Aldo Rossi and Colour

“Souvenir d'Afrique”, Aldo Rossi, Tessiture Sarde, Storea editore, 1988

Aldo Rossi and Colour

By Jacopo Costanzo

To address the use of colour in Rossi's architecture is to address both a fundamental, and a superficial aspect of his work.

One gets lost in the urban and domestic landscapes painted by Rossi; con‐ stantly moving between deep shadows and intense fields of color. The former dark and impenetrable, distinguished by a sharp stroke or broken overlapping lines, the latter never dull in tone.

On the page, Rossi arranges geometries and objects by colour and shade. The elements are equipped with their own gravity ‐‐ disconnected from any dimensional context – through the use of shadow and generous chromatic celebration.

The dark areas portray alcoves, moldings, they reference boundaries. Col‐ our instead celebrate the vibrant superficiality of pure and simple form.

Shapes and colours seem borrowed from Piero della Francesca’s frescoes. However, they are translated with a particularly modern pre‐ cariousness, with ephemeral techniques such as watercolor and pastels.

"I remember (from my childhood) small benches placed along the roads in Italy where most cyclists and a few truck drivers stopped by. There granite were served. Granita is a simple drink made with crushed ice and incredible syrups; incredible because of their colours, and their combina‐ tion of sweetness and density; green mint, grenadine, lemon, dark and thick tamarind. These colors were at odds with the dusty bodies of cy‐ clists, but at the same time complemented their yellow and blue jer‐ seys”1.

And again Rossi…

"As a boy, I remember watching the movies about the French Foreign Le‐ gion such as Due Bandiere. I had no sympathy for the French, but at the end of the film I loved those white forts (ingrained in my memory) and those who fought a lost battle. Every lost war leads to progress”2.

Thus, colour frequently appears in Rossi’s story as the last element to fade from memory. Details that are indelible and visions which remain.

1

A. Rossi, Complesso alberghiero e ristorante “Il Palazzo” a Fukuoka, Giappone, 1987 in: A. Ferlenga (edited by), Aldo Rossi. Tutte le opere, Electa, Milano 1999 (2006), pp. 170‐175.

2 A.Rossi, Premessa in: A. Ferlenga (edited by), Aldo Rossi. Opera completa 1993‐1996, Electa, Milano, 1997, p. 7.

Colour is not a supporting actor, it plays the lead role. One might recog‐ nize ‐‐ with a somewhat critical boldness ‐‐ references to those white forts in Rossi’s earliest architecture. Take Villa Ronchi for example, the monu‐ ment to the resistance at Cuneo, the amazing project in Parma, Segrate, or the middle school at San Sabba in Trieste.

However, history itself has declared that Rossi would be best known for the use of colour in his architecture.

From the Ossario di Modena to the Teatro del Mondo, right down to the last isolated “Berliner,” Rossi echoes the inclination of his day to bring colour back into architecture. Yet, it seems clear that his attempt is never blatant or purely esthetic. Rossi selects a colour palette from a contextual need. A need to better mirror existing structures, to continue a dialogue.

It may be accurate to refer to Italian painter Mario Sironi. The similarities in the use of color of Rossi and Sironi are as surprising as they are unin‐ vestigated. It’s a matter of atmosphere rather than shared tonalities.

Moreover, the Ossario di Modena through the common thread of form and colour, is in visibly open conversation with Sironi, Libera and Rossi.

Two clues are a coincidence, three are a pattern.

Adalberto Libera, project for Aprilia, 1936

Two decades afterwards, Rossi continues his tale of colour and materials in Fukuoka.

He dives masterfully into a complicated context through the use of col‐ our. This was his first project in Japan.

"The Fukuoka palace is cut by an acid green. The green is mineral‐like and arboreal, such as the green of stones abandoned in parks and covered with an unhealthy naturalness.

Hotel Il Palazzo, Fukuoka, Aldo Rossi & Morris Adjmi, Japan, 1989; © Jacopo Costanzo

This green crosses red‐varied‐orange stone from the oldest empire: Per‐ sia, door to the East and mother of the West”3.

The more unfamiliar the scenario, the more Rossi endows the responsi‐ bility of the architecture to materials and colour—just like notes on a score which direct the conductor.

It is a product of synthesis. It is a dry and stripped down architecture. It is increasingly iconic. It is destined to a parallel dimension as unattainable as an Orthodox icon.

Rossi’s exotic portfolio continues on Broadway, New York. This project is strongly connected to its illustrious predecessor, Fukuoka. For the Scho‐ lastic Building, Rossi delivers a lesson in architecture: large white pillars with round bases take on the Italianate theme on the main façade. The latter is expressed in an unusual out‐of‐scale way, almost neo‐Palladian, already investigated by Rossi earlier. Although these stay the dominant elements of the facade, it is the remaining components which chromati‐ cally sharpen the building. They complement perfectly its illustrious neighbor, the masterpiece Singer Building by Ernst Flagg.

3

A. Rossi, Complesso alberghiero e ristorante “Il Palazzo” a Fukuoka, Giappone, 1987 in: A. Ferlenga (edited by), Aldo Rossi. Tutte le opere, Electa, Milano 1999 (2006), pp. 170‐175.

Scholastic Building, New York City, Aldo Rossi; © Jacopo Costanzo

And again in Japan, in Tokyo, Rossi is able to exalt his register of colour.

The sky‐blue Brazilian facade for the showroom Ambiente and the golden entrance box — metaphorical vision of Japan as the Eldorado — with the blue ceramic‐tiled roof designed for the studio house of Katsumi Asaba, Rossi adds two unexpected chapters in his personal chromatic tale.

Studio house of Katsumi Asaba, Tokyo, Aldo Rossi; © Jacopo Costanzo

This architecture recalls a project, completed by Rossi in the late eighties, that even if smaller and less well known, has a similar intensity.

A series of 12 carpets and related design studies have as their main subject the region of Sardiniain Italy, and certain imaginary scenarios invented by Rossi himself. In this work Rossi uses a recurrent and non‐ standard use of colours, shapes and iconoclastic images, to achieve unknown ‐ almost mysterious ‐ forms of expression. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of these expressions closely recall the archaic paintings on cave walls.

Along with tormented and refined drawings that have a Nauragic subject, Rossi produces here some of his most artificial compositions. These compositions are geometrically ambitious: Doric style columns, cabins, as well as monuments, labyrinths, and ruins present themselves with great intensity.

Souviner d'Afriques is probably one of Rossi's most powerfully communicative works.

The typical Sardinian woven fabrics which result, faithfully translate Rossi's drawings, but add a touch of the unexpected.

“Souvenir d'Afrique”, Aldo Rossi, Tessiture Sarde, Storea editore, 1988

The architectural composition, recalling Modena's early works, has three colour blocks: one orange interior, one red plaster, and a dry shadow. The last element is a palm, which sublimates the composition as the only out‐ of‐the‐context object.

Thus, the question needs to be asked: could it be postulated that colour is the sole truly rebellious trait of Aldo Rossi’s architecture?