Talk:The Architecture of the City

The article in Portuguese is more complete than the one in English. Could someone translate it? 11:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabiumas (talk • contribs)

Italian version
See Fabiumas's previous comment, which I of course agree with. There's also - not surprisingly - a detailed Italian article, with chapter-by-chapter analysis. But unfortunately there's no link between the Italian article and the English/Portuguese ones - I've left a message on the Italian talk page pointing this out. I can read both Portuguese and Italian, and am a professional translator, so I'll have a go at both articles - one may in fact be partly a copy of the other, but in any case they're far more detailed that the English one. Then I'll post the translations here and leave it to someone more technically experienced to add them to the English article.213.127.210.95 (talk) 17:37, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

The English article also seems to have been written by a non-native speaker (e.g. 'An English translation has been published in 1982', which is grammatically incorrect - the present perfect tense is never used in English for periods, such as 1982, that have now ended). This seems a good reason to replace the whole article with a more detailed version, and one written by a native speaker - which I can at least provide, since I am one.213.127.210.95 (talk) 17:47, 12 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Here it is, rapidly translated and so perhaps not as good as it might have been if I'd had more time. The Italian and Portuguese versions of the article are very different, but both far more detailed and subtle than the English one. I’m afraid I can’t reproduce the hyperlinks, since the Wikipedia talk pages don’t even allow bold or italics, let alone such technical niceties as hyperlinks. The Portuguese (I think Brazilian) article seems to have been written by someone that really understands where Rossi was coming from – whoever it is writes in much the same terms. But so does the Italian writer. The brief English article really doesn’t do justice to an architect of this stature – so I hope my translation can help to redress the balance.

TRANSLATION OF THE PORTUGUESE ARTICLE: “L’architettura della città” (1966) is one of the books by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, in which he analyses the whole process of the rise and transformation of the city in general – not only real cities throughout the world, but also projects and studies.

The city and its emergence have for centuries been one of the most closely studied and researched topics in the field of architecture. It could not be otherwise, for ever since people have needed to create the environment they dwell in order to live better lives we have spoken of the creation of the city, and hence of architecture. [not sure how this was translated into English from Rossi’s book, from which this is evidently a quote – perhaps someone can replace this with the ‘official’ version?] “I mean architecture in a positive sense, as creation that is inseparable from civil life and the society in which it takes place; it is collective by nature. Just as the first men built dwellings and in their first buildings tended to create an environment more favourable to their lives, to build an artificial climate, they also built according to an aesthetic intentionality. They initiated architecture at the same time as the first sketches of cities; architecture was thus inseparable from the emergence of civilisation, and is a permanent, universal and necessary fact.”

Creation of an environment more suitable to life and aesthetical intentionality are stable features of architecture, according to Rossi, who attempts to organise and set out the main problems of urban science by using various methods to confront the problem of studying the city.

He divides the book into four parts: in the first, he deals with problems of description and classification, which are hence typological problems; in the second, the structure of the city in parts; in the third, the architecture of the city and the “locus” in which it exists, and hence urban history; in the fourth, finally, he refers to the main issues of urban dynamics and the problem of politics as a choice. All these problems are pervaded by the question of the urban image, its architecture; this image encompasses the value of the whole territory lived in and built by man.

The form of a city’s plots, its emergence, its evolution represent the long history of urban property and the history of the classes profoundly linked to the city. The form of the city is always the form of a time of the city, and there are many times in the form of the city. In the very unfolding of a man’s life, the city changes its face around it, the references are not the same. The city is not by its nature a creation that can be reduced to a single basic idea: its processes of adaptation are different. The city is made up of parts, each of which has its own features: it has primary elements around which buildings gather. Understanding the foundation of the city in terms of primary elements is, says the author, the only possible rational law, i.e. the only way to extract a logical principle from the city in order to continue it.

[another quote which may already have been translated differently] “The city is the collective memory of peoples; and, as memory, it is linked to facts and people, the city is the “locus” of collective memory.”

Thus, regarding the architecture of the city, Aldo Rossi refers to the “locus” as being the main characteristic of urban acts; “locus”, architecture, survivals and history have been used in an attempt to clarify the complexity of urban acts. Finally, collective memory turns into the actual transformation of space, by the community. It is likely that this historical value, as collective memory, understood as a relationship between the community and place and the idea of it, allows or assists our understanding of the meaning of urban structure, its individuality, the architecture of the city, which is the form of this individuality. Thus the union between the past and the future lies in the very idea of the city, which pervades it just as memory pervades the life of a person and which, in order to become concrete, must not only adapt reality but also adapt to it. And this adaptation remains in its unique facts, its monuments, the idea we have of them. This also explains why, in antiquity, myth became the foundation of the city.

TRANSLATION OF THE ITALIAN ARTICLE:

“L’architettura della città” is an essay by Aldo Rossi that deals with the study of urban space in terms of architectural aspects.

The city is in fact described as an organism of architectural facts (or individual architectural units) with the fundamental role of being the “fixed stage in the theatre of human life”.

Index [hide]

1 Contents 1.1 Chapter 1: structure of urban facts 1.2 Chapter 2: primary elements and dwelling areas 1.3 Chapter 3: individuality of urban facts 1.4 Chapter 4: development of urban fact

2 Notes Contents

The four chapters of the book analyse the elements which, in Rossi’s opinion, make up the city: the primary elements (monuments or signs representing the communal will) and dwelling areas; urban planning is nothing but continual interaction between these two elements.

Chapter 1: structure of urban facts

This is a distinctly innovative chapter that provides a different reading of the city and substantially confronts the typological problems of architecture. After fiercely criticising naïve functionalism – in Rossi’s view, a city is not shaped by functions – Rossi launches into a description of the Palace of Reason in Padua, and how this plays a key part in the entire definition of the city: essentially, whoever lives in this exemplified space feels emotions, negative or positive, and then simply projects these onto the rest of the dwelling area. Analysis of the city must therefore set out firstly from the catalysing urban facts, and secondly from the classification of the street network: it is streets that in fact help to create a hierarchy for urban spaces. Rossi ultimately states a positivist view: to him, the dynamic evolutionary process of a city tends towards evolution, rather than preservation.

Chapter 2: primary elements and dwelling areas

Here Rossi defines the structure of the city. The area is defined as a portion of urban space catalysed round a primary element or shared (typological or social) features. The areas, particularly those used for dwelling purposes, are formed according to economic laws. In this connection Rossi cites the cities of Berlin, Stockholm and even the utopian Garden Cities and the Ville Radieuse. The primary elements described in the previous chapter are nevertheless fixed, and do not depend on economic laws but solely on their form. Finally, the interaction between these elements determines the evolutions of cities: whereas in Arles (where a Roman theatre became a working-class district) they both ended up converging, things were different in Berlin, neatly divided into sectors detached from the symbolic places of the city.

Chapter 3: individuality of urban facts

Rossi adds the notion of the “locus”, defined as the special, continuous relationship that is established between the architectural structure and its context, and then moves on to his idea of architecture: in accordance with Viollet-le-Duc’s precepts, he speaks of architecture as a science. Science in the sense that must be approached with high-level, intellectually honest knowledge; in the everlasting quarrel of form versus function, Rossi thus clearly opts in favour of the former, which does – or does not – define the value of a work or a city. Function, which usually prevails, must be subordinated to form and structure (which must go hand in hand and, in turn, call for an honest choice of materials). Finally, Rossi turns to the notion of the monument, defined as a product born of will and collective memory; taking the example of Athens, Rossi also speaks of the city as a locus of collective memory.

Chapter 4: development of urban facts

Here Rossi analyses the dynamics that will influence tomorrow’s cities. The factors that will count most will be economic and political ones. The means will be the laws on expropriation and the value assigned to private property. In drawing these conclusions, Rossi analyses and infers three historical periods in which certain social, and hence economic/architectural, changes have taken place: 1. the mediaeval period: this period saw craftsmen steadily abandoning their workshops, and hence a break between the workplace and the home. 2. the industrial period: this period saw a complete break between the workplace and the home. 3. the transport age: greater speed in covering distances led to the division of cities into dwelling areas, administrative areas, work areas and so on.95.97.230.36 (talk) 23:35, 12 August 2017 (UTC)