ARCHITECTURE: Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi (3/5/1931-4/9/1997) was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design. Rossi was born in Milan, Italy. In 1949 he started studying architecture at the Politecnico di Milano where he graduated in 1959. Already in 1955 he started writing for the Casabella magazine, where he became editor between 1959-1964. He became extremely influential in the late 1970s and 1980s as his body of built work expanded and for his theories promoted in his books “The Architecture of the City’’ (1966) and ‘’A Scientific Autobiography’’ (1981). The distinctive independence of his buildings is reflected in the micro-architectures of the products designed by Rossi. In the 1980s Rossi designed stainless steel coffee makerσ and other products for Alessi, Pirelli, and others. He joined the teaching staff of the School of Architecture in Milan in 1965 and the University of Venice in 1975. His growing fame, contributed to his appointment as Professor in Zurich, Spain and the United States. In 1983 he was appointed as Director at the Venice Biennale in 1990 was awarded with the Pritzker Architecture Prize and in 1992 withe the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture. The largest of Rossi’s projects in terms of scale was the San Cataldo Cemetery, in Modena, Italy 1971-1978, the Theatre of the World in Venice Biennale of 1979 and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, 1990-1994.