Alvaro Siza

Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza (Alvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Viera), is one of the best-known Portuguese architects of the 20th century. Although Alvaro Siza produced numerous projects for clients in Portugal (houses, schools, and other instututions), it was not until the 1980s that Alvaro Siza began to recieve recognition through exhibitions and commissions in other European countries.

Alvaro Siza's architecture is strongly rooted in the Modern movement, but incorporates a subjective approach to concept and design, seeking alternative interpretations of modernism. Alvaro Siza has stated, "Architecture is increasingly a problem of use and reference to models... My architecture does not have a pre-established language and does not establish a language. It is a response to a concrete problem, a situation in transformation in which I participate."

The geographic and climatic contitions of the place of Alvaro Siza's architecture are of profound importance to this thinking in addition to cultural and social concerns. In Alvaro Siza's oeuvre sensitivity to context does not result in nostalgic historicism or critical regionalism. It is rather a unique approach to a universal language transformed to respond to a local situation. Alvaro Siza's built works strive to integrate conflicting demands and affinities, often embodying poins of tension that exist in a delicate balance.

For Alvaro Siza, a building is a. the same lime autonomous and responsive, unified and diversified. Alvaro Siza eschews using technology for technology's sake and employs local materials such as stucco, brick, and stone - all traditional building materials that Alvaro Siza uses to create abstract compositions.

Alvaro Siza's swimming pools (1966) located in Leca de Palmeira, a small town near Porto, were his first projects to receive acclaim outside Portugal. These seaside pools easily make the transition from man-made concrete to the natural rock formations, creating sublime bathing pools. The changing rooms are in an unobtrusive pavilion of concrete with wood roofs that guide the visitor through a corridor-like space before opening on to the expansive sea.

The Pinto e Sotto Maior Bank (1974) in Oliveira de Azmeis, a small town in northern Portugal, is very representative of Alvaro Siza's early work. This small building does not adopt the formal architectural vocabulary of the place but rather creates a dialogue with its surroundings. The curved, glass facade looks out on to the square, however, creating a formal juxtaposition with the traditional forms of the square. Another bank building, the Borges and Irmao Bank (1986) in Vila do Conde, Portugal, takes a similar approach. It is both a separate entity and a participant in the townscape, respecing the scale of its surroundings. From the outside little is revealed of the character of the interior. However, the space flows because of the visual connection between floors.

In 1977 following the revolution in Portugal, the local government of Evora commissioned Alvaro Siza to plan a housing project in the rural outskirts of the town. It was to be one of several that Alvaro Siza would do for the national housing association, consisting of 1,200 low-cost, row houses, some one-story and some twostory units, all with courtyards. The layout, of the new section gave order to an area at the periphery of the town while connecting it with existing housing areas.

During the 1980s, Alvaro Siza asked to undertake increasingly larger institutional projects, such as the School of Architecture (1992) at Porto University in Porto, the Teachers Training College (1991) at Setubal, and the Centro Galiziano (Museum of Modern Art, 1994) in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, located within the historical city.

This Centro Galiziano building fots into a complicated and historic site employing concepts of integration and contrast. The reductive elongated form of the museum - produced by two adjacent wings - seeks to create classical order in an area that had suffered decline. The granite exterior contrasts with the stark white interior. Once again, Alvaro Siza has approached the work with sensitivity to context without relinquishing the autonomy and strength of the new construction. Other notable museum projects include the addition to the Serralves Foundation and Museum in Porto (1999), the renovation and extension to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1997), and the Manzana del Revellin Cultural Centre in Ceuta, Portugal (1997).

Other outstanding, widely published projects of Alvaro Siza's include die Aveiro University Library a. Aveiro, Portugal (1994); the Vitra factory at Weil-am-Rein, Germany (1994); Schlesisches Tor Apartments at Kreuzberg, Germany (1983); the Portuguese Pavilion at Expo '98 in Lisbon, Portugal (1998); the Santa Maria Church in Marco de Canavezes, Portugal (1997).

Biography

Born in 25 June 1933 in Matosinhos, just north of Porto in Portugal. Studied architecture at University of Porto, School of Architecture (1949-55). Opened his own atelier in Porto (1954) and began Alvaro Siza's career by designing smaller works, mainly residences in the late 1950s-1960s. Collaborated will) Portuguese architect Fernando Tavora (1955-58); began leaching at University of Porto (1966); became full professor (1976-present); has taught and lectured outside Portugal at Harvard University, the Ecole Poytechniquc of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Los Andes University of Bogota. Awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1992).

Major works:
Swimming pools, Leca de Palmeira, Poriugal, 1966
Alves Santos House, Povoa do Varzim, Portugal, 1969
Pinto e Sotto Maior Bank, Oliveira de Azmeis, Poriugal, 1974
J.M. Teixeira House, Taipas Guimaraes, Portugal, 1980
Borges and Irmao Hank, Vila do Conde, Portugal, 1986
"Joao de Deus" Kindergarten, Penafiel, Portugal, 1988
Residential complex Schilderswijk West, The Hague. Netherlands, 1988
School of Architecture, Porto University in Porto, 1992
Teachers Training College, Setubal, Portugal, 1991
Vitra Factory, Weil-am-Rein, Germany, 1994
Centro Galiziano (Museum of Modern Art), Santiago de Compostela, Spain 1994
Manzana del Revellin Cultural Centre, Ceuta, Portugal, 1997
Architect's Office, Porto, 1998
Boavista Residential Complex, Porto, 1998
Serrakves Museum and Foundation, Porto, 1999
Bibliography:
1. Alvaro Siza 1954-1988.
2. A+U Extra Edition Tokyo: A+U, (June 1989).
3. Angelillo, Antonio (editor), Alvaro Siza: Writings on Architecture, Milan Skira, 1997
4. Dos Santos, Jose Paolo, (editors). Alvaro Siza: Works and Projects, 1954-1992,
5. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1994 Fleck Brigitte, Alvaro Siza, Basel and Boston: Birkhauser, 1992
6. Frampton Kenneth, Alvaro Siza: Tutte le Opere, Milan Electa, 1999
7. Jodidio Philip, Alvaro Siza (Architecture & Design Series), Koln and London, Taschen, 1999
8. De Llano, Pedro and Carlos Castanheira, Alvaro Siza, Madrid, Sociedad Editorial Electa Espana, 1995
9. Siza, Alvaro, Alvaro Siza, Arquiucto: Centro de Art Contemporanea de Galicia, Galicia, Spain, Xunta de Galicia, 1993
10. Testa Peter, The Architecture of Alvaro Siza, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., 1984
11. Testa, Peter, Alvaro Siza, Basel and Boston, Birkhauser, 1996
12. Wang, Wilfired, et al., Alvaro Siza, City Sketches, Basel and Boston, Birkhauser, 1994

Some books about Alvaro Siza

Alvaro Siza: GA Document Extra 11
Alvaro Siza 1954-1976
Alvaro Siza: Writings on Architecture
The Pritzker Architecture Prize 1992: Presented to Alvaro Siza
Alvaro Siza. Das Gesamtwerk.
Alvaro Siza - Casas 1954-2004
Siza, Alvaro - Obra Completa
Francesco Venezia
Profesion Poetica - Profissao Poetica
An interview with Alvaro Siza: An article from: Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature
Architecture of Alvaro Siza (Quaderni Di Lotus/Lotus Documents, 6)
A arquitectura de Alvaro Siza = The architecture of Alvaro Siza
Interview with AIlvaro Siza Vieira (Archidea) (Archidea)
The architecture of Alvaro Siza (Thresholds)
Alvaro Siza em Matosinhos (Conferencias de Matosinhos)
Architekten--Alvaro Siza Vieira (IRB-Literaturauslese)

Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is considered a modern architect, yet his work exhibits a carefully crafted balance of intricate and complex forms, spaces, and elements, and reveals a traditionalism rooted in the cultural heritage and physical environment of Finland. Over the course of his 50-year career, Alvar Aalto, unlike a number of his contemporaries, did not rely on modernism's fondness for industrialized processes as a compositional technique, but forged an architecture influenced by a broad spectrum of concerns.

Alvar Aalto 's is an architecture that manifests an understanding of the psychological needs of modern society, the particular qualities of the Finnish environment, and the historical, technical, and cultural traditions of Scandinavian architecture. Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was born in the Ostro-Bothnian village of Kourtane in 1898. The family soon moved to Alajarvi, where his mother, Selma Hackstedt Aalto, died in 1903. By 1907 Alvar Aalto 's father, J. H. Aalto, a government surveyor, had remarried and moved the family to the central Finnish city of Jyvaskyla. In Jyvaskyla the young Alvar Aalto attended the Normal School and the Classical Lyceum, and in the summer months during his teens often accompanied his father on surveying trips. Alvar Aalto entered the Helsinki Polytechnic in 1916, and became a protege of Armas Lindgren (who was partner of E. Saarinen and H. Gesellius during the formative period of Finnish National Romanticism). While a student, Alvar Aalto worked for Carolus Lindberg on the "Tivoli" area for the 1920 Finnish National Fair, and served in the militia during the civil strife following the Russian Revolution. After graduating from the Polytechnic in 1921, Alvar Aalto sought employment in Sweden; unable to secure a position with Gunnar Asplund, Alvar Aalto worked for A. Bjerke on the Congress Hall for the 1923 Goteborg World's Fair.

After having executed several buildings for the 1922 Industrial Exhibition in Tampere, Alvar Aalto established his practice in Jyvaskyla in 1923. While securing local commissions, Alvar Aalto also followed the normal practice in Finland of participating in architectural competitions. In 1924 Alvar Aalto married the architect Aino Marsio. Exemplary of the classicism found throughout Scandinavia during the 1920s, Alvar Aalto 's early work was influenced by contemporary Nordic practitioners such as Asplund and Ragnar Ostberg, as well as by the simple massing and ornamentation of the architettura mirwre of northern Italy. His work evolved from the austere quality of the Railway Workers Housing (1923), to the more Palladian inspired Workers Club (1924-1925) (both in Jyvaskyla), and from there to the deftly refined and detailed Seinajoki Civil Guards Complex (1925), Jyvaskyla Civil Guards Building (1927), and the Muurame Church (1927-1929). Composed of simple, wellproportioned volumes rendered in stucco or wood, these works are characterized by their sparse decoration and selective use of classical elements.

In 1927 Alvar Aalto won the competition for the Southwestern Agricultural Cooperative Building (1927-1929), and moved his office to Turku. Located on the southwest coast of Finland, Turku, the former Swedish capital, was a major cultural center where Alvar Aalto made numerous contacts that proved important to his development. His friendship with architect Erik Bryggman was coupled with Turku's proximity to Sweden, where associations with Asplund and Sven Markelius provided connections with the continental architectural avantgarde. Alvar Aalto not only attended the 1929 meeting of Les Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), but traveled regularly throughout Europe, making him one of the most knowledgeable architects in Finland of the "new architecture."

During the six years spent in Turku (1927-1933), Alvar Aalto designed the series of buildings that would establish his international reputation. His architecture evolved from the stripped classicism of the Agricultural Cooperative Building toward a full acceptance of the formal and theoretical canons of International Style modernism or "functionalism" as it was termed in Finland. The Turun Sanamat Newspaper Building (1928-1930) was the first work in Finland to incorporate Le Corbusier's les cinq pointes d'une architecture nouvelle. The Standard Apartment Block in Turku (1929), the Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium (1929-1933), and the Turku 7th Centenary Exhibition complex (designed in collaboration with Bryggman in 1929) indicate Alvar Aalto 's level of understanding of both International Style modernism and the other avantgarde movements in art and architecture that occurred in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In addition to functionalist principles, Alvar Aalto 's work demonstrated an awareness of Russian Constructivism and the Dutch de Stijl movement, not to mention the work of Johannes Duiker, Andre Lurcat, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. During this period, Alvar Aalto was an active polemicist who advanced the cause of modernism in Finnish architecture.

Alvar Aalto moved his office to Helsinki in 1933, hoping the capital would provide greater opportunities for commissions, as well as bringing him closer to the city of Viipuri where the Municipal Library (1927-1935) was under construction. Although Alvar Aalto would not receive a major public commission in Helsinki for another two decades. Alvar Aalto 's practice expanded. This was an important period of transition in his work which, with the Viipuri Library, included his house and office in the suburb of Munkkiniemi (1934-1936), the Finnish Pavilions for the 1937 Paris and 1939 New York World's Fairs, the Villa Mairea (1937-1938), and the factory and workers' housing at Sunila (1935-1954). At this time Alvar Aalto received the patronage of Harry and Maire Gullichsen, prominent industrialists, for whom Alvar Aalto had designed the summer house Mairea on the Ahlstrom estate in Noormarkku. The Gullichsens provided Alvar Aalto with entry into Finland's industrial establishment, which resulted in a number of factory and housing commissions throughout Finland, including the complexes at Sunila, Inkeroinen, Kauttua, Vaasa, Karhula, and Varkaus for the Ahlstrom and Stromberg companies. In 1935, with the assistance of Maire Gullichsen and with Nils Gustav Hahl as director, the firm of Artek was formed, which produced and marketed Alvar Aalto 's furniture, fabric, and glassware designs.

During the mid-1930s Alvar Aalto 's work began to embody a more tactile, romantic, and picturesque posture, becoming less machinelike in imagery. The presence of these characterisl ics in his work, coupled with a seemingly rekindled interest in Finnish vernacular building traditions and a concern for the alienated individual within modern mass society, signals a movement away from the functionalist tenets that formed his architecture in the early 1930s. In renouncing industrialized production as a compositional and formal ordering sensibility, Alvar Aalto moved toward a more personal style which solidified over the next decade, a direction achieving maturity in his work executed after World War II.

Major works: Bell tower, Kauhajrvi, Finland, 1921 - 1923
Municipal hospital, Alajrvi, Finland, 1924 - 1928
Defence Corps Building, Jyvskyl, Finland, 1926 - 1929
T church, Helsinki, Finland, 1927
Viipuri library 1927
Turun Sanomat newspaper offices, Turku, Finland, 1928 - 1930
Tuberculosis sanatorium and staff housing, Paimio, Finland, 1928 - 1929
Central University Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia (former Yugoslavia), 1931
Municipal library, Vyborg, Russia, 1933 - 1935
Corso theatre, restaurant interior, Zrich, Switzerland, 1934
Finnish Pavilion, 1939 World's Fair, 1939
Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947 - 1948
Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland, 1949 - 1966
House of Culture, Helsinki, Finland, 1952 - 1958
Town centre, Seinjoki, Finland, 1958 - 1987
North Jutland Art Museum, Aalborg, Denmark, 1958 - 1972
Regional Library of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland, 1965
Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland, 1962 - 1971
Building for Westmannia-Dalecarlia Nation, Uppsala, Sweden, 1963 - 1965
Central-Building of the Satellite-city "Neue Vahr", Bremen, Germany, 1962
Mount Angel Abbey Library, Mount Angel, Oregon, 1970

Some books about Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto (Archipocket)

Nature and Space: Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier

Alvar Aalto in His Own Words

Alvar Aalto - Villa Mairea Aid (Architecture in Detail)

Alvar Aalto Complete Work Vol 2 (Alvar Aalto)

Alvar Aalto Apartments

The Architectural Drawings of Alvar Aalto 1917-1939: Villa Mairea, 1938 : Villa Mairea, 1938-1939 (Garland Architectural Archives)

The Architectural Drawings of Alvar Aalto 1917-1939: Aalto's Own Home in Helsinki, the Finnish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, and Other Buildings and Projects, 1932-19374

Alvar Aalto: Towards a Human Modernism

Alvar Aalto: An Academy Architectural Monograph (Architectural Monographs (London, England), 4.)

Alvar Aalto: The Complete Catalogue of Architecture, Design and Art

Villa Mairea: Alvar Aalto (Architecture in Detail)

Alvar Aalto In Seven Buildings

Villa Mairea , Noormarkku (Alvar Aallon arkkitehtuuria)

Alvar Aalto: A working bibliography (Architecture series--bibliography)

Alvar Aalto: The Finnish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Alvar Aalto Furniture

Das Theater von Alvar Aalto in Essen

Alvar Aalto: Kulttuuritalo, House of Culture, Helsinki

Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi (born 1931), one of the most influential architects during the period 1972-1988, has accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. After receiving his architecture degree at the Polytechnic University in Milan in 1959, Aldo Rossi served as a course assistant to prominent architects Ludovico Quaroni and Carlo Aymonino. Aldo Rossi became a faculty member in the School of Architecture in Milan in 1965 and at the University in Venice in 1975. In addition to these regular appointments, his growing fame brought him positions as a professor in Zurich, Spain, and the United States.

Aldo Rossi 's career as a theorist began to take shape during the years Aldo Rossi worked with Ernesto Rogers on the leading Italian architecture magazine Casabella-Continuita (1955-1964). In 1966 Aldo Rossi published the book The Architecture of the City, which subsequently was translated into several languages and enjoyed enormous international success. Spurning the then fashionable debates on style, Aldo Rossi instead criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time. Despite the modern movement polemics against monuments, for example. Aldo Rossi held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city.

This understanding of the city and its elemente, its monuments, and its permanences, informed Aldo Rossi 's own designs for public buildings. One of his earliest major public buildings was the addition to the existing cemetery of the city of Modena in northern Italy. Perceiving the cemetery as a repository of social meaning, Aldo Rossi conceived of it as a house for the dead, indeed, a city of the dead. The elemental architectonic forms, as in the elegant stereometrie volumes of the ossuary with its chamfered windows, reflect his ongoing investigations into building typology, that which remains beyond the particular and the concrete.

The primary elements of architecture are repeated again and again in his work as Aldo Rossi engages in a determined search for essential forms based on what Aldo Rossi refers to as "repetition and fixation." Aldo Rossi attempts to recover the "immovable elements of architecture," not as empty catalogs of forms but as a search for an ageless originality found in formal types. Understood in this fashion, architecture, Aldo Rossi claims, helps make sense of the lived reality of the world. lt also provides the fixed scene of human events, which the architect historically has not been able to foresee. The most enduring architecture has been that which, in Aldo Rossi 's words, "stopped short of the event." Aldo Rossi gave these ideas built form in the school at Fagnano Olona, for example, where the grand stepped podium leads to the gymnasium; and provides a place where class photographs can be taken, a school ritual in both Italy and the United States. Such rituals, says Aldo Rossi, give the "comfort of continuity, repetition, compelling us to an oblique forgetfulness"; the architecture should provide the backdrop against which they can be played out.

In the project for the Carlo Felice Theater in Genoa, Aldo Rossi 's task was to replace the theater that was bombed in World War II. His project leaves the old facade intact but accommodates full complex of new functions and spaces. The stereometric architectural forms convey an originality that at the same time transcends time and asserts a powerful presence in the urban fabric. Here and elsewhere Aldo Rossi avoids historical and technological detailing in favor of preserving the integrity of the volumes, which then convey the quality of structures that have stood since antiquity.

For Aldo Rossi, public buildings often become miniature versions of the city, particularly his schools and his Teatro del Mondo for the 1980 Venice Biennale. At Fagnano Olona, Aldo Rossi organized a series of elements (rotunda, cubic block, conical smokestack) around a central count and approached along linear elements such as a street, a bridge, or a wall axially aligned with the central elements, a disposition that recalls Italian city planning Such an organization also characterizes the school in Broni, where the library recalls historic models such as the anatomical theaters of Padua and Bologna. In turn, these types informed his Teatro del Mondo floating in the canals of Venice; like the city, the theater is also a stage, and simply miniaturizes the activity and organization of the city. In the same way, Aldo Rossi denies that Aldo Rossi creates the elements that regularly recur in his work; instead, Aldo Rossi discovers them in the city, especially the cities in Italy that Aldo Rossi knows and loves best; Milan, Mantua, and Venice.

Even before the success that Aldo Rossi has enjoyed in the last decade with projects underway from Japan to Germany, Aldo Rossi achieved singular distinction for his drawings. Although one of his professors tried to discourage him from studying architecture on the grounds that Aldo Rossi drew as if Aldo Rossi were a rural builder, Aldo Rossi was not disrouraged. Inspired by the urban landscapes of Italian painters Mario Sironi and Giorgio Morandi, Aldo Rossi produces haunting images in which his buildings and others in the city shrink, while everyday objects such as coffeepots and cigarette packs swell to fill the frame. The drawings conflate historical buildings, built and unbuilt projects by Aldo Rossi, mundane utensils, and shadowy figures occupying tiny cabins or yellow windows, and the same images, combined and reshuffled, reappear regularly, just as the cube and the cone reappear in his buildings.

The recurrence coffeepots in his increasingly wellknown drawings eventually induced the Italian firm Alessi to commission him to design a line of coffeepots and even, eventually, a watch that recalls those of his childhood schoolrooms.

Although Aldo Rossi 's first projects, for a housing complex on the outskirts of Milan (Gallaratese 1969-1974), the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena (begun 1972), and Fagnano Olona School in Varese (1972-77), were contemporary with the publication of his most important theoretical works, only in the late 1970s and 1980s did his building work begin in earnest, and only in the last few years has his fame brought him a significant numberr of commissions in Italy.

Two civic center projects in Italy indicate the range of his responses to a similar program. In Perugia, a large civic center (1988). with town hall, theater, and housing project, is elevated on a parking podium and mediates between the historic city and the postwar business center. The U-shaped Town Hall, with shops below and offices above, is bisected by a galleria raised high on slender piers. Adjoining the town hall but irregularly placed on the parking podium are the theater, with its freestanding conical entrance tower, and a long, slender housing block. The disposition suggests an accretion of disparate buildings over time rather than a complex planned for uniformity. Although here as elsewhere drawing on simple local types, Aldo Rossi also transforms them, as Aldo Rossi does with the public arcade that slices through the town hall.

The town hall for the small village of Borgoricco demanded an altogether different response. Although Aldo Rossi adopted the U-shaped plan again, Aldo Rossi opens it up here with a south-facing courtyard framed on one end by copper clad, barrel-vaulted roofs that cascade down over the meeting room and the archives The simple elemental forms of the massive Perugia project give way here to a more complex massing and a greater play of materials, Each of the three principal views is articulated in markedly different ways, yet ordered and related by such elements us the narrow brick walls that rise through the full two stories.

Two other major recent private commercial projects in Italy are worth noting. For the GFT fashion group in Turin, Aldo Rossi designed an office building on an L-shaped site with an angled corner entrance of smooth brick. Aldo Rossi repeats a motif from Borgoricco when Aldo Rossi anchors the entrance with giant double columns surmounted by a green steel I-beam lintel. By incorporating a smaller version of the double column I-beam lintel motif in the auditorium. Aldo Rossi emphasizes the parallel between public, urban scale and the theater as a smaller version of the city. Street elevations of the two lateral wings incorporate stone porticoes, a traditional urban element in the Piedmontese city, but Aldo Rossi also modulates the surface by extending the stone revetment up to the first floor and framing the stone piers with green steel I-beams. A regional shopping center outside Parma rises up out of the flat plains with 50-ft-high brick towers that both carry the name of the center and provide a setting for billboards and advertising.

A hotel complex in Fukuoka, Japan, an architecture school for the University of Miami, Florida, and a victory in a major competition for the Museum of Natural History in Berlin promise further opportunities to render the ideas Aldo Rossi explored in Architecture of the City in built form.

Major works:

Disney Development Company, Orlando-Celebration
Villa bei Ronchi Ronchi (Versilia), 1960
Contemporary History Museum, Milan, 1962
Rekonstruktion Theater Paganini und Gestaltung der Piazza della Pilotta, Parma, 1964
Platz vor dem Rathaus mit Denkmal, Segrate, 1965
Wohnanlage San Rocco, Monza, 1966
Middle school, Triest, 1968-69
F. de Amicis elementary school, Broni, 1969-70
Gallaratese 2 Residential Complex, Milan, 1969-73
San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena, 1971, 1978-84
Elementary School in Fagnano Olona, Fagnano Olona, 1972-76
Pavillon in Borgo Ticino, Borgo Ticino, 1973
Single-Family Houses in Broni, Broni, 1973, 1982-83
El Corral Del Conde, Seville, 1975
Single-Family Houses in Mozzo, Mozzo, 1977-79
Middle school, Broni, 1979-83
Teatro del Mondo, Venice, 1979-80
Single-Family Houses in Zandobbio, Zandobbio, 1979
Cooperativa d'abitazione, Goito, 1979-83
Cooperativa d'abitazione, Pegognaga, 1979-82
Wohn- und Gesch ftshuser Sdliche Friedrichsstadt Block 10, Berlin-Kreuzberg, 1981-88
Funerary Chapel, Giussano, 1981-87
Centro direzionale e commerciale Fontivegge, Perugia, 1982-88
New Town Hall, Borgoricco, 1983-90
San Cristoforo Station, Milan, 1983-92
Stadtvilla an der Rauchstrae, Berlin-Tiergarten, 1983-85
Carlo Felice Theatre, Genoa, 1983, 1987-90
Aurora House, Turin, 1984-87
Centro Torri Department Store, Parma, 1985-88
Mehrzweck-Restaurierung, Este, 1985-93
Vialba residential complex, Milan, 1985-91
Mittelschule in Cantu, Cantu, 1986-93
Wohnanlage La Villette, Paris, 1986-91
School of Architecture, University of Miami, Miami, 1986-93
Gymnasium, Olginate, 1987-93
Hotel il Palazzo, Fukuoka, 1987-89
Lighthouse Theatre, Lake Ontario, 1987-89
Monumental Arch, Galveston, 1987-90
Hotel Duca di Milano, Milan, 1988-91
Palazzo dello Sport, Milan, 1988-94
The Hague Area Development, The Hague, 1988
Pisorno Area Development, Tirrenia, 1988-94
Center for Contemporary Art, Besse-et-Saint-Anastaise, 1988-91
Pocono Pines House, Mount Pocono, 1988-89
Centro Citta Commercial Area, Gifu, 1988-93
Via Croce Rossa Monument, Milan, 1988-90
GFT Comune di Settimo Torinese, Turin, 1988-93
Restaurant and Beer Hall, Sapporo, 1989-93
Ambiente Showroom, Tokyo, 1989-92
UNY Shopping Center, Nagoya, 1989-93
Asaba Design Studio, Tokyo, 1990-91
University of Castellanza, Castellanza, 1990-94
San Carlo alla Barona Church, Milan, 1990-93
Bonnefanten museum, Maastricht-Cramique terrein, 1990-94
Civic Center, Verbania, 1990-93
Canary Wharf Office Complex, London, 1990-93
Hotel Ocean, Chikura, 1990-91
Residential Complex, Citt di Castello, 1990-93
Lorenteggio Public Housing, Milan, 1990-93
Residential Complex, Bari, 1991-94
Palazzo del Cinema, Venice, 1991-94
Villa Alessi, Lago Maggiore, 1991-93
City Center, Kuala Lumpur, 1991-94
La Torre del Sole, Makuhari, 1991-94
Disney Office Complex in Disneyland, Orlando, 1991-94
Art Academy, New York City-Bronx, 1991-94
Linate Airport, Milan, 1991-94
Villa Alessi, Suna di Verbania, 1993-95
Quartier Schtzenstrae, Berlin-Mitte, 1995-97
Celebration - Disney World town, Orlando, 1995
Cirque de Soleil-Haus, Berlin-Mitte, 1997-2000
Umnutzung des Pirelli-Firmengelnde (Bicocca), Milan, 1999

Some books about Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi: I Quaderni Azzurri

Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects

A Scientific Autobiography

Care Architetture: Scritti Su Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi: Architectural Monograph

Aldo Rossi: Architect

Aldo Loris Rossi (Pocket Architecture)

Visionary architecture of the 20th century: Master drawings from Frank Lloyd Wright to Aldo Rossi

Care Architetture: Scritti Su Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi: Villa sul Lago Maggiore : progetto di villa con interno (Architettura)

Aldo Rossi in America, 1976 to 1979: March 25 to April 14, 1976, September 19 to October 30, 1979 (Catalogue - Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies , 2)

Aldo Rossi, architetture padane

Care Architetture: Scritti Su Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi: Architetture 1988-1992

Aldo Rossi (Works and Projects/Obras Y Proyectos)

Aldo Rossi Italian Architect

Adlo Rossi: Surrealist Vision (Architecture Series : Bibliography, a 1925)

Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) ranks as one of the most important pioneers of the modern movement in architecture. Ironically, his influence was based largely on a few interior designs and a body of controversial essays. Adolf Loos 's buildings were rigorous examples of austere beauty, ranging from conventional country cottages to planar compositions for storefronts and residences. His built compositions were little known outside his native Austria during his early years of practice.

Adolf Loos was born in Brno (Bruenn), Moravia, now Czech republic, on December 10, 1870. Adolf Loos was introduced to the craft of building at an early age while working in his father's stone masonry shop. At the age of seventeen. Adolf Loos attended the Royal and Imperial State College at Reichenberg in Bohemia. In 1889 Adolf Loos was drafted for one year of service in the Austrian army. From 1890 to 1893, Adolf Loos studied architecture at the Technical College in Dres den. As a student, Adolf Loos was particularly interested in the works of the classicist Schinkel and, above all, the works of Vitruvius. Adolf Loos 's developing tastes were considerably broadened during a three-year stay in the United States, which began in 1893. The 23-year-old architect was particularly impressed by what Adolf Loos regarded as the innovative efficiency of U.S. industrial buildings, clothing, and household furnishings. In 1896, Adolf Loos returned to Vienna where Adolf Loos began working in the building firm of Carl Mayreder.

In 1897, in the pages of The Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, Adolf Loos initiated a series of polemic articles that later established his international reputation. Adolf Loos did not directly address architecture in his writings. Instead, Adolf Loos examined a wide range of social ills, which Adolf Loos identified as the motivating factors behind the struggle for a transformation of everyday life. Adolf Loos 's writings focused increasingly on what Adolf Loos regarded as the excess of decoration in both traditional Viennese design and in the more recent products of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstatte. In 1898, in the pages of the review Ver Sacrum, which was an organ of the Wiener Secession, Adolf Loos published an essay that marked the beginning of a long theoretical opposition to the then popular art noveau movement. His theories culminated in a short essay entitled, "Ornament And Crime," published in 1908. To Adolf Loos, the lack of ornament in architecture was a sign of spiritual strength. Adolf Loos referred to the opposite, excessive ornamentation, as criminal - not for abstract moral reasons, but because of the economics of labor and wasted materials in modern industrial civilization. Adolf Loos argued that because ornament was no longer an important manifestation of culture, the worker dedicated to its production could not be paid a fair price for his labor. The essay rapidly became a theoretical manifesto and a key document in modernist literature and was widely circulated abroad. Le Corbusier later attributed "an Homeric cleansing" of architecture to the work.

Another point of contention decried by Adolf Loos was the masking of the true nature and beauty of materials by useless and indecent ornament. In his 1898 essay entitled "Principles of Building," Adolf Loos wrote that the true vocabulary of architecture lies in the materials themselves, and that a building should remain "dumb" on the outside. In his own work, Adolf Loos contrasted austere facades with lavish interiors. Much like Mies van der Rohe, Adolf Loos arrived at the reduction of architecture to a purely technical tautology that emphasized the simple assemblage of materials. This article was followed by the 1910 essay entitled "Architecture," in which Adolf Loos explained important contradictions in design: between the interior and the exterior, the monument and the house, and art works and objects of function. To Adolf Loos, the house did not belong to art because the house must please everyone, unlike a work of art, which does not need to please anyone. The only exception, that is, the only constructions that belong both to art and architecture, were the monument and the tombstone. Adolf Loos felt that the rest of architecture, which by necessity must serve a specific end, must be excluded from the realm of art.

In 1899, Adolf Loos designed the Cafe Museum, which proved to be one of the most notable projects of his early work. The austere interior was a mature architectural embodiment of his theorized renunciation of stylish ornamentation. The starkness of the "untattooed" facade that inspired the popular name Cafe Nihilismus asserted Adolf Loos 's developing theory of the predominance of technique over decoration. The cafe also affirms his aesthetic equation of beauty and utility by bringing every object back to its purely utilitarian value. To Adolf Loos, that which is beautiful must also be useful. Thus, the only elements Adolf Loos used to pattern the vaulted ceiling of the cafe interior were strips of brass, which also served as electrical conductors. A more refined work, the tiny Karntner Bar Vienna (1907), reveals in microcosm the architect's great sensitivity to spatial manipulation. Once again, Adolf Loos showed his fondness for the expressive use of natural materials as Adolf Loos skillfully manipulated classical materials including marble, onyx, wood, and mirror, into a careful composition of visual patterns.

Between 1909 and 1911, Adolf Loos designed and constructed one of his best known works, the controversial Looshaus in the Michaelerplatz, in the heart of old Vienna. This complex design enunciated theorems on the relationship between the memory of the historic past of a great city and the invention of the new city based on the modern work of architecture. The design was characterized by a mute facade from which all ornamental plastic shapes were absent. For Adolf Loos, the language of the environment of the metropolis was centered in the absence of all ornament. In 1910, a public furor spawned by the simplicity of the modernistic design resulted in a municipal order to suspend work; construction ceased and building permits were denied. Adolf Loos responded to the attacks in a public meeting attended by more than 2000 angry residents. The controversy ended with an agreement to add window boxes in an attempt to countrify and familiarize the unpopular design.

Adolf Loos 's private residential works were characterized by unembellished white facades. As a result, these buildings have routinely been associated with the work of Le Corbusier, J. J. Oud, and others. Among the more famous were the much published Steiner House (1910) and Scheu House (1912), both in Vienna. One of Adolf Loos 's best known projects was the entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922. Adolf Loos 's surprising combination of Doric columns at ground level with modern skyscraper technology indicated that Adolf Loos was less doctrinaire about ornament than his modernist colleagues believed. To Adolf Loos, the polished black granite columns, durable classical symbols in a building, were altogether useful and therefore beautiful.

Also in 1922, Adolf Loos was appointed to the post of Chief Architect of the Housing Department of the Commune of Vienna. His projects during this time were primarily con structions modulated around simply-composed layouts utilizing basic construction technology. Flexible interior arrangements were achieved through the use of movable partitions. Exteriors were typical of suburban housing Vegetable gardens, which were considered essential extensions of the dwellings, were assigned high priorities. Adolf Loos soon grew disillusioned with his work as chief architect. As a result of his opposition to the then current ideology of Austrian Marxism, Adolf Loos resigned from his post the same year Adolf Loos was appointed.

Adolf Loos moved to France in 1922. Adolf Loos lived there until 1927, dividing his time between Paris and the Rivier with frequent journeys to Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. Adolf Loos was received enthusiastically by the French avantgarde. His work entitled "Ornament and Crime" was translated in 1920 in Esprit Nouveau, a publication edited by Le Corbusier, Paul Dermee, and Ozenfant. Adolf Loos also exhibited regularly at d'Automne, and became the first foreigner to be elected to its jury. Adolf Loos built some of his most significant works during this period. These included The Tzara House in Paris (1926-1927), Villa Moller in Vienna (1928), Villa Muller (1930), Villa Winternitz in Prague (1931-1932) and the Khuner Country House at Payerbach in lower Austria. Monolithic in nature, these works contrasted greatly with the glass architecture that dominated rationalist styles of the 1920s. Once again, Adolf Loos as in a posture of contentious indifference to fluctuations in current taste.

In 1930, on his sixtieth birthday, Adolf Loos was officially recognized as a master of architecture. Adolf Loos was bestowed with an annual honorific income by the president of the Czechoslovakian Republic. His collected essays were published the following year. Adolf Loos died on August 23, 1933 and was buried beneath a simple tombstone of his own design. His most significant contribution to architecture remains his literary discourse.

Major works:
Cafe Museum, at Vienna, Austria, 1898 to 1899.
Wohnung Leopold Langer, at Vienna, Austria, 1901.
Villa Karma, Clarens, at Montreux, Switzerland, 1904 to 1906.
Wohnung Rudolf Kraus, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
Schmuckfedern-gesch ft Sigmund Steiner, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
American Bar, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
Wohnung Bellak, at Vienna, Austria, 1907.
Schneidersalon Knize, Vienna, Austria, 1909 - 1913.
House on the Michaelerplatz, at Vienna, Austria, 1910 to 1911.
Steiner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1910.
Scheu House, Vienna, at Austria, 1912 to 1913.
Horner House, at Vienna, Austria, 1921.
Rufer House, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
Villa Stross, at Vienna, Austria, 1922.
Landhaus Spanner, at Gumpoldskirchen, Austria, 1923.
Big shop (project), at Alexandria, Egypt, 1924.
Tristan Tzara House, at Paris, France, 1926 to 1927.
Moller House, Vienna, at Austria, 1927 to 1928.
Wohnung Hans Brummel, at Vienna, Austria, 1929.
Wohnung Willy Hirsch, at Pilsen, Czech Republic, 1929.
Khuner Villa, at on the Kreuzberg, Payerback, Austria, 1930.
Villa Muller, Prague, Czech Republic, 1930.
Wohnung Leo Brummel, at Vienna, Austria, 1930.
Muller House, at Prague, Czech Republic, 1930.
Landhaus Khuner, Payerbach, Austria, 1930.
Bojko House, at Vienna, Austria, 1929 to 1930.
Mitzi House, at Vienna, Austria, 1931.
House in the Vienna Werbund, Austria, 1930 to 1932.
Semler House, at Pilsen, Czech Republic, 1932.

Some books about Adolf Loos

Loos Adolf - and the Reconstruction of Villa Muller

Adolf Loos - Arquitectura 1903 - 1932

Adolf Loos - Huis voor Josephine Baker = Adolf Loos : house for Josephine Baker (Architectural models)

Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the Road to Modern Architecture

Adolf Loos - Teorias y Obras

Adolf Loos: Theory and Works

Adolf Loos - On Architecture (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought)

Adolf Loos (Architecture series--bibliography)

The architecture of Adolf Loos: An Arts Council exhibition

Geistesgegenwart: Essays zu Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Jura Soyfer

Begegnung mit Pionieren: Le Corbusier, Piet Mondrian, Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, Auguste Perret, Henry van de Velde (Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur)

Untersuchungen zu den Schriften von Adolf Loos (Dissertationen der Universitt Salzburg)

Klassiker des modernen Mbeldesign: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser (Keysers Sammlerbibliothek)