Aldo Rossi

280 pages

An essential new look at the Italian architect, writer, and designer whose work paved the way for the postmodern movement

This crucial reassessment of Aldo Rossi’s (1931–1997) architecture simultaneously examines his writings, drawings, and product design, including the coffeepots and clocks he designed for the Italian firm Alessi. The first Italian to receive the Pritzker Prize, Rossi rejected modernism, seeking instead a form of architecture that could transcend the aesthetic legacy of Fascism in postwar Italy. Rossi was a visionary who did not allow contemporary trends to dominate his thinking. His baroque sensibility and poetic approach, found both in his buildings and in important texts like The Architecture of the City, inspired the critic Ada Louise Huxtable to describe him as “a poet who happens to be an architect.”

and the Spirit of Architecture Diane Y.R. Ghirardo 9780300276732