi's drawing, how dark the shadows are.
It's as if the shadows are the only inhabitants of the city.