MODENA CEMETERY: Modena, Italia.
permanence
"Rossi insists, I don't invent I remember."[1]
Ty`pol`ogy (ti pal e je) n. {TYPO- + -LOGY} 1 the study of
types, symbols, or symbolism 2 symbolic meaning or representation;
symbolism.
De`sign (di zin') -n. {Fr dessein < It disegno < disignare
< L designare} 2 purpose; intention; aim 3 a thing planned
for or outcome aimed at
typology is an analytical process, a means of separating the history of
architecture (designs or theories) into a system of classification such as
genealogy and cosmology. Typology, however, bases its understanding of
architecture on forms which are classified into types based on specific
criteria. For Rossi it is the ideas of public and private, and rational design
and place.[2]
The design is a creative endeavor which seeks new forms to express
a current moment in time. It is a work of inspiration and transformation, and
contains the possibility for new types.
Rossi defines architecture as designs (forms) which have persisted over time to
become types. Those types constitute the history of the city or its memory,
and the culture of the present. Functions vary over time but form remains. It
is the desire for permanence that is so characteristic of his work. The history
of the city is composed by those designs which persist over time to become
types. This permanence of memory (meaning) in the city is based on two
principles:
memory - Urban facts which are permanent; those which withstand the
passage of time and eventually become monuments.
monuments - These give meaning to the life of the city through memory.
[3]
"Change is within the very destiny of things, for there is a singular
inevitability about evolution ...The singular authority of the built object and
the landscape is that of a permanence beyond people."[4]
Following the ideas set down in Architecture of the City, we can
see how Rossi's architecture becomes one of re-presentation or a typological
design which seeks permanence. He wrote "All this allows for a representation
of the past with a desire for the present. [For] the past of a man in whom
desire is dead ...the past paradoxically glows with the color of the future,
with those of hope."[5] So, for Rossi, it is not a
lament of the past which he desires, but a recovery of it in the present which
establishes continuity within the history of the city.
representation
Rossi perpetuates classical vocabularies through abstracted platonic forms
with all their latent ideologies disguised by reductive methods. The
transformation of the typologies of the past is a formal reduction of ornament
and detail to `pure' forms. But it is a stretch to refer to his designs as a
transformation, it is potentially more accurate to refer to his process as a
translation of the past to a modern setting.
"It is certain that behind many of these structures we see the signs of
ancient misery, and we would like to overturn them. Yet we must also take hold
of these very dense images which will comprise the history of the new city."[6]
For this reason he chooses to work from within the system as a way of
transforming historical meaning. What Rossi sees as the essential
characteristics of historical models are represented in a form stripped of
ornament (and any significant detailing). These forms become highly emotive
for Rossi because their memory/meaning is one of extension from past monuments,
a transference of responsibility and meaning, while retaining enough of a
transformation to elude any specific historical reference.
We can see an obvious appreciation of the theories of Le Corbusier within
Rossi's work. His axioms of architecture in Towards an Architecture clarify
the analogy:
"Our eyes are constructed to enable us to see forms in light. Primary forms
are beautiful forms because they can be clearly appreciated."[7]
But where Le Corbusier's plastic forms were generated from the machine and
light, Rossi's are from a classical, more conventional signage, stripped of
detailing to bare surface. Light is not as important as shadows in Rossi's
architecture. The shadow, a ghost from the past, simultaneously conceals and
accentuates his volumentric designs . In this respect his architecture is more
similar to that of Boullee's in its monumental scale, historicist tendencies
and dramatic shadows. Boullee wrote:
"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 still darker."
In the end Rossi's architecture is a fusion between certain aesthetic qualities
of both architects which is where his particular signage is read.
For the Modena Cemetery he has created a translation of the Costa and Jewish
cemeteries of the 19th century. The original competition which Aldo Rossi won
in collaboration with Gianni Braghieri was held in 1972. The scheme was
reworked in 1976 before construction could begin in 1978. The construction is
less than 50% complete to this day.
It is important to note an event that occurred just prior to the Modena
competition. Rossi was in an serious automobile accident which resulted in his
hospitalization for a period of time. "While in the hospital he discovered
that the structure of his body resembled a series of fractures which had to be
put together again."[8]
At this time he was also writing what would become
A Scientific Autobiography in which he expounded on this notion of
the fragment: "the question of the fragment in architecture is very important
since it may be that only ruins express a fact completely ...I am thinking of a
unity, or a system, made solely of reassembled fragments."[9] This fragment system is what we are presented
with at Modena. The osteological composition, concealed through the
orientation of its presentation and its fragmentation, is a literal translation
of his experience in the hospital, and this desire for an architecture of
fragments. It is simultaneously a sign of the body and the mimetic re-assembly
of the cemetery type.
There are two levels of fragmentation which can be read within the design:
precedent and a system of weak vs. strong.
precedent
There are two parallel levels of reference at work, one historical which has
been fully investigated by Eugene Johnson in his article "Aldo Rossi's Modena
Cemetery - What Remains of Man." This article expounded on implicit references
to Boulee, Piranesi, Giorgio de Chirico and others. The other level which
Johnson's article didn't address is a mimetic one of the Costa and Jewish
Cemeteries which are site specific, historical allusions.
By breaking down both the Costa/Jewish and Rossian cemeteries using various
criteria we can begin to see striking resemblance's in configuration of plan
and structure. Rossi has taken those fragments of formal composition found
within the Costa/Jewish cemetery and transformed, translated, or reduced
specific elements, representing them in his cemetery plan.
Siting and Proportion of Addition
The rectangular outer boundary of Rossi's design placed on the other side of
the Jewish cemetery has an imprint similar in shape and proportion to Costa's
cemetery. The three story wall of housing that Circumscribes the design is
similar to that of Costa's minus the north wall.
Axes
The Costa Cemetery is a courtyard divided by a series of paths which set up
axes of movement between the zones of the cemetery. Each path terminates at
the wall in a formal articulation.
Rossi, using a similar boundary wall sets objects within the space which
define axes and break up the rectangle into a series of zones. The strategy,
similar to Costa's, has one important transformation: the wall articulations
at the end of Costa's axes pull away from the wall in Rossi's to become free
floating objects within the space.
Geometry
Rossi's ossuary cube is both a commentary on the cemetery as house of the dead
and a transformation, in positioning and proportion of enclosing structure to
void, of the two squares situated south of the Jewish cemetery.
The triangular composition of the Jewish Cemetery terminating on a funeral
structure is taken by Rossi into his design and transformed into a series of
rib-like buildings terminating at a cone containing the communal grave. The
impression is the same, and even if the experience would be completely
different the similarities in planning are undeniable.
Rossi's housing of the coffins is also a minimal translation of the
configuration presented in Costa's Cemetery. The only essential differences
between the two are Rossi's use of stucco rather than brick, two levels instead
of one and a flat roof rather than pitched.
weak vs. strong
How does one understand the design of a fragment?
"In my projects I have always thought about these things, and precisely in such
a way as to attempt to structure the opposition between what is weak and what
is strong."[10]
The strong in Modena becomes the datum or frame for that which is weak, the
fragment. This notion can be read on several levels. The completed Costa and
Jewish Cemetery can be read as strong or complete while Rossi's, as of yet,
unfinished scheme becomes the weak, or the fragment. But this dialectic can
even be understood within Rossi's cemetery design itself.
Here, the strong becomes the wall housing for the dead which circumscribes the
Rossian Cemetery. It is a transformation of the `urban house' type as the
strong or complete. It is characterized by enclosed space, pitched roof,
windows, doors, walls and floors - all the elements which would ideologically
and physically complete a house.
The weak is characterized by the lack of completion (ideologically), missing
one or more of the systems which comprise the strong and make it whole. There
are three examples: The Cube, a house of the dead, like the house of the
living has no roof, floors, windows or doors. It is only a shell with
openings. Some openings for light, others for views, access, and even
containment of cremated bodies. The Arms and Ribs have a flat roof (therefore
no typologically or traditionally articulated roof), and one wall is an open
row of columns, breaking down the continuity of the wall. The Cone, a
translation of funerary precedents such as Boullee is marked incomplete due to
the open occulus at its top.
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