Milan, Italy, 3.5.1931 - Milan, Italy, 4.9.1997 (Milano, Italia, 3.5.1931 - Milano, Italia, 4.9.1997)
Official site: Aldo Rossi: l'archivio personale

Info (Informazioni)

Architetto italiano. Pritzker 1990.

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) studies for his degree in Architectural during the Fifties at the Politecnico of Milan, then working as an assistant in Ignazio Gardella's and Marco Zanuso's architectural practises. Rossi's academic career begins with Ludovico Quaroni in the Scuola urbanistica of Arezzo and Carlo Aymonino at the IUAV of Venice. In 1959, he is offered a junior professorship by the Politecnico University in Milan followed by a full one in 1970, when he is in charge of Building Technology. In the same period, Aldo Rossi starts cooperating with many American universities, among which the Cooper Union University, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and the universities of Harvard and Yale.
His activity as an architect contemplates both private and public building. Among the earlier finished projects, let us remember the extension of the De Amicis school in Broni (1970), a residential unity in Milan's Gallaratese borough (1973), the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena (1978) and the primary school of Fagnano Olona (1976); to which must be added the subsequent public buildings of Fontivegge-Perugia and Borgoricco (1989), the refurbishment of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa (1989), the extension of the Milano-Linate airport (1993), culminating with the project for the reconstruction of the Venice theatre "La Fenice". Simultaneously, Aldo Rossi asserts his professional reputation beyong national borders, with achievements such as the block between Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse in Berlin (1981), the Hotel "Il Palazzo" of Fukuoka (1989) and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht (1994).
Rossi's activity as a historian and theoretician of architecture leads him to cooperate with different important Italian periodicals, as "Casabella-Continuità", "Società" and "Il Contemporaneo"; and to the publishing of the full-length volumes, Architettura della città (1966) and A Scientific Authobiography (1984), not to forget his experience as a filmmaker with Ornamento e delitto. Rossi directed the international architectural section of the 1973 Triennale exhibition in Milan and the whole architectural section in the 1983 Biennale of Venice.
Aldo Rossi was both an architect and a scholar. He became a member of the Academy of San Luca in 1979 and was assigned the Pritzker Prize in its 1990 edition, without neglecting his successful and pioneering work as a designer - cooperating with Alessi, Artemide, Longoni, Molteni, Unifor. His artistic creativity knows few boundaries, as is made clear by the exhibition of the faboulous Teatro del Mondo in the 1979 Biennale of Venice as well as by the Sandro Pertini Monument (1990): in these cases, as always in Rossi's activity as an architect, there is a close and fruitful interaction between the idioms of drawing, design, painting and building.

The Fondazione Aldo Rossi has been created in 2005, according to the heirs' desire to assemble, protect and promote the work of the architect in all its complexity and cultural variety. As being directed by Germano Celant, the mission has been identified in the raising and in the ordering of Aldo Rossi's work in a unique virtual corpus, considering that the Foundation disposes of an important collection of published and unpublished materials - such as works, written texts, bibliography, photographic documentation - and being at the same time aware that it has to be the result of a cooperation with the most important institutions in Italy and abroad, so to promote, through a scientific knowledge, cultural initiatives and exhibitions on the architect's work.

The Fondazione was born around a rich original core of works, drawings, autographs, bibliographical references, photographic and archival documentation as well as published and unpublished texts; its primary scope is to collect and protect in one virtual corpus the original or true-copy materials already in its possession and those which may be gathered in time, in order to promote a better knowledge of Aldo Rossi's professional and intellectual itinerary and achievements. The collection will gather the documentation related to architecture and design projects, pictorial and graphic works, publications, lectures, correspondences, bibliography, filmography, interviews and pictures.

Invested with the Trust of Aldo Rossi's heirs, the Fondazione is legally entitled to manage the architect's copyright. With Germano Celant acting as Director, the Fondazione has been and will keep in touch with the most important Italian and international institutions and public collections owning materials connected to Aldo Rossi's work, in order to create an international network of collaboration.

Among the Fondazione Aldo Rossi's priorities stands first and foremost a fruitful cooperation with the most important museums and the most significant cultural institutions in Italy as in the rest the world. With its deep-grounded belief in Aldo Rossi's cultural significance and the wish to give assistance and offer a focus to students and scholars of his work, the Fondazione thus proposes to contribute to the growth of scientific and architectural knowledge through the promotion of cultural initatitives and projects, scholarly events and exhibitions in both Italian and international contexts. (Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Via San Nicolao 2, 20123 Milano, Italia, info@fondazionealdorossi.org).