Square, Triangle, Circle.

Then the Windows:

The Poetry of San Cataldo Cemetery

Stephanie A Jazmines
Arch 3268 01
The Long Enlightenment
 Square, Triangle, Circle. Then the windows: the Poetry of San Cataldo Cemetery

Temple of death! The sight of you chills our hearts. Artist, flee the light of the Heavens!
Descend onto the tombs to sketch your ideas in the pale dying Light of the Sepulchral Lamps!
- Etienne-Louis Boullée, Architecture, Essai sur l’art

In the consideration of the Enlightenment and its influence on contemporary

architectural theory and design, the importance of Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728-1799)

cannot be denied. As a professor at the Académie Royale d ’Architecture, Boullée had

little opportunity to practice architecture but gained fame through the large number

of unpublished drawings he had donated to the Bibliothèque National. Along with the

drawings, he archived many philosophical writings concerning his theoretical and

practical views on architecture. Largely unstudied and unread until Emil Kaufmann’s

publication, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu in 1952,

Boullée’s work found an eager and appreciative audience in the modern architecture

scene. His arguably most important treatise, Architecture, essai sur l’art was first

published in English in 1953, despite the volume having been written between 1778

and 1788. Through these publications, architects and artists alike were finally able to

access these eighteenth century ideas of architecture that harbored unprecedented

aims to express character, create atmosphere, and compose through form. The

writings permeated through the architecture scene and in 1967, just one year after

publishing his seminal work L’architettura della Città, Aldo Rossi translated and wrote

a generous introduction to Boullée’s Essai. According to Rossi, the compositional

theories set forth by Boullée encompass two major characteristics of absolute validity

and modernity: the construction of a logical process of the investigation of forms and,

within that, the primacy of the conceptual, emotional, and operational moments. Five

Jazmines 2
years after the publication of Rossi’s Italian translation (1971), he and Gianni Braghieri

accepted the invitation to compete for the design of the extension to San Cataldo

cemetery in Modena, Italy, and won. Although much of the design is unbuilt, it is

evident that this project directly reflects many ideas presented in L’architettura della

Città. However, less often discussed is the undeniable influence of Rossi’s

interpretation of Boullée on not only on Modena, but also on Rossi’s general mode of

thinking. There is an apparent correspondence between the design of Modena and

Boullée’s ideas of architectural character that present architecture not as the art of

building, as historically defined by Vitruvius, but rather, as Poetry.

The competition for the cemetery at Modena was for an addition to be built on

the lot adjacent to a Jewish burial ground and a traditional neoclassical cemetery

designed by Cesare Costa between 1858 and 1876. Along with a number of drawings,

Rossi had written an accompanying text to his competition entry entitled “L’azzurro

del cielo,” published in Controspazio (October 1972). In this, Rossi insists on describing

his project in architectural terms, hoping to guarantee widespread understanding of it.

He writes that his extension “complies with the image of the cemetery that everyone

has.” In making this statement, he relies heavily on ideas of typology. As an overall

composition, regarding the various parts of the complex, Rossi asserts that “[t]he

cemetery must be considered a public building, whose paths have clarity and

necessary rationalism… Outside, it is enclosed by a wall on which windows are open.

Consequently, it is not very different from other public spaces. In its order and

position, it is also a reflection on an aspect that is exactly like the memory of the city”

and it this the recovery of typology, as Moneo argues, that is intrinsically linked to the

idea of memory. First and foremost in the design, the cemetery is understood as a

Jazmines 3
house – a house of the dead, alluding to the traditions of the earliest cultures in which

the house and grave were the same thing. In Rossi’s mind, “death signaled a passing

stage between two conditions with no well-defined limits … the cemetery as buildings

shall be the house of the dead … today the identification of house with grave has only

remained, as a distinctive feature, in the architectonic structure of the cemetery. The

house of the dead, the grave, the cemetery is a deserted, abandoned house…” Along

the short axis of Rossi’s plan as drawn and built, there exist the series of structures

that stand at the heart of the project. Defining the central spine are, from south to

north, a cube, a U-shaped building, a stepped triangle, and a truncated cone.

1 Aldo Rossi Competition Drawing Entry

From square to triangle to circle, the forms of Platonic solids make their

appearances, as is common in many of Rossi’s other works. The sequence of the

Jazmines 4
individual elements of San Cataldo thereby evoke a literal necropolis of monuments,

rendered in light and shadow. In this way, the monument becomes something more

than a historical reference, but rather, it becomes geography. “And is the light that

created the shadow not the same

light that corrodes material and

gives us a more authentic image

of that which the same artist

wanted to give us?” (Introduction

10). By using intelligible and

recognizable forms, the “fact” of

the architecture becomes a

2 Aldo Rossi sketch of geometric relationships- I Quaderni Azzurri, Vol. 6
different sort of reality “whose

sense and meaning are accessible and understandable” (Moneo 12). Regarding the

individual parts of the cemetery, Rossi writes that the monuments are “analogous to

the relationship between life and buildings in the modern city. The cube is an

abandoned or unfinished house; the cone is the chimney of a deserted factory” (Rossi

1976 31). The cube and the cone stand at the extremities of the triangular ossuaries,

patterned like vertebrae, allowing a reading of the entire complex as in the form of a

body as well as a city. The cubic volume, or Sanctuary, punctuated with one-meter-by-

one-meter openings referring to the “minimum space for death” (I Quaderni Azzurri),

have no frames, no floors, no roofs. It is a house of the dead, unfinished and

abandoned. It is “a collective monument where funeral, civil, or religious ceremonies

take place. Just like the cemetery, the sanctuary belongs to the whole community”

(Rossi 1976 31). The cone, or smokestack, is placed over the communal grave of the

Jazmines 5
“abandoned dead.” To these oppressed, “the city builds a monument higher than any

other” (Rossi 1976 31). The intended red color recalls the smokestacks of de Chirico,

while the proximity to the Jewish burial grounds relays a symbol of the Holocaust. The

Ossuaries, triangular both in plan and in section, connect the two ends of the axis.

3 Aldo Rossi Section Drawing for Modena Cemetery Entry

In the writing of Essai, Boullée included a section entitled “Funerary

Monuments or Cenotaphs.” Cemeteries and monuments of the dead, Boullée writes,

call for the Poetry of Architecture more than any other building type. It must be a

characterization of the resting place of death. To achieve this, he outlines three major

concepts for constructing a mournful effect. Primarily, Boullée writes that “the basis

of architecture is a totally bare, unadorned wall … I cannot conceive of anything more

melancholy that a monument consisting of a flat surface, bare and unadorned, made

of light absorbent material, absolutely stripped of detail, its decoration stripped of

detail, its decoration consisting of a play of shadows, outlined by still deeper shadows”

(Boullée 105 – 106). Secondly, he introduces the idea that the cemetery entrance must

be given “an illusion of buried architecture” (Boullée 105). He specifies that the nature

of this sunken architecture must be one in which the “construction was satisfying as a

whole at the same time and [made] the onlooker realize that a part of it was

concealed underground” (Boullée 106). The third description Boullée introduces is

Jazmines 6
what he terms “the architecture of shadows.” He uses an anecdote to describe the

effect, saying: “I was in the country, on the edge of a wood in the moonlight. My

shadow produced by the light caught my eye (it was certainly nothing new to me).

Because of my particular mood, the image seemed to me of an extreme melancholy”

(Boullée 106). From the beginning of Rossi’s work on Modena, it is apparent from his

early sketches that “the architecture of shadows” was consistently a part of his

designs. Specifically in the case of a cemetery, this unfinished quality in the buildings

create the sense of something lacking,

something missing. Rossi had taken this

phenomenon as an art having to do with

natural facts, something directly related to

“a direct experience of the beauty of things

and a state of mind … there is no art that is

not autobiographical” (Introduction 8-9).

While this section of Essai is quite

4 Aldo Rossi Sketch of Columbaria and Truncated Cone. I Quaderni
Azzurri, Vol. 8
brief, these is much to be gained in

comparing these ideas to the Rossi and Braghieri’s cemetery design. As it stands, the

cemetery as an architectural type found its form during the time of Boullée and the

Enlightenment. The cemetery, “with walls that define it as a reliquary, with

monumental doors full of archaeological resonance, with measurable order, with strict

functional services that suggests the newly discovered hygiene, is a building type that

was introduced in the late Enlightenment….These well-known typological dimensions

are accepted by Rossi here more radically than in any other of his projects” (Moneo

119). Pier Vittorio Aureli also writes of Rossi’s fascination with Essai, interpreting it as

Jazmines 7
a manifesto of architectural autonomy and exploration of what constitutes public

monuments (Aureli 142-43). As aforementioned, this is exactly how Rossi views the

cemetery: a monumental city of the dead. Taking each part of the cemetery at

Modena, one can make connections between the three ideas proposed by Boullée and

begin to see Rossi’s design as a manifestation of these writings. Each part of the

design can be read in parallel with these ideas of flat, plain walls, sunken buildings, and

shadows.

5 Aldo Rossi Competition Drawing of each element

Early in the competition, Rossi made extensive notes in his blue notebooks (I

Quaderni Azzurri) regarding the major moves he would be carrying through the

entirety of the design process. These early iterations, the initial moves, are perhaps

the most telling of Rossi’s intentions. Aside from the obvious typological allusions to a

Jazmines 8
 house, Rossi accepted the model of the adjacent Costa cemetery – an elongated

neoclassical courtyard.

6 View of Costa Cemetery 7 View of Rossi's extension as built

Similar to the nineteenth century model, Rossi surrounds his with three-storey

ossuaries, and an arcaded walk. These buildings, however, are “idealized, abstracted,

geometricized versions of the (Italian) cemetery-type […] For Rossi, however, the

ossuary walls with their rows of niches represent a fundamental Type of storage thus

inviting gloomy meditations” (Broadbent 226). The perimeter path formed by the

corridors of these buildings have a typological clarity that Rossi constantly desires in

his work, especially the beauty

that results from it. The interior

stair within the columbarium

cube unites the house typology

with this typology of the

gallery.

8 Interior View of the Ossuary as built

Jazmines 9
 There are two ways of approaching the interpretation of Modena within this

framework. The first is through the description of building typology and physical

properties as outlined in the previous pages. Much of this comes through Rossi’s

descriptive writing on the project in L’azzurro del cielo as well as in I Quaderni Azzurri

and works through Rossi’s theses of Collective Memory and the nature of the city,

taking the cemetery to be a city of the dead. The second avenue of interpretation is

through looking at Rossi’s introduction and translation of Essai as being indicative of

how he approached the design process theoretically. In this introduction, Rossi begins

by discussing Boullée as a Rationalist – or, someone who constructs a logical system

of architecture. However, the term “system” is not taken as a functionalist term. The

principals of the system, Rossi writes, are taken from nature and provides a

sentimentality that can only be derived from nature. Boullée writes that “The

creations of a man of genius are always characterized by the way he applies nature in

his Art” (Essai 113) There must be an inherent relationship between logic and art, and

this is what Rossi calls an “exalted Rationalism.” This, rather than conventional

Rationalism is what exists in Boullée’s work, Rossi argues. His system is autonomous,

clear, and offers “the autobiographical singularity of experience … A consideration of

this type can do justice to Hautecouer’s claim that Boullée understands the existence

of a superior degree of metaphor, and the possibility of provoking emotions from the

creation of what Baudelaire calls ‘correspondences’” (Introduction 2). Throughout the

Introduction, it becomes apparent that what Rossi is explicating is not a system

validated by art or science, but rather one that is logical, emotional, metaphoric, and

autonomous at once. The reason Boullée becomes such an important figure, then, is

because his compositional system is a result of his work being an explanation of this

Jazmines 10
system. Boullée states that “Vitruvius mistakes the effect for the cause” (Essai 83)

and that “one must design for effect. Our forefathers did not build their cabins until

after they had conceived of the image. It is this production of the spirit, it is this

creation, that constitutes architecture, and that we can consequently define as the art

of production and bring to perfection all of the ordinary buildings. The art of building

is thus only a secondary art that we deem suitable to name the scientific part of

architecture. Art properly says to science: here is what we believe must be

differentiated in architecture” (Boullée from Introduction 5). Architecture is taken as

a constructed art, the composition of which is constituted by technique. This is not

only to be taken as commentary on the way Boullée designs, but must also be

evaluated as a reflection of the Rossi’s own theoretical leanings.

In the same way Rossi examines one of Boullée’s buildings – the Public Library –

to evaluate the logical procedures of his systematic application, one can also examine

Modena. For Rossi, the origin of the Library as a project “is a point of emotional

reference, and that escapes analysis; it is associated with a theme from the beginning

and grows with it throughout the project … The first emotional datum, and ultimately

that in itself is devoid of any possibility of development, is associated with a figurative

solution, an apparently distant form that is not its own architecture” (Introduction 6).

The neo-classical courtyard is a cemetery type that Rossi adhered to strictly, allowing

for the facile recognition of the place as a cemetery. In addition to this was the

exercising of Boullée’s physically sensorial concepts regarding light, shadow, surface,

and ground plane in the elements that fell along the central axis of the complex. The

distinguishing feature that becomes not only the focus of Rossi’s study of Boullée, but

also of Rossi’s own work is this idea of architectural character that is the nature of the

Jazmines 11
subject – it is that which constitutes the emotional and evocative parts of the

architecture. The relationship to “the architecture of shadows” then is not merely a

reference to physicality, but the understanding that light is related to nature, to man,

and thus to the essence of time. In the passing of light, and in the construction of

shadows, both Rossi and Boullée are constructing an effect in which the environment

can speak directly to man’s own mortality.

10 Aldo Rossi Shadow Drawing. I Quaderni Azzurri Vol. 9

Jazmines 12
 Bibliography

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011.

Bandini, Micha. “Aldo Rossi.” AA Files, No. 1. London, UK: Architectural Association School of
Architecture, 1981-82. 105-111.

Boullée, Etienne-Louis. Architecture, Essai sur l'art. Vol. 9153. Trans. Sheila de Vallee. Ed. Helen
Rosenau. Paris: Bibiotheque National, 1953. 82-116. Print.

Heathcote, Edwin. Monument Builders: Modern Architecture and Death. London, UK: Academy Editions,
1999.

Johnson, Eugene J. “What Remains of Man – Aldo Rossi’s Modena Cemetery.” Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, Vol. 41, No. 1. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1982. 38-54.

Kaufmann, Emil. Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu. Vol. 3. Philadelphia: The
American Philosophical Society, 1952. 433-73. 42 vols. Print.

Moneo, Rafael. “Aldo Rossi: The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery.” Oppositions Reader:
Selected Essays 1973-1984. Ed. K. Michael Hays. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.
105-134.

Rossi, Aldo. Architetture 1959-1987. Ed. Alberto Ferlenga. Milano, IT: Edizioni Electa Spa Milano, 1987.

Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1982.

Rossi, Aldo. “The Blue of the Sky.” Oppositions 5. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976.

Rossi, Aldo. Introduction. Architettura, Saggio sull'arte. Ed. Etienne-Louis Boullée. Trans. Stephanie A.
Jazmines. Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1967. N. pag. Print.

Rossi, Aldo. I Quaderni Azzurri. 47 vols. Trans. Stephanie A Jazmines, Los Angeles: Getty Publications,
2000. N. pag. Print.

Strauss, Jonathan. Human Remains: Medicine, Death, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Paris. New
York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2012.

Warke, Val K. “Type – Silence – Genre.” Log, No. 5. New York, NY: Anyone Corporation, 2005. 122-129.

Jazmines 13
Introduction to Boullée by Aldo Rossi (1967)
Translation by Stephanie Jazmines (2015)

This essay of Boullée presents a particular interest for those today who are convinced of the
necessity of a reading of architecture founded on the logical and sustaining principals of
architectural designs that can be based, for the most part, on the development of a series of
propositions.
Boullée is a rationalist architect in the sense that, constructing a logical system of
architecture, he proposes a continual verification of diverse projects with assumed principals;
and that rationalization of the project consists of the adhering to this system.
So, in this essay, argumentation and design present themselves as the unity of the project
that constitute a system. The principals are stabilized from nature and create the feelings that
nature gives rise to in us; it has to do with seeing that in this participation of architecture and
this overall treatment of architecture as an art.
The system immediately rejects functionalism; and it has to do with the few, or the single
treatment, that I know, of architecture that negates each fundamental certainty of
functionalism as in theory and craft; from whom the precise contestation is explicitly a part of
Boullée and all of the treatises that came after Vitruvius.
In the presentation of this work, then, I have not understood the recollection of the history of
architecture (where Boullée already had his position that did not seem to me to suffer great
modifications) but proposes a more general system. So I press that all of this develops, in a
certain sense and for all that is possible, outside of the same architecture of Boullée. (Notes of
this analysis are much more pertinent in how much Boullée is an insignia of architecture, like
David is to painting, in the sense that these artists are preoccupied with the problems of the
transmission of experience).
Evidently, readings of this type represent also a choice; and I believe that each should choose
and construct a grounds of testimony and as a better way for valuing a trend; and not running
the risk of having to always restart from the beginning and never performing in a continuous
way the line of experience.
In all of this introduction, I always insist on the relationship between logic and art, and on
Boullée as rationalist: autobiographic, and exalted / elevated.
But why do we elevate him so much?
One part, certainly, through emphasis in the difficulty of measuring problems with critical
sense from the others, is close to how much Giedion says is from the obsession of Le
Corbusier for which “…only fanaticism and obsession grant the ability of not sinking in the sea
of mediocrity.”
Mediocrity is not understood so much or only in the human way or in the theoretical way. We
come to understand insufficiency, and mediocrity, as that which is the result obtained in the
rational way, and is then derived in a continuous way from the principals that we can offer.
And then, the instinct to break rational construction from within and place a sort of

1
continuous contradiction between systematic teaching and the necessary autobiography of
expression.
Carrying a continuous line of the trends that are served from analog proceedings say that, in
the architecture of rationalism, Boulle is as rigorous as Le Corbusier and Loos are to
European rationalism in the modern movement. From here the contrast is the apparent
contradiction of their architecture; the wild gardens and spheres of Boullée, the white
monuments and the excitement of Ronchamps, the stereometric architecture and the giant
column of Chicago. As Le Corbusier offered the more rigorous logical construction of
architecture, he had extracted from the data the problem of the theory of the house as a
machine to live in and from there we were given, above this, the more personal part of
architecture.
In reality, the logical construction of architecture constitutes the craft– in a sense the
opposite architecture that does not identify itself it with the result of that architecture.
Certainly, the conventional rationalism pretends to derive all of the process of architecture
from principals, while this rationalism exalts, from Boulle and the others, and presupposes a
confidence (or faith) that illuminates the system from the outside.
And then from a part of the maximum autonomy of the system, the clarity of the propositions,
from the other, the autobiographical singularity of the experience. And naturally, the
relationship is particularly complex in architecture. … A consideration of this type can do
justice to Hautecouer’s claim that Boullée understands the existence of a superior degree of
metaphor, and the possibility of provoking emotions from the creation of what Baudelaire
calls correspondences.
*
But architecture can say more of design by way of the architectural composition.
In the way of teaching design, or from describing it, there has always been a notable disparity
of views; it is always, in any case, difficult to ascertain the goodness of a procedure from
another -- what the value of the architecture is from the result of the procedure. In reality,
one can never hold oneself on account enough from the value of the form that shows itself, or
who the students know in some other way, and that which is imagined becomes the
fundamental experience. Now this experience can be part of the method and the system, but
can also overlap, as what happens in an external way.
From here, the success of these teachings insist directly on this image; from one part with a
psychological analysis etc, from the form almost and decidedly separate from architecture,
from another that is from a formal proposal of imitation or copying or stamping in a way that
exercises a direct influence.
In the first case, moving interest under the processes of perceived conformity, under all of the
visual implications of the images can comprise a useful experience. Experience of this type,
for reference to authentic aspects of modern culture, must be watched with interest. We have
one (aspect) wrong and it is that which is unable to propose from the interior of architecture
and that we ourselves cannot propose an architecture. It is certain that authentic disinterest
from these types of results is the more scientific position, but for the incapacity of tradition, it
is difficult to consider it under the formation of a theory of design.

2
More complex, in any case, is the discourse on the formalists. I mean formalism in the
elevated sense. To use these examples is to say that architects like Breuer, or from our own
days, Louis Kahn, belong to the sphere of the formalists; these architects know well the value
of forms and, above all, the effect; they do not construct a system but recall a series of
architectural works that they constitute from the formal pretexts for their own projects. It
limits them and is, in an authentic sense, the contaminator.
This position in architecture, and the architecture that does not degrade, has a capacity to
consume very forcefully; these in the genre are the more often imitated for the same qualities
and lastly for being very often born of taste and reconciled with intelligence of the authentic
aspirations and profound intuition, born elsewhere, with a type of image more fruitful and
more adapted to divulging.
Take a fundamental work of contemporary architecture like the convent of La Tourette of Le
Corbusier; this work presents an extraordinary synthesis of roman architecture and some
architecture of the 1700s, for example Boullée, and constitutes perhaps the major work of an
artist who, in all of his work, has developed a unitary search. This appearance, from beyond
the more or less authentic admiration for the artist, is difficultly cultivated in its own
architectural quality and lends itself to being vulgarly imitated.
One will note, however, like the same search on classicism and the architecture of the 1700s,
that in an artist like Louis Kahn, it is all of the formal and superficial that becomes a model of
grand diffusion; in reality, in the works of Louis Kahn the romance is all that is playful in
certain elements and combinations of the stylistic goal and the functional goal and the result
does not offer certainty like a meditation on a persistent form in architecture and does not
propose any systematic means.
In a certain sense, it is not only about parallel examples; even the architecture of Ledoux is
regarded with that of Boullée and there is more taste and more ability and something that
makes it more adaptable to being imitated. In reality, in Ledoux, the picturesque setting and
the fantastical elements of the architecture parlante poses itself within the scope of an
autonomous search and it clashes with another type of theme, for example the social, that is
completely foreign to Boullée.
One can see the difference of these two artists regarding the character of their works;
Ledoux, albeit from the interior of the expressive distinctions of architecture parlante,
confronts all of the themes that arise with the same disposition to make architecture; the
country house or the monument are places on the same plain. Boullée, as we will see, poses
the question of character and of theme as decisive questions; poses namely a choice that is
primary in the architectural project and places in the foreground, necessarily, the typological
aspect of architecture.
A typical aspect of this position is that one relative to the home. I alluded first to the rigor with
which this theme presents itself in Le Corbusier. Boullée, as the much later Adolf Loos, (to
insist on some names) is convinced that the discourse on the home is well identified and
separable from architecture as an art and is largely subjected to other determinants. When
Boullée speaks of exercises of the scholastic level on the rental house and of the difficulty of
mystery that this presents, he is speaking of a residential machine that is therefore not
accidental, as it seems to the critics of art, as the house he constructed in Paris, where
nothing varies from the other constructs of the age. And this does not present decisive
architectural characteristics. From an urban standpoint, as we know today, this position is

3
very rigorous, both from the dynamic urban standpoint and from the historical standpoint
(thinking of the urban edifices), and finally from technology.
*
Now, I believe that the authentic problem of architecture is the construction of this logical
system, validated in itself, independently from the disagreement between the scientific
conscience of architecture and the arts; disagreement that is negated by conventional
rationalism and is accentuated by exalted rationalism. The latter, in substance, wants to
isolate scientific reason – and in an attempt to isolate it maybe offers the more rigorous
contributions – showing at last its inability to be not so much sentimental as rational -- to
construct a world that guarantees and satisfies not only the logical but intellectual needs of
man. And this architecture is within rationalism and is from the rational demands that desires
overcome starting from the same logical base. Hence, the struggle and the outrage of Boullée
for the architecture of fantasy, for fantastic art, is his continued occupation with the
technical, distributive, and practical questions on the projects. So the architecture like POEMA
does not present anything arbitrary. Individuated internal opposition of the binary system of
the arts and of art, of theory and autobiography, some artists are brought to exasperate
themselves while trying to break the classical limits between the real and intelligible, between
rationalism and passion. And in this sense I speak of a rationalism exalted, emotional and
metaphoric.
It remains, however, that only an authentic rationalism, as the construction of a logical
architecture, can put an end to the functionalist old embarrassment and to the new fables of
architecture as an interdisciplinary question; architecture is always presented as its own well-
defined discipline, practical and theoretical, constituted from the problems of composition,
typology, distribution, and of the study of the city etc. that to us carry on effects and
constitute the body of architecture together with the works of thought, design, or
construction that we know of. To carry it forward means to accept it from within, that is, from
the discourse of architectural discourse, to try to answer in this way all of the problems that
man and civil progress pose to architecture. And it is this, from the more general form, the
rationalist attitude respects architecture and its construction; the belief in the possibility of a
teaching that is completely inclusive of a system and where the world of forms is logical
enough and precise as every other architectural appearance of fact, and to consider this as a
transmissible meaning of architecture like any other form of thought.
It follows that the problems of architecture, as such, are unique and do not have the sense to
say that the problems of antiquity are different from ours; while it has an extremely concrete
sense to say that the occasions of antiquity were different from ours.

The difficulty is to take that these conditions are different; one thinks, for example, of the
typological problem often where the modification is understood only in a quantitative, or
dimensional, or technological sense while the various dimensions have only the sense that
they operate with qualitative limits.
Here the question is like this logical construction of architecture (that is sought to delineate
between sequential pages) that can arrive at the composition and where one encounters a
personal or autobiographic moment. Evidently this question interests us not from the point of
view of the structural but from the practical; that is, from the possibility of conveying the
principles of the project outside of the formal imitation to see what is going on communicably

4
in exalted rationalism, and how it is possible for conventional rationalism to develop with
continuity in the full arc of the project.
*
I will always return to the compositional system of Boullée from the moment that all of the
work is based, exactly, on the explanation of this system. Let us remember each point. Firstly,
position the polemic with the classical treatises, from Vitruvius; Architecture is not the art of
construction and Vitruvius, says Boullée, mistakes the effect for the cause.
“One must design for effect. Our forefathers did not build their cabins until after they had
conceived the image. It is this production of the spirit, it is this creation, that constitutes
architecture, that we can consequently define as the art of production and bring to perfection
all of the ordinary buildings. The art of building is thus only a secondary art that we deem
suitable to name the scientific part of architecture.
Art properly says to science: voila that which we believe must differentiate in architecture.”
For Boullée, architecture is an art and the major difficulty consists exactly in recognizing it as
such: art constitutes the reductive aspect of architecture, but does not constitute
authenticity. But this art is constructed, like the other arts, though one of its techniques;
techniques that are constituted from the architectural composition.
For the architectural composition, are the principles of construction necessary?
Surely, in certain measure, but they are not as essential as distribution or decoration are also
non-essential parts of architecture. We must have the courage to search for the constitutive
principals that are within architecture and allow us a logical treatise, a transmission, a
progress.
To date, we are again able to respond to Boulle that we know few of these theories that are
convincing and if we retain this architecture as such we have made some progress. But we
must admit, further, that we also know few that we have posed to question with sufficient
clarity, trying to overcome the more or less declared functionalism that runs, starting from
Vitruvius, all of the history of architecture. The major interest that we feel for Boullée
theoretically, over the interest for the artist or for the works in this rejection of the functional
position of architecture is the resulting refusal to identify the thinking of architecture with the
constructed work; the architectural project with the urban fact.
Certainly there is a work of Boullée that is before us in all of its importance regardless of the
construction of Boullée and in a sense different from the theories of antiquity, for example, of
Alberti.
The designs of Boullée are an accomplished fact and are justifiable from the point of view of
the history of architecture, and naturally they presuppose an architecture or that which is
based also on built architecture. The cupola of Boullée is critical to the existing but
presupposes it; and it would be difficult to imagine the contrary.
The respected differences in the traditional style of understanding theoretical architecture is
in fact those presupposing works come from the built works but do not pretend to be built.
A position of this type in architecture also presupposes a type of experience of architecture
wider than traditional (for example, of the treatises) and certainly poses several questions
that we can call modern.

5
It is evident that in placing these questions, I am referring to a situation that goes beyond the
works of Boullée and is invested in several architects; certainly in the contemporary world of
Loos and Le Corbusier.
Loos and Le Corbusier are also architects that have built much, the second more than the
first, but it is all in their unbuilt work and it is difficult to be able to call the work theoretical in
the traditional sense because it is a type of diverse experience in which the artist can be
judged.
To speak also of a utopian claim in artists like Boullée has little significance as controversy
and it is the sense of the word utopia in architecture because we judge utopias by the
architecture we encounter, for the realization of the remarkable difficulty of economic and
sociological character. It is then of ‘the difficult works’ rather that the utopian works. Above
all in architecture, where the difficulty of realization are these and also many for the works
that are more modest, their realization can always be problematic.
The logical procedure of Boullée is the systematic application in his work.
We can distinguish: an emotional nucleus to reference, the construction of a complex image,
the technical analysis, the reconstitution of the work.
Let us examine a project of Boullée: that of the Public Library.
The origin of the project is a point of emotional reference and that escapes analysis; it is
associated with a theme from the beginning and grows with it throughout the project.
We accept that theme of Boullée is independent from the building, whether the library that is
about work are the existing libraries.
The first time he sees the library like the physical seat of spiritual heredity of the great men of
cultures past, they are themselves, with their works, the books, and remain so for the
development of the project, the first datum, the organized material of the project as in the
Palazzo Nazionale, the material of the architecture will be constituted by the constitutional
laws.
This first emotional datum, and ultimately is devoid of any possibility of development, and is
associated with a figurative solution, an apparently distant form and is not its own
architecture. Here Boullée declares he was “profoundly struck by the sublime conception of
the School of Athens by Raphael,” and declares he will achieve that. (It is this composition, he
says, that will be his success.) The School of Athens by Raphael is more than a symbol; the
great men of the past mixed contemporarily and constitute a unity between antique and
modern and the culling of a humanistic culture. But in this reference, no one is foreign to the
composition; the large space in the School of Athens, the dynamics of the figures, the
vastness of the space, the technical mastery is typical of a composition such as this.
This technical mastery is Boullée’s own interest, who searches always to resolve his
architecture beyond the personal core generator and the same system of his projects in a
skillful construction, of all the architectural and essentially independent, in the upper limit,
from the content addressed.
In this moment of formulization of the work appears the technical questions; the prints of
architecture, the distributed prints, constructive, stylistic, are the architecture and Boullée

6
loves to analyze singularly, breaking them down and composing them within the development
of his system.
It seems that the distribution has a large importance; and it is right that if one thinks that he
always seeks to identify the work within a type, to construct an exemplary work. Each of his
works searches, thus, to insert itself in a typological system, prefixed and necessary.
So the library became a grand, undivided space – an overlapping gallery, illuminated from
above, agile in every sense; elsewhere it will speak of a basilica and certainly a library, like the
other public buildings, emphasizing this key aspect of classification: the public and the private.
In another sphere still are the monuments.
These distributive prints, and the structures that they permit, become one with the decoration
without becoming reduced from the functional considerations. The books become a vast
amphitheater of books; use or decoration find themselves for the same purpose. “…I desired
that our literary riches were presented in the most beautiful ensemble possible. This is why I
have thought that nothing would be greater, more noble, more extraordinary, and of more
magnificent appearance, than a vast amphitheater of books. That, within this vast
amphitheater, one can imagine people placed on various ranks, and distributing in a
happenstance way, from hand to hand, the books … one does not presume that the author of
this Project, in describing the sublime image that will present the place of which is the
question, had the purpose of speaking the art that he can use for the decoration of this
monument. He assures that it will be as metaphorical as its immensity.”
In the system of building returns the spatiality of the School of Athens as well as the image as
is present in the perspective of the interior of the library.
The immensity of the library, which is the principle architectural character, is also symbolically
immense in culture and history, but in the interior is a single building, or singular.
The amphitheater of books is a typological solution in how much we can create other
amphitheaters of books without repeating Boullée: but Boullée is not restrained to offer up
this scheme for a basilica / library, as always, he offers a completed project in which he abides
also for the decoration the figure of the theme: the books.
Otherwise, the theatre ends with the affirmation that the principle decoration is constituted
from the same theatre; that is, from the spectacle and from the public that seeks to
emphasize the interior and the exterior of the building the most.
At this point, nothing more superficial can affirm that artists like Boullée work without
measure in concrete construction. Just read the description of the project of any of these
buildings to realize the contrary. Indeed the author, where these conditions are not sustained,
looks for them and makes proposals until they become the conditions of architecture. It is
indeed extraordinary – and also someone like me who is a convinced believer in an
architecture a priori – as a large part of solutions are born of these conditions.
We looks again to the library where the project is bound to the use of an area and a pre-
existing construction. Boullée creates a large court with a closed central space that is will
build upon the constant typology of the modern public building; the solution will become
exemplary within public urban architecture.
*

7
For Boullée to put the character in a work signifies the use of all the proper means to not
allow us to try other sensations beyond those inherent in the subject. The reference is to the
great “tableaux de la nature”; the seasons in their course with their own diverse appearances.
The character is then the nature of the subject; the character constitutes the emotional,
evocative parts.
“Temple of death! The sight of you chills our hearts. Artist, flee the light of the Heavens!
Descend onto the tombs to sketch your ideas in the pale dying Light of the Sepulchral Lamps!”
If the character is the architecture of the subject and the architecture of a cenotaph subsides
into the earth as Boullée asserts to have an idea so new and bold “…it was to offer the image
of a buried architecture.”
In the exposition of the Cenotaphs, as in the other works, Boulle offers us the autobiography
of the work and it is indispensable; there does not exist a Henry Brulard of architecture but
certainly works like the diaries of Delacroix or those of Klee that constitute a portentous
testimony of the structure of art.
Boullée and Loos or Le Corbusier offer us in the concrete that multiplicity of experience and
the mode of being that becomes the same technique of the artist. The Academic, in the worst
sense, signifies the acceptance of a franchised technique, and for the other arts, is a
renouncement of invention. But the renouncement of invention signifies the contempt to
renounce the deepening threshold that divides, or is simply limiting, between personal
experience and artistic experience.
There is no art that is not autobiographical.
And in the artist, the nexus is as natural as it seems individually different in two moments (if
two moments exist) and we are convinced that there is also this link (of an human, proper,
private, etc experience that one encounters and discovers inventing a technique) that
distinguishes the world of the artist from the academic or the formalist that does not add any
of his own experience.
*
We read Boullée following – as we are invited to do – the development of his ideas.
A part from the nucleus of architecture that is a bare and naked skeleton (the same bones
that encountered Loos: this is architecture, etc) and what Boullée proposes in his essence
while, however annoyed, he searches to warn those who, little versed in art, are surprised that
a very simple production takes so much effort; and that effort is however compared to this
difficult simplicity. As simplicity in architecture is not the reduction of decoration – that is
nonsense – but the adherence of the work to the reading of nature.
Working around buried architecture, Boullée announced the fundamental point of his
architecture; the architecture of shadows “…it occurred to me a new idea; it was to present
the architecture of shadows.”
The opposite bodies of light cast in their shadow an image of the body. And the artist
observed these natural facts and drew the principles of his art.
But these are things of art that are linked to a direct experience of the beauty of things and a
state of mind.

8
“…I found myself in the country, I stood there alongside a tree, in the light of the Moon. My
effigy, made by the light, excited my attention (assuredly this was not a novelty for me). By a
particular disposition of the spirit, the effect of this simulacrum appeared to me one of great
sadness … Struck by the sentiment that I experience, I occupied myself, from this moment,
with how to apply this particularity to architecture…”
This disposition of the spirit saw things through their own shadow; and captured not an
architecture of illusion but the will to stop a moment of architecture as it was conceived, but
also alive in the time, in the days, and in the seasons.
The architecture of shadows then became the link and the search for the principles of
architecture in nature that were the utmost preoccupations to Boullée.
Architecture is not fantastic; and it is extremely linked to nature, to its law, to its becoming.
*
With this temporality, unveiled from the light, classical architecture was born of an idea a
priori, all closed in a geometric thought, returning to nature; indeed possessing a value of
something natural, closed in time but felt in the light of the time. No one organic adjustment
of form can obtain this.
Boullée did not capture all of the vastness of this definition; does not see, that is, the effect of
the light that is one with that of time.
In reality, we know that all of the cycles of the seasons of humanity are the cycles of
architecture and that we always tend toward the first condition of architecture. So that the
fossilized man and lithic utensil have a time we can only imagine; and from the sentiment of
that image we develop the beauty of form.
The monument, exceeding its relationship with history, becomes geography; and is the light
that created the shadow not the same light that corrodes material and gives us a more
authentic image of that which the same artist wanted to give us?
So, even more than that is personal and collective to a time in architecture and is the most
important of the arts and the sciences; which is why the cycle of architecture is like nature, as
the cycle of man is but what remains of man.
In this sense, I have spoken of the monuments and of the city; but also of the continued
relationship they have with time.
This relationship with time, through the evolution of architecture and perpetuity of its
principles, does not emerge, naturally, in the architecture of Boullée, who had to tell us
something more of architecture of the past and the use he makes of those elements in his
architecture.
*
Let us turn a moment to the summary reflections on the art of teaching architecture. Here
Boullée develops a type of teaching that goes from hut to house of habitation like two terms
of necessity and complexity (where the rental house is introduced ‘in the art of combining’)
considered as exercises or as preparations to compose and above all “practical instruction” of
art properly dictated and founded on theory of bodies and in the application of natural law
that will know poetry. From here, the great example of architecture are the considered orders

9
as immutable laws. (“They must become the immutable laws for man of genius who envisage
nothing but with admiration”).
One must note that Boullée’s method of teaching architecture is not completely objective
(“…in the Beaux Arts it is not possible to instruct with a method following those of the
Sciences. Each artist may particularly know the beauty of nature by his senses alone.”)
This attitude seems to me very modern; the system of teaching is not able to give the same
result to the diverse students as each will develop according to their own faculties
(architecture as art); but it is still of a system of teaching then of an ordered series of
propositions on architecture that constitute a theory.
The base of this theory is the studio of nature that is captured and expressed through taste
and then the teaching of architecture is the education of taste independent of its quality.
“Here the pleasure increases proportionately with imagination, sensitivity, and knowledge. -
Nature and the art that copies it does not have anything to say to a man who is stupid or cold,
and very little to a man who is ignorant.
What therefore is taste? A disposition, acquired through repeated experience, to obtain the
truth, the good, together with the circumstances that render it beautiful; sudden sense and
intense upsets.
And this will be the critical sense if the experience that determines judgement is present in
memory; if, instead, it does not serve memory or does not remain only an impression -- that
would be feeling, instinct.” (Diderot)
The treatment of Diderot enlightens us on the general aspects of the thinking of Boullée,
above all of Diderot’s Encyclopedia, preoccupied with the relationship of the arts with
techniques of crafts and of production. And the problem of art as technique is already implicit
in the ‘repeated experience’ and in the fundamental critique of memory.
In this sense, Boullée was to bring forward more of his relationship to monuments, with his
style and technique that is addressed and becomes illuminated by his thoughts and by his
work.
For example, Boullée, unlike Ledoux and one of the architects of the enlightenment, never
places a systematic method to the questions of urbanism. The city always presents itself as an
architectural place that provides certain occasions and its own interests that always refer to a
partial system of the surroundings. Very progressive otherwise for architecture is the
attachment to an architect like Antolini who draws the significance of the monuments from
the city and sees the relationships between the urban and the diverse buildings that form a
foundation for the significance of architecture. With him the urban character, that altogether
escapes Boullée, always becomes a character of architecture. At the base, the application of
his architecture, like the architecture of the new city with definite typologies and
characteristics, will be carried by his successors in Petersburg, not as he expected.
There where Boullée poses the question of the relationship with the urban monuments and is
always toward a formal analysis of the Schinkelian type; a reconstruction described of the
forms applied to a singular institution. In the analyses of the gothic Cathedral, the
observations on the gothic style capture the beauty of a certain technique and of the singular
effect that the verticality can provoke on the classical framework. With few observations,
Boullée anticipates the disconcerting Gothicism of his successors and of Schinkel.

10
*
The relationship of Boullée with nature is certainly the most singular part of his poetics. It
goes well beyond the application of the theories of Rousseau and is specific in tectonics.
On the one hand concerns the study of the objects of nature, on the other, the character, and
lastly the same application of nature as a foundation of architecture.
“Architecture is the implementation of nature.”
His position is also closer to the cultural point of view of Diderot where it culminates, the
prodigy of technical ability consists in a profound and integral adherence to a nature that can
reduce to a minimum any cultural contribution. Nature is the individuation of the nature of
things, a problem of knowledge.
A purpose of the Salon of 1796, Diderot reports a phrase about the (Eiffel) Tower, writing:
“Every being has to endure, more or less, their labors of their state. It does not bear an
imprint more or less marked. The point is first grasp everything from this imprint, so that
when you have to paint a king, a general, a minister, a magistrate, a priest, a philosopher, a
porter, these people reflect as much as possible their condition.”
Yet the relationship to light for Boullée becomes the way to record sentiment, to arouse
sentiments, through the study of nature. And here the sense is of the descriptions of the
seasons and their relationship with the character of things. The laughing image of the fall is
generated from a variety of objects, and from contrasts of light and shadow, from the bizarre
appearances of color in transformation, from multi-colored. So then, the theatres, the baths,
the fairs, the salt of reunion will take into account this like the cold lights of winter preside in
the design of funerary monuments.
Using some of these architectural elements (for Boullée it is of immutable laws) one must
insist on their combination and disposition. This repetition and opposition, contrasts from
light, alternated from mass and line; and the reference to this technique is always in a more
general memory, direct and autobiographical, of nature. “…I finally obtained one of their
experiences that recalls in myself the somber effects and mysteries that I have observed in
the forests … it is the light that produced these effects. It is these that have cause the
contrary sensations in us following that they are brilliant or somber … These resulting effects
of a mysterious day produce inconceivable effects and, in a way, a truly enchanting magic.”
In a lone work, The Monument for Public Recognition – this complex relationship with nature
seem to vanish in a sort of magical fence where the same thing begins and ends the artistic
process; the natural museum and the same nature, the environment and the objects become
untranslatable.
The paradoxical logic of Boullée anticipates the experience of romanticism and of naturalism
in a direct way. Not only does the internal logic of the system suggest this experience, but
same seems unable to renounce it, breaking from classical unity and sacrificing form, for the
same purpose without touching or trying to understand the mystery.
This type of experience will bring about a very high degree of work from Schinkel that will
support his cold analysis of architectural form, in a description without time, placing in a
natural, almost obsessive, element and ending for the purpose of the same architecture as
one made naturally. The environment and the objects surrounding it acquire the same value
of the architecture.

11
Again, Diderot with his profound intuition speaks “of the ideas awakened by the environment
and by the objects surrounding.”
“…I wondered some time how come the temples of antiquity, open and isolated, are so
beautiful and suggestive. Reason is that which you could decorate on for sides without
harming its simplicity. And being accessible from all the parts would be the same image of
security. And then…
…
If it were up to me to design the plaza of Luigi XV in the place that he wanted, I would have to
look at razing the forest. I would have wanted to catch a glimpse of the profound obscurity,
from between the column and the grand peristyle. Our architects do not have imagination,
they do not know what accessory ideas are awakened by the environment and by the
surrounding objects.”
The great piazza of Diderot-Boullée, the immense colonnade of this urban monument open to
the depth of the forest is where grows and settles the son of architecture in the general scene
/ framework that is right: nature, man, and the construction of the city.”

12
Aldo Rossi: I Quaderni Azzurri
Excerpts from Volumes I – IX (1969 – 1971)
Translation by Stephanie Jazmines (2015)

1 dicembre 1969 (presentation of the Lotus Project)

“Dear imagination, that is what I love above all else in you, that you do not fo
rgive.”
– Andre Breton Manifesto
Teaching of the composition –
Or is taught through a system [certain elements / Cogito – journal] or the teaching of no value
/ transition of the impression…
The teaching happens, then, through the examples.
See the introduction to Boullée on the teaching of art.
The examples of architecture in the sense of architecture x the museums
La Tendenza (the tendency, the trend) – vision of the recently built reality – because the
teaching of certain concepts is like the construction of the idea – forming architecture
One general treatment of architecture / a catalogue x architecture
My architecture takes from a classical rationalism of research and new meanings of the
Surrealism – Breton’s Manifesto.
Respect to the avant-guarde – the only one that retains value.
[DRAWING OF THE OSSUARY CUBE]

1
2 dicembre 1969 (LOTUS project)
What signifies this project:
- S. Rocco – Monte Amiata –
Plastico Sannazzaro
- The place of residence as a theme and ____ as function
- The relationship with the city; the sea arises in no project in a direct way. For the
absurdity of the city that does not exist like presence or binding.
- The city is invented like an injury from which is born architectural stars.
- In Sannazzaro there is also an attempt to construct in the city.
The advantage over the positions of acclimatization which as necessarily naturalistic.
This constructed city is based on facts / but the facts are now theories.
Architecture x the museums
A rigorous discourse on the architectural design must be based on fundamental logic.
This foundation is also of the elements of architecture that are used and perfected
successively. And there are constituent parts – architecture is not the same as the
significance of architecture. The significance resides in the operations that we perform, in the
use, in the character.
And this in its more general form is the rationalist attitude in respect to architecture: The
teaching is all that is included in the system and excludes all impressions.
Architecture in this more elevated form creates pieces from the Museum from which one can
rebuild technically to transform and adapt it – with a multiplicity of functions – with
requirements that must be applied.
…
2 dicembre 1969
Projects – some projects of habitation
The projects – that are published – refer to residential complexes. The residential unit S. Rocco
of 1967 is the body of work invented in the project of the residential block of Carlo Aymonino
in the Gallaratese Quarter in Milan are two aspects of research accomplished this year on the
urban residential structure. The typology of the two together are diverse.

Diverse is the typology of the two projects: one complex is the typological form to be
analyzed.

2
[SCHEME]

Teaching of the composition starts with the residence –

A quote from Boullée –
We are at an advantage because there is some clarity on the typological question: it permits a
comparative analysis with the construction of the city.
The typical forms admits very few degrees of liberty inside and out. This concert was intended
in the realistic treatment – or morals – of architecture where the interior of the distribution
becomes necessary in more ways to disengage locality. This practical definition is precise
enough and is necessarily inferred from the questions of internal networks even if paths such
as these become definitive later in the end from the analysis of habitation – there are very few
– criteria x held in a formula dependent on an internal organization in its mobility and the
ability to “adapt” to the building, like the forms of this modification and its role in the
constituted urban story.
In essence, the question is that of the degree of compatible liberty with a constituted
typological form.
…

16 gennaio 1970
Competition for the gallery of Contemporary art in Milan.
…
Description – Description of the idea –
The area is placed next to the basilica of S. Eustaquio –
- 4900 square meters of building

3
 - 1200 square meters of green
…
Description of the idea of the building –
The interior of the building is formed from a simple body that constitutes the central spine.
From this we infer normally the simple body whose length is increasing – a body that is almost
symmetrical.
In respect to the central spine. The dimension of the different arms is continued in the
protection of an arrow, or triangle. At the top of the triangle is elevated a tower divided in
three floors. The transverse section of the tower is round while the vertical is realized using
different overlapping cones – the form of the tower is referring to that of the square [which?]
of De Chirico and to the tower of Tatlin as in the University of Mosscow or to the major spire
over the crossing in the Duomo of Milan. This results in certain sketches –
Sunday / Monday/ Tuesday  Venice.
17 Gennaio 1970
The exhibit of Courbet in Palazzo Reale—few beautiful pictures / a portrait of Proudhon, “Les
Demoiselles au Bord” ecc. (?) The woman on the sycamore [very beautiful] – the prominence
of the first room, etc.
The thing that strikes me the most from the other large paintings is that which he calls “La
Grande Pittura,” ie: the construction of the picture, the composition of the figure, the light,
etc.
As I was enjoying the technical elements of the painting, I did not have time. In the application
of each type of good painting is the mark of each bad painting.
Also here the thesis of a purported jump to modern painting makes no sense.
Itemizing: most important paintings
(for what one does, etc)
A list of this type is a useful exercise.
…
[IMAGE OF PLATONIC FORMS]

4
12 febbraio 1970
Monument to the Resistance – Commune of Milan, Central Direction
Furnace / Hallow Cube /
Empty Cube of Release / Form
Symbol / Form
- Monumento Cuneo
- Monumento (Sandro Pertini) Milano
- Monumento Segrate
Carmelo Bene Capricci / “Nostra Signora dei Turchi” ** a film
[SECOND DRAWING OF THE MODENA CUBE]

4 marzo 1970
Discussions (at the Polytechnic etc) on disciplinary autonomy, science, form, etc. ___ of the
discussion. In any case it secures then your own sense and themes without simplifying it. The
discourse on ideology, the Tendenza / trend, autonomy, etc, is continual in architecture and is
a constant insertion: but the constant insertion is also the autobiographical, psychological,
psychoanalytical, etc knowledge of the artist. The book of Gombrich and the citation of Freud
on art is extremely interesting / it seems that the participant of art is like the internal
structure. We better know this problem from which proves the suggestions of surrealism.
The Analogous City
Again the painting of Canaletto, but defining the possible points of hypotheses –
1. Diverse organizations of buildings and new possibilities -- capacity of relations then formal
deformations
2. The real structure of the city
a.) as the formal insertion of experience, of things
b.) the institution of buildings in the pre-existing fabric. The invention of terms / public
relations.

31 marzo 1970
Seeking out the Politecnico at CLUP (cooperative libraria universitaria del politecnico)
Urban analysis and the architectural project.
--

5
14 aprile 1970 – Theory lesson on the project X Palermo
I took all the following notes:
- Architecture for the museum
- The Analogous City
- Theories of projects
- Urban analysis / topography / project
- Psychology of art
- History of art
- Figurative art
- The progressive in architecture and La Tendenza
As in the theory of the project.
Theory of the project as architecture describes (including design of the construction for
elements of description.)
It is indeed of the unattainable, it shows faith, it is mystical.
All of the propositions can be of equal value (Wittgenstein).
But other theories are like fragments – fragmentary constructions.
More to the point is a theory that presents itself more as a fragment of the real; here we see
the analogous city. But the experiences of theorists stay between themselves with analogous
references. The continuous recollection of the city and other cities are an authentic part of
the formal discourse. (The remainder is formal over the condition for which the autonomous
city is a determined aspect.)
The recalling of architecture and other architectures
The progressive in architecture:
Destined as a coincidence of the rational with the fact, interpretations of the collective
aspirations.
---
The matter making use of elements, finished parts, true and proper architecture, is a choice of
precise architecture.
Pieces used: cylinder-column, pilaster, thin septum, solid wall, limited apertures, external stair,
beam-bridge to a triangular section, flat roofs, a cupola, a cone.
Additive Process –
The construction proceeds for succession or for superposition.
Noet:
The elements, the pieces, the additive process.
Not compensation, but sum.

6
30 dicembre 1970 – dear Ezio
If the typology has its grounding in function it is for the functionalist (acceptable). It presents
itself also as ideology / idea of reference of the elements – It should therefore not be
overstated in the description of theory. On the contrary, it allows the use of demystifying from
the elements – on a clear typological construction of architecture. It is also ordered in the
sense of decoration. Hence the need for facades which do not have necessity themselves (as
claimed by the functionalists). But the contrary is absolutely valid with the invention of
architecture.
See the facades of Gallaratese where the gallery can be resolved in a more diverse way
because it is absolutely determined by its typological significance.
Also see my notes on the presentation of the Gallaratese (Monte Amiata Lotes is 1st) with the
reference to the archeological section.
Manifestly, it emphasizes itself as the relationship with archeology takes more than the
relationship with history / where archeology is the artifact, the find, the object. So the form
(with the implications seen by Boullée at the time – and so with the physical consumption with
the form of time, of the elements, atmosphere, etc.)
But if the choice of the type is the most important operation, the rest assumes a secondary or
purely decorative importance. ?

15 maggio 1970
Project –
Progressive in architecture –
The operations of the project –
Teaching of the composition.
The objective of an investigation of a projet.
Development not of the theory of the project but how, etc.
Objective – Significance—Operation.
Summary:
The scope of classical architecture is always as that which obtains a harmony of susceptible
parts of demonstration … a susceptible harmony that is derived from a specific code to refer
to, and that which conforms absolutely to the nature of Classicism. (Le Corbusier modular).
Klee – Theory of Art, etc. page 32.
Sometimes I dream of a work of vast scope, spanning all the way across element, object, style.
---
We are again that which is researched.
---

7
We cannot do more.

Theme / Content / Objective.

The progress of technique is referred to itself: but it is modified for different objectives. The
grand monuments of modification of history and of art. (obviously) – the external contact does
not yet say anything of the use of these elements that remain the job of the artist.
Tafuri / It is not possible, and architecture of style/form/class from a critique of
style/form/class (obviously).
But see our interpretation of the architecture as architecture, of the dominant classes and of
the possibility of oppositions in the projects – their differences in Utopias.
1. Translation of Boullée – a way of teaching the project. Page 9.
Value of the forms.
Techniques – a certain technique in the arts sometimes introduced etc.-- is essential etc –
today is it possible to eliminate the vision?
See the Soviet architecture which is modern architecture.
…
Problems of architecture – immutable – occasions and answers differentiate.
Then, history.
- City x parts
- Typology (work on typology)
- Typological Form
Avant Guarde and experimentalism
The structural bonds
Forming Typology with value of the Manifesto. Plans centered on civil use – the ideological
assumption of romance. ….
Form and Ideology
Type: Benedictine
Type: Carthusian
Benedictine = united building where life is totally collective and where the form refers to
itself and the collective quality (dormitory, refectory0
Carthusian = singular quantity or self sufficient unity, the value of the cloister.
…
20 maggio 1970 – A.B. Rationalism Debate.
The debate at the moment of teaching rationalism. Rigor of rationalism.

8
 Vision of rationalism as a mode of inclusive architecture between work and theory in a
continuous (but insufficient) example of references.
Differing from rationalism are the elements charged down from disorder, and not from
fantasy. –
In rationalism we start from Classicism to Surrealism including all the architecture that
does not measure time, problems, or ideology. With this we cannot think of attaining
Rationalism like the progressive Tendenza in faith.
We have indicated also the sizes, the abandonment, the ambiguity.
But above all, we have not talked in this lesson history/ not I or the others.
This relationship – in a certain diverse mode) is related to the experiment of the vision of
architecture.
With this, we can become friends with the relationship between theory and the project, of
choice and work: we can speak of the project in a non-superficial way – of the form in a
non-formulistic way.
Rationalism has exceeded the historic definition / we can abolish it as a term.
Speak of realism a surrealism for example.
“but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary
interest. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us.” (Breton)
A rational theory of art does not want to limit the significance of the constructed work.
Also, the debate on architecture of form / style belongs rightfully to this architecture
The problem of the typical is partly integral to the creative method of socialist realism. (cit,
Motta)
The experience of art must be understood through the collective experience: it is subject to
progress and retraction. In the structure exists the culture of form / style –
…
What is the project?
…
But in authentic rationalism one muse attempt also the more difficult way, the
autobiographical experience, architecture as art.
Progressive –
Connection of the rational with the factual
18 marzo 1971
The courtyard in the school of De Amicis di Broni.
Fountain and Clock.
Square, Triangle, Circle. Then the windows.

9
“Le Monde” 19 marzo 1971
Reports of a painting of Sengai: one of the great Japanese artists – called Zen (1750 – 1835)
that “represents the three fundamental forms of the universe. The circle represents infinity
and infinity is the base of all that is of a ___ form. The triangle is the natural law, fixed and
unalterable from which is born all forms. The square is the first that generates a form. A
square is a triangle doubled. This process of duplication continues to infinity and we have the
multiplicity of things, including man.
The illustration and the comments accompany a number of themes on Tch’ian and Zen texts.
[ILLUSTRATION OF SQUARE, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE]
Drawings of forms that occur / follow within the Plateau Beauborg – Combinations of the
geometric forms according to the concept of formal strength – Direction, directionality.
Generally, the direction identifies itself with a straight line. Reports not typological forms.
Progression of the forms.
[ILLUSTRATION OF FORMS I] – questions of the ties and of the divides / separations. The ties
are mediated by a sole element ___
[ILLUSTRATION OF FORMS II] – The idea of progression can be reported to the project of
_____:
But more can be conscious and more can create architecture.
…
7 aprile 1971
The initial competition on the Place Beaubourg.
Application of a pre-constituted form. See previous attempts [municipal gallery ]
Principal theme of the competition: library, museum.
Union of central spaces and closed bodies: typological form un-assumed in a central spaces
and closed bodies – towers and simple bodies. Diameter of the tower 30 / 50 meters. Depth 8
meters. Height 100 meters.
Boullée’s Library. School of Athens of Raphael. Duomo of Milan. Siedlung scheme.
Addition of simple elements. The museum must be unfolded through long paths. The museum
is a corridor with open rooms.
28 Maggio 1971
(Do not) take the Enlightenment and Architecture for Accademia etc.
The Wild Boy of Aveyron (L’enfant Suavage), by Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard
The problem in architecture. See the public buildings of London and Paris, published by
Rosenau. The Panopticon of Bentham – Robert Evans (Controspazio)
In all of the questions of architecture of the Enlightenment, one can see the significance of the
sciences and of craft. As well as that of education and coercion. Results of the positive period.

10
The two aspects of the social problem in the institution and of utopias. In reality, the
typologies of Poliziano does not seem very diverse. The development of the single family
house and the phalanstery (is dead) and it says that one is freer than the other. Compared to
the military hospital, architecture searches for a more specific character – also in the sense of
distributive characters, of the technological sense, etc. But I believe that this is the negative
character, regressive, etc. of architecture of the Enlightenment / has essentially taken more
to modern architecture (Benevolo thesis).
Then the progressive impulse is somewhat within craft, in the research of type, in topography,
and in the other considered elements as in Boullée, Antolini, etc. where the concept of
tradition and of invention is referenced in all of society. In this sense it seems to me that we
can rightly be called political (and progressive). See on the contrary the research of Itard –
“The Wild Boy of Aveyron” is in the end, a book without hope. From an irresolvable, absolute
sadness; I believe it is possible to define a piece of black literature. The sadness is not within
the condition of being “Wild” but in the condition of being “Prisoners detained” because each
education, if it is not respected, creates an unsuitability, etc.
…
30 maggio 1971 – Elements of Analytical Architecture
The composition of elaborate architecture in 1970. (industrial city with monuments, city with
monuments, etc.) as the (alternative) composition of “collage, of parts in assembly. These
compositions are founded on several parts that continually return and are: the triangular
bridge of Parma (Alcide De Gasperi Bridge) and Segrate, the portico and the façade of Monte
Amiata, the final overlapping pieces of the tower, a tower of a smokestack, iron bridges with a
lattice structure. Crane or machine of a building site, smokestack, stair, San Carlone
sectioned, rarely architecture with a tympanum. The composition is in a large part, colored,
several with a final varnish.
It is possible to stabilize some non-current motives in the composition of these parts – a few
cases indicate a new project of building. The case of the tower is developed like a project that
is attributable to the competition of Paris Place Beaubourg necessarily expressed.
I believe, however, that we can again establish a different architecture that is not of assembly
of singular pieces but of an ulterior definition that in these compositions will acquire certain
elements of architecture.
[Naturally, the compositions acquire, then, a sense in themselves, but on this I would occupy
myself for now from the point of view of architectural theory – and this is a limit. Determine
how and why it is a limit. From this point of view (value in self), the composition with San
Carlo, the stair and the triangle, and the tower, is possibly the most accomplished.]
…
I would finally like to see the type of deformation that is precisely the acquiring of some
elements and also the significance of modes of representation and the action of the
represented forms.

11
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 1 ELEMENTS A, B, C, D, E, E1, F, G, --]

A. The permanent element as form and in the composition – substantially a link, an open
passage. – a cantilevered connection – value of the gable, does not present itself as open.
B. Always seen as a support of A. B is a basement porch – characterized by the depth of the
pilaster walls – the pilaster walls are united with a superficial continuity. This drawing is not
precise regarding the depth of the pilasters. From Figure 1 to Figure 4, their distance is more
considered although it tends to shorten.
C. It shows that the elements themselves – extended in the drawing – have a precise
relationship with B. One can compare with the supports of A. In Figure 1 and in Figure 4, it is
differentiated as supports (4) and part of construction (1) – as in the supports of A, (marked,
___) it has a major diameter -- we must return to this with the consideration of the column.
The relationship between height and diameter. Here the height is compared to B. D is a part
that is not defined in the composition (see the transformation of the facades of Gallaratese)
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 2]

D. In Figure 1 and in Figure 3 D does not present itself as the

definitive position of a façade. It is any building, the regularly
placed openings of a home. Their own proximity allows us to
always adopt this solution. The windows do not have window
frames. Several compositions shine in the facades of wood
constructions x firefighting exercises. In this (form?), the
façade is a element.

12
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 3]

E, E1. Appearance in Figures 1, 2, 3, 4. E is my cylindrical tower (Torre di Capo Rocchi –

Calabra) overlooking, and whose diameter is (changing). The cutting of the composition does
not define what is a rarity in height. E and E1 differentiate themselves from the exposed
structure and are of the polygonal qualities of La Tendenza. In the first drawing, this tower
does takes what de Chirico presents in some cities – it is presented as a homage to de Chirico.
In reality, it has always remained as a citation / a quote. [examples on the value of the citation
in architecture]

[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 4]

F. Assume a major importance like architecture. In origin, it is a round smokestack and its
significance is always more than that of a tower. It tends to amplify the transverse section. In
the design for Paris E & E1 and in universal tendencies, and in the only conical element (see
the towers of cement works, firstly in Bergamo by Giancinto Guffanti). The conical element

13
becomes that which contains the overlapping ____. (The problem of the vertical paths are
unresolved).
G. Then we go to the section of San Carlone di Arona. It is his last possible reduction.
Rendered in the great Baroque form and the singularity of images, the section is a laceration
of the statue where remains this wall of bricks with stairs, passages, galleries, doors. It is
presented here as any wall and perhaps is a fact of the totally private report on the postcard
of San Carlone on which it is featured. But it is not featured in a process of simplification. The
reduction of a form can have a complex psychological motivation. Each reduction is looking to
possess something that is unattainable on the whole. This may be a mutilation. In this case it
is not of a fragment, where the fragment is permitted to construct all that is drawn in the
work. Here, the work can remain withheld, unknown. But the significance of the wall, like that
of the corridor, is a priority because it touches on other experiences. It refers to a first in
architecture like each event has a “first” and each event has a type of construction to
manifest itself – constriction and construction. The analysis must be brought forth to all the
interest you have in this figure – an urban wall in the lakeside.
X & Y. these are the funds, plans, and projections – dimensions of each composition, like the
embers, can be false or more simply, wrong or automatic. The colors of the plans are a made
almost instinctive, from education, etc.
The problem with reconstructing this composition in plan and section is that it is like unitary
architecture. In the end, it is unitary architecture. But in this composition, one can find a unity
of the effects with the major tensions – that is, the elements of major tension – their
superimposition tends to a dramatic moment like the façade of a baroque church. The
relationship of the side / flank of the convent of Santa Ceara compared to the small façade
where the dramatic elements of the façade are linked to the long side of the convent. The
cathedral of Halle (Germany) has this projection on the uniformity of the gothic city; but this
contrast is singularly bound to topography – the urban topography is the first reading of
architecture. It constitutes the decisive reading for the comprehension of a work; it is
infinitely superior to the deity of images, of the city. The images are not more definitive, but
exist as a rational fact. This discourse is also confused in regards to the dominance of the
German architects – plans of Leipzig and Dresden. These cannot be dominant provided in itself
– while in all of the discourses, it is a question of altitude, of the sky-line, etc. The dominant is
first of all in the emerging fact of the urban topography.
…
12 giugno 1971
The composition of Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, -- in addition to the permanence of certain elements –
indicate a progression of architecture toward the round / circular. In addition to tension, it is
the introduction to the condition of verticality. I believe that in this composition there is
already an analyzed form in the projects for a Museum, Place Beaubourg, etc. A progression
of regular elements that goes along a diagonal. The elements that interrupt this sequence are
the tower, or the smokestack. Also, the regularity of the portico assumes this value. The other
compositions are corollary and these together set off to the triangle-bridge -- its importance
emblematic. The union of these elements conform within architecture. I believe I have
introduced the composition here of the building of elements in the form of the city – also
related to topography – here within the way the block became the form of architecture.

14
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 5]

In Figure 5, the aligning recalls the form of the rationalist Siedlung but tends to become
compact and unified. Here, the conical tower is a central element around which multiply the
parallelepiped blocks. In other compositions, the conforming is stellar and then grows around
a central element. The mode of seeing this composition in axonometric before (seeing it) in
plan indicates its origin in urban forms in reality with respect to certain designs now
assimilated in urban form. The union of these blocks can be given from a passage / portico
from a motif of collage to patina but then it belongs to itself in a certain way.
…
18 giugno 1971
If the composition of Figure 5 doubles itself about a central axis, this constitutes a species of
streets that can be precisely like an architectural route. The shift of the conical tower leads
this route to a collective. I believe that architecture is here identified individually by scale and
by function. Here it does not deal with an object but with a construction / this construction is
architecture. This requires a type of validation in itself, from the logical organization of its
parts.
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 6]

Together the elements organized this way are always more configured in architecture. The
cylinder behind the conical tower is like the fragment of elements that indicate a direction of
development, an orientation of the composition. The direction of the composition is
fundamental. It creates interest and is linked to meaning.

15
The parallelepipeds, similar to those of Figure 5, are tinted pink like the elements of figure 4.
Certainly the pink, red, orange, etc are following a physical character of the construction
(brick, plaster, tint / paint, etc) – The element is above all a wall – the conical tower is
becoming more defined with respects to the composition somewhat in itself. They should
define themselves with other elements like the triangular beak and the neck of Figure 7, that
is, by some elements that are its own, like the square windows of the parallelepipeds. Where
these windows are “the home” and then their significance is not in the geometry of the
square, but in the way it is ordered in the square as its windows. In those together are the
façade.
In Figure 7, the relationship between volume F1, “cut cone” and the beak and the handle – the
relationship between geometry, use and form. The beak and handle in the object are
analogous to the organization of the building in architecture, see the diverse speculation
made in architecture on these relationships – in plan A) – the sequence of triangle, circle,
rectangle.
[ILLUSTRATION – FIGURE 7]

…
24 giugno 1971
Competition for the Cemetery of Modena. I will develop the competition project with facts,
that it, the unique origins of the design of architecture, to be due in November. I can work on
it in July and August.
The university as full alienation. Detached from what you want to do.
Today at the building site of Monte Amiata. Start of the foundation work.

16
[ILLUSTRATION – BACK COVER – MODENA CONCEPTS]

BOOK 9 – ARCHITECTURE – LE CIMITERIO DI MODENA – 5 agosto 1971 – 10 ottobre 1971

5 Agosto 1971
Modena – Accepted the invitation and visited the cemetery. The competition for the new
cemetery is due November 2.
The actual cemetery is made up of two parts / one that is Christian and one that is Hebrew /
Jewish. The Christian cemetery is late Neoclassical, are they are now building the entrance
according to the original designs (but removing the cupola – why?) – The Israeli Cemetery has
a part of very beautiful tombs; they are plates of marble bent extremely thin for the land
subsidence and as airy / casual as a wood board – the most beautiful has simply the Star of
David and Hebrew script. The plates are laid on the green.
Remember the Turkish cemetery between Serajevo and Banja Luka with the white sticks and
turbans sculpted out of stone.
The area for the new cemetery can be found next to the Jewish cemetery so that this
becomes the center between the old Christian cemetery and the new extension.
The area does not present characteristics of note / it is flat, covered with shrubs, encircled by
an urban periphery or little character. It is outside the city and does not have any type of
constructive relationship. Being devoid of the monumental thus far, the cemetery does not
have an avenue of entrance; although, this is a characteristic of the Neoclassical cemetery.
The academic architecture is very rational / it deals with a precise typology where the area is
surrounded by porticoes. In the double order of the portico, one finds the columbaria and the
tombs of the illustrious citizens and the patrician families. Often the Marble plates are very
beautiful / the contents of some of the writing exceeds the sayings of the occasion and
reveals the presence of this humanistic culture, of all loss, of the Italian city of the eighth
century.
Gianni Braghieri has taken many very beautiful photos that tell precisely this.

17
Problem of how to connect the three cemeteries / neoclassical, jewish, modern.
Maybe only with an element that rejoins, or a common entrance. Or one background, a wall, a
false façade.
Ossuary / a wall where one puts the bones of the dead.
We must comply with the dimensional data, which is the measurement of the dead.
Here, there are no “nice ideas” – it is like constructing an oven, a public bathroom, etc.
Here there is nothing to say because it is unspeakable. But the unspeakable is like a church
with one believer** / So remember that the cemetery is above all the bodies of the dead, the
bones with their weight and their color – this is what is singular of the cemetery.
We have to stabilize a relationship of knowledge, technique, and this singularity. No type of
construction is so close to architecture.
The validity of the neoclassical cemetery in this relationship is technical / it uses a constant
typology, the repetition and alteration of the architectural elements, columns, materials, etc.
The diversity of the English cemetery neogothic, natural, etc. – The nature of the cemetery of
London.
Survey / Inspection / View of the cemeteries.
Camposanto di Pisa (Gianni)

The first review of the possible elements—

An empty cube: thick walls with many windows. The windows are square punctures / holes
without surrounds. (Remember the construction for firefighting exercises.)
This empty cube is like an abandoned house- The abandoned house is the house of the dead.
They can be passages of air (Gianni) between a window and the other one. In the wall there
can be the ossuaries. This wall is very profound.
The abandoned house has no roof/ the cover is mechanical or provisional.
The perimeter portico with columbaria. Accentuate the character of the route, corridor,
covered street. The vertical elements in cement with cuts for doors and windows / these
elements are like wings*.
The portico is open toward the cemetery. The triangular roof in cement is cantilevered on the
top.
To the left of the portico is the columbaria / a street of the dead. Light from above. The
possibility of closing also towards the cemetery with cuts in the top. Writing on the outside.
Gallery with columbaria

18
[ILLUSTRATION OF PLAN, AXON]

Central structure – [cube, gallery with columbaria overlapping, cut cone]

The central structure is like a house / it is made up of an axis or central spine onto which
corridors and galleries are grafted to access the columbarium. The spine is developed
between the cube and the cone and is comprised between two diagonal lines that form a
triangle. It can serve as a residential framework for the indifference of the typological form.
Or like a museum.
Its shape has some analogy with the skeleton of man or of fish.
The superior line of the columbaria is analogous to the clavicle for the relationship with the
central spine and the square to the extremities. And it could connect other elements.
…
27 agosto 1971
In this period [deserted city, etc] the project itself is almost concluded. The modification or
principal clarification is due to an internal wall, that will become an enclosure.
[ILLUSTRATION OF PLAN WITH INTERNAL WALL]
The cube becomes distanced from the wall. In the interior, the enclosing wall (fence)
maintains the same distance and proportion – Also the successive walls have a reference to
the different degrees of access / approach.
The cemetery of the island of fishermen (Isole Borromee, Lake Maggiore).
In effect it is a courtyard of a house – a fenced garden behind a church.
Perspective – questions on the shadows in front, background of Modena

19
[ILLUSTRATION – PERSPECTIVE WITH SHADOWS]

12 settembre 1971 (domenica)

…
And then a tomb –
Typology – corridor and room.
Alignment of the ___ -- sequence of the elements. And thereby including all the architecture.
The typological form arises here before the geometric form / the geometry is not obtained.
4 ottobre 1971
Competition Report
1) The singular element of the cemetery is the relationship between the institution and death.
This singularity of the relationship (not dialectic between the two terms) places the cemetery
and the construction of the sepulchers as a measurement between the institution and its
cultural tradition. See the idea of death in the primitive people, etc.
For the architecture, removing rhetoric and making set design makes the relationship less
singular.
The cemetery is, for architecture, the house of the dead / so much so that the origin of the
concept of the house is derived from the tomb and the typology of the dolmen (portal tomb)
and the construction of the sepulcher becomes the typology of the house. The rectilinear
course, central space, light from above, earth and stone.
The development of the columbaria or sepulcher of stone in contrast with burial increases this
importance of the house: that is, of an inhabited place where the difference is to be or be
dead.
But as there is a minimum of space of living, there is a minimum space for death / because the
dimensional reduction is, for itself, insignificant opposed to the authentic meaning of
construction.
In this project, one must then insist on architecture of urban institutions / as a design of a
slaughterhouse with central electricity etc without searching for a solution that is not of
things –
But while in the slaughterhouse, central, etc, there is nothing from which to say the
relationship is unspeakable. Then still, there is nothing one can say. From here, the beauty of
the academic cemetery (Modena, Brescia, Moscow, etc) where architecture does not want to
create suggestions for the theme that is used, but with consistency of the proper elements.
The proposed solution presents itself with characteristics of necessity / it can be modified
only with its secondary parts. It uses the ground in a rational way and does not discuss the
idea of the cemetery that everyone has. It has clear paths, precise spaces, regular terms. The
typological setting is given by the rectilinear porticoed pathways / these are ordered along
the corpses. The rectilinear paths are perimetric and ____ / the use of the interior plan can
augment or diminish.

20
At the center of the area are places the ossuaries in regular succession, inscribed in a triangle
/ this central spine, or vertebrae extends toward the base whose arms tend to close. This body
is raised progressively against the extreme end to a possible upper path; also the latter opens
under the lateral corridor. (A)
To the extremity of the spine, one can find two elements with a very definite form / a cone
and a cube. In the cube, under this, one can find the common burial ground. In the cube, the
memorial of the war dead.
These two elements of the cemetery are connected by a central spine with an osteological
configuration that is free from a relationship of dimensional necessity in a complete way.
Their monumental character is not so much in the form, in the volume, or in the dimensions,
but in the problem of significance that arises in the architecture. The cubic construction with
the regular fenestration has the structure of a house without floors. Art that cannot look to
the unknown world of the dead is a part of knowledge, of reason.
And then the conforming of an empty house appears as the first building of the Dolmen. The
empty space intended for the dead is only the space of memory – certainly grand architecture
of the past saw in the cemetery and the tomb the exaltation of history where the person
disappears in a civil and public death – the Pantheon is a tomb.
But in the modern world, the relationship is always more private: and the culture of death is
above all in remorse. Closed in remorse, death becomes a sentiment and does not have
history.
From here the monument reconnects to the Dolmen, to the typology of habitation. The cubic
element is constituted of four walls. On three walls there are openings of 1 meter x 1 meter,
corresponding to the doors. The fourth part is completely closed; … one can come ____ / it is
completely ____ / from the case to the superior line / one which is located sculptures. Etc.
From the center of the cube one goes down to the columbaria – they are arranged on the
square. [ceremony, etc]. The cone is above the common burial ground as a large smokestack
is united along the central path of the spine. Accessible from this is an upper balcony. Steps
lead down to the common grave / here, funeral ceremonies (religious or civic) can take place.
The perimeter path is a covered corridor with two floors above and a floor below ground / its
typological clarity is the beauty of form itself – it interrupts the entrance.
The stair, the interior of the columbaria, unites the scheme of the house to the gallery.
Together with this building, one can configure a city / in the city, the private relationship with
the dead forms a civil relationship to the institution. The cemetery is then a public building
with the necessary clarity and rationalism of a path with the proper use of the earth.
Externally closed from a wall with windows.
The melancholy theme is not too detached from the other public buildings / its order, its
arrangement, also includes the bureaucratic aspect of the dead.
Other than the municipal needs, the practices of bureaucrats, the face of the orphan, the
remorse of private relationships, tenderness and indifference, this cemetery does not differ
from the idea of a cemetery that each person possesses. Search to resolve the principal
technical questions as is the case in a hospital, in a hotel. But the difference of a house, of a
hospital, of a hotel – here each and all are planned.

21
(A)
At the center of the area are placed ossuaries. These are constituted of a regular succession
of parallelepipeds inscribed planimetrically in a triangle. The single elements are lifted
progressively so as to also include a triangle in section. The progression in plan proceeds, in a
contrary sense, to that height but along the same direction. The longer elements are at the
lowest point while the shortest are at the highest. The longer elements that are at the base of
the figure proceed beyond the base of the triangle at a straight angle and are enclosed. It is
configured as an analog form to the vertebral column, or as an osteological conformation.
Typologically it is constituted of a corridor with a row of columbaria / the same structure is
partially repeated where the height permits in the upper structure. The upper path is open to
the central part reaches the front part of the edifice. Two stairs and two elevators, coupled
and placed symmetrically, allows the union of the two circuits*.
All of the upper paths that partly constitute the cover are paved with clear stone. Also, the
non-accessible cover are paved with the same stone.
At the ground level, the porticos are lined up with the green of the burial plan (inhumation).
The central path of the spine, to the two floors, connects and penetrates into the common
grave.
B.
The common grave and the sacrarium are the two collective monuments.
In the interior, it holds the commemorative funeral celebrations, religious and civic.
Together, the two monuments are similar to the relationship between life and the fabric of the
modern city. If you have no feeling in history, the formal reference is to the modern city.
The cube is an abandoned house with empty windows, roofless / The cone is a an escape from
work or study, deserted or abandoned. The Etruscan urn, the tomb of the Baker (Tomb of
Eurysaces in Rome) is this relationship between the deserted house and the abandoned work;
the silence of the dead and the living (more empty) of the others that remain. The tomb of the
baker is here the chimney of the common grave, of the collective tomb. [only the oldest forms
continue in the caves of the boundaries between life and death – Kerenyi – Apollo and
Dionysus]. The material of the cemetery is cement, plaster of the house, and fabric. Where the
use renders necessary we employ stone, white and gray – In the covers, on the pathways of
the perimetric corridor, in all of the flooring.
The place, or the environment, preexists and it is difficult to find other references that are not
the same cemetery as Costa’s and the Jewish cemetery. Now surrounded by a degraded
periphery, one must surround the bounding zone with green, with a large paved area and an
avenue of trees.
The insertion into the large pre-existing cemetery must take place in the enlargement of the
perimeter fence, without laceration, with the continuity of external wall – Costa’s original wall
system design will continue into the new building – The general perspective will give the
dimension of a new grand complex that becomes part of its constitution / composition.
[visual aspects and the functionality of the work in the intermediate phases-] the notice. ---

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10 ottobre 1971
Remember that in the Chateau of Chambord, the most important thing is the white-chalky
yellow stone cut in large regular blocks that constitute the internal and external, and the
internal cylinder of the stair that recalls the part of S. Patrizio di Orvieto with the alternating
lights and the silhouetted ramp. In this construction, the wood floors [removed in the entry of
the Royal Door] are a both accessory and distributive.
In the Cape Breton churches on the sea, the mossy vegetation on the gray rock is equal to
that of Santiago – grey / green / rust – the colony of sea shells. Also the styles Gothic /
Renaissance / Baroque.
The history of architecture is in this work and in the others, in the elements of the things
constructed – where style is pure classification, schemes of reference, didactics of the artist
and the mason, notations – It is always fundamental to the technical discourse.
The project as the development of an idea – Diverse elements.
You always thought that your project had to win. Always behave as if you were to win. But
who wins? Why does he win? Is there a victorious art? Maybe it is like the question of
professional art.
Maintain that this project is difficult. Is there a difficult art and therefore and easy art?
Chambord is difficult or otherwise stupid. In both cases, it is exceptional. But one cannot
propose a stupid work as one cannot propose a difficult work. It is undeniable that the work
has or acquires its own autonomy – the possibility, the implications of the events of life. The
bitterness of interrupted sympathies. (Flaubert)
[ILLUSTRATION – BOULLE-LIKE DRAWING OF MODENA]

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