parametric design.

it's totally magical - i'm not referring to its generative power here but how pyschologically captivating it could be. I worked from 8 to 9 last night (somehow this doesn't make sense) just to make one model and god, I swear, I didn't leave my seat more than 8 times, each time less than 30 seconds. (apart from, of course, a regular interval of '5-minute-breaks') That's miraculous, particularly for an ADD like myself. All I had to do is to finish a dumb model and watch it generative different forms on its own.

The anti-climax was, of course, the 9:09 email from Mark saying that the mid-term is postponed, after an all-nighter. I still cannot figure out whether I should feel stupid or not.

And of course, prior to that I also worked on my fabrication project. Yet another dumb project but quite informative still - at least for the first time I started on a 3D model and fabricate it on a laser cutter. Kind of a late start but a good one nonetheless, I guess.

moneo

I. Critique of Moneo’s account: What exactly is the difference between before and after, anyway?

A. Given the dramatic theoretical shift that Moneo claims to have occurred, one would expect a no less dramatic revision of architectural forms from Rossi. Nonetheless, while we do recognize some startling changes in Rossi’s designs in terms of materiality and the use of ‘iconography’ (both seem to manifest his reference to personal history and memories), he did not detach himself from the use of elemental forms (as one could see from the plans and sections of his buildings). It seems, therefore, that Rossi’s ‘pre-America’ designs did not differ from his ‘post-America’ ones as much as Moneo attempts to show in his account. We would like to show the following projects in order to substantiate our argument:

1. The San Vincenzo Project (1986) vs. the Gallaratese quarter (1969)
2. Teatro del Mondo (1979) vs. De Amicis School, Broni (1970)
3. Cemetry of San Cataldo, Modena (completed in 1984) vs. Memorial of Resistance, Cuneo (1962)

In fact, even Moneo alludes that “[Rossi] couldn’t go beyond repeating the images coined by the architects of the Enlightenment”. Rossi himself, not coincidentally, acknowledged his ‘compulsion to repeat’ in the Scientific Autobiography.

B. If Rossi did find, as Moneo notes, that “the Lukacsian reality that he had pursued so anxiously [in the 60s] was now unacceptable”, why didn’t he radically renounce the use of elemental forms in architecture all together, in lieu of accepting his own “compulsion [architectural forms]” even after his trip to America? While we agree that a shift in theoretical position did take place after Rossi’s American trip, we find Moneo’s account for Rossi’s departure from the ‘Lukacsian reality’ and typicality exaggerated. We attempt, with reference to Lobsinger’s account and Rossi’s Scientific Autobiography, to argue the following:

1. He did not renounce his rationalist position in Autobiography. Quite the contrary, Autobiography surveys and recognizes the ‘inexplicable’ – at times translated into ‘cultural sentiments’ by Moneo – without relinquishing his rational ground.
2. A Scientific Autobiography illustrates, with a sense of subtle and yet not entirely indiscernible reluctance, Rossi’s recognition of the inherent conflict of his ‘scientific’ approach against “historical obstacles [in relation to ‘culture’ and ‘context’ that he attempted to break away from] that hinder every reconstruction”.
3. In that sense, one may postulate, as Lobsinger does, that Rossi’s repetition is, apart from being a gesture of his adamant and consistent opposition against the modernists’ “perpetual desire for formal innovations”, his attempt to reconcile the two ideologically opposing aims of his architecture.

C. Lobsinger’s psychological account for Rossi’s Autobiography, albeit a compelling argument in itself, tends to be an interpretive postulation. Vincent Scully, on the other hand, provides us a more comprehensive (as much as it is lyrical) reading of Rossi’s Autobiography in relation to his ‘pre-America’ works. Instead of arguing that Rossi reluctantly held onto his scientific analysis, Scully approached the paradox in quite an opposite way; he boldly asserts, at the beginning of his postscript for Rossi’s Autobiography, that “… the adjective ‘scientific’ which Rossi employs takes on an ironic tinge… Rossi did not begin with this vision; no one does”. Through his poetic ‘saga’ through the following works of Rossi’s Scully argues that the notion of personal memories, in relation to history and locality, has always been present in his design (the cemetery of Modena, and the Gallaratese quarter).

Indeed, the notion of memories never escaped Rossi as “a distillation… his observed things are indeed idealized by it, ‘Platonized’ into enduring shapes” – an explanation that quite convincingly answers our question for Moneo.