The Architecture of Analogy-2

6/4/2014
The Architecture of Analogy | The Architecture of Analogy is a PhD that examines the architectural design and theory of Aldo Rossi, through the produ
Skip to content
Skip to search - Accesskey = s
The Architecture of Analogy

Notes on Architecture and Cultural Production
Posted in Discourse by Cameron McEwan on May 18, 2014
Montage of Rossi (1976) La citt analoga; and Serlio (1545) Scena Tragica.
On the left, Rossi places a standing figure into the city making clear that the city is the result of human labour, both manual
and mental. On the right, Serlio emphasises the street as a public space defined by a wall of buildings.
http://cameronmcewan.wordpress.com/
1/28
6/4/2014
While it is clear that architecture is not autonomous from culture, it is possible to understand architecture as autonomous
in relation to culture because architecture is a discipline with its own rules, values, formal and conceptual principles which
are put forward in theories, drawings, built and unbuilt examples. Yet architecture gives concrete form to culture and
came into being with the first traces of the city. Architecture is rooted in the formation of culture and civilisation so that
the history of architecture, which is the city, is also the history of culture. Architecture, culture and the city are therefore
relational and co-determinate. The purpose of the following notes will be to briefly reflect on these points.
Mind takes form in the city; said Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities and in turn, urban forms condition mind.
Mumfords words remind us of architectures formal condition and that the city embodies the sensibility, attitude, and
dominant worldview of any given culture. Then, urban forms architecture as such condition the sensibility of any
given culture because the architecture of the city is both a human creation of manual as well as mental labour and the
willed expression of power, whether in the name of the state, religion, corporate patronage or some other authority such
as a single figure. The city thus embodies private passions and desires, shared beliefs and needs, as well as the conflicts
of a people, which always results in both the construction and destruction of the city. Think of the construction of great
arches during the Roman Empire to celebrate war victories; or infrastructural projects like Haussmanns Paris
boulevards that destroyed vast areas of the city to represent an affluent Paris as a crucial centre of Europe; or the
production of iconic buildings in the 1990s and 2000s that attempted to turn relatively unimpressive cities into global
tourist attractions. By understanding architecture and the city as the embodiment of culture of shared beliefs and needs
as well as common sensibilities and attitudes we can ask what is the culture of our current condition and how is this
formalised in architecture?
There has been considerable recent discussion by commentators who describe culture today as a crisis of social
imagination. [1] Let us note two examples. According to Paul Virilio, Progress has become excess. In the past,
progress was the shared improvement of living, working, and education conditions. As Virilio states in The
Administration of Fear progress is now excess. For Virilio, excess means the proliferation of unnecessary objects so that
we are saturated with images, sounds and words. These are produced at an excessive speed with the purpose of feeding
our desire for immediate satisfaction. The excessive speed of contemporary culture and the constant speed of postindustrial society has caused the fragmentation of rhythm, whether daily and habitual, seasonal, or something other.
Virilio extrapolates this to various scales including human, city, and military. He comments that society accelerates at all
times and without pause for reflecting on our desire for new things. The planned obsolescence of technologies such as
phones and computers (as well as cars and new homes) is an example. We dispose of them at a quicker rate because
they are produced at a quicker rate so we endlessly consume. Virilio reminds us that the need to constantly update our
Facebook and our Email is another example of the acceleration of reality. The implication of the desire to update is
that we are always behind where we need to be: behind on work, family, and friends. Because of its banality the sense
of being behind goes unnoticed as a way of controlling our sensibility that results in deep feelings of anxiety. Lastly,
Virilio reminds us that modern culture equates progress with economic expansion and the excessive proliferation of facts,
figures, percentages, profits, and statistics, which is what Virilio calls the mathematicisation of reality.
Let us recall another example. In Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity Gerald Raunig says the following:
Knowledge economy, knowledge age, knowledge-based economy, knowledge management, cognitive capitalism
these terms for the current social situation speak volumes. Knowledge becomes commodity, which is manufactured,
fabricated and traded like material commodities. Here, contradictory keywords are conjoined: knowledge and
economy, knowledge and management, cognition and capitalism. Knowledge is understood as collectively produced
shared thinking and is founded on human cognition which is immeasurable and cannot be controlled nor quantified. By
contrast economy, management, and capitalism represent mass-individualisation, extreme competition, and hierarchical
control. In Raunigs reflections, we can read the struggle between the human value of knowledge versus its gradual
commodification by dominant power.
The points made by Virilio and Raunig on the quantification of life and knowledge help frame the following architectural
examples which can be read as symptomatic of a deeper cultural pathology that increasingly rejects the human sensibility
for critical and creative imagination. Koolhaas (et al) Mutations, although now a dated text, is worthwhile recalling
because it is the model of numerous recent texts. It surveys contemporary global urbanisation from cities and cityregions in Europe, America, and Asia. The text measures cities through statistics and indexes, and is illustrated by
countless charts. Significantly, Mutations opens with a series of page spreads that comment on global population trends.
The first reads: At the outset of the twentieth century, 10% of the population lived in cities. In 2000, around 50% of the
world population lives in cities. This is a tiring statistic which is constantly repeated.
Another text, Content, is a history of OMA/AMO since S,M,L,XL of 1995 and situates Koolhaas practice within the
2/28
6/4/2014
scope of global culture. In the chapter entitled An Autopsy global culture between 1989 to 2003 is charted in relation
to the production of iconic buildings and the Dow Jones Financial index. It makes clear the link between architecture
and its commodification within the framework of economic markets. In the photomontage that illustrates the chapter, we
see buildings by Zumthor, Gehry, Foster, and SOM amongst many others. We also see photographs of Kofi Annan,
Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, and images of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, as well as art exhibitions such as Damien
Hirsts in MOMA, New York. Comment should also be made on the objecthood of the book: a small, thick, glossy
paperback magazine, saturated with images, photomontages, ideograms, advertisements, essays, interviews and
statistics about global culture. It is an analogical reflection of the loud consumerist ethos of our age. Yet, to qualify this,
Content still asserts the role of culture and understanding the city as a prerequisite for the production of architecture.
While these are only two examples, we can cite many others to indicate the recent emphasis on quantifying the city,
architecture and culture via technological-scientific language. For brevity, a few book titles should suffice: Weak and
Diffuse Modernity, Recombinant Urbanism, The Endless City, A New Urban Metabolism.
The preceding examples from the critical reflections by Virilio and Raunig on the implications of mathematicisation of
reality and social imagination, to the quantitative analyses of Koolhaas and others serve as illustrations of our current
cultural condition and its interplay with architecture in general. To end, here is the crucial point: instead of constructing
complex mathematical models to measure architecture or endlessly analysing the city through data, we should
remember that architecture is a form of cultural production and based on human sensibility, which is of immeasurable
importance. Let us remember that architecture is an intellectual inquiry that questions urban life as such by putting
forward alternative ways of living and critical interpretations of existing conditions.
[1] See for example the following: Franco Berardi, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e),
2012); David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (London: Profile Books, 2014); Eric
Hobsbawm, Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Abacus, 2014); Antonio Negri,
Art and Multitude: Nine letters on art, followed by Metamorphoses: Art and immaterial labour, trans. by Ed Emery
(Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2011); Paul Virilio and Bertrand Richard, The Administration of Fear (Los Angeles,
CA: Semiotext(e), 2012).
This essay can also be found at http://issuu.com/level6portfolio
Share
Like
9 bloggers like this.
Tagged with: architecture, autonomy, city theory, culture, history, urbanism

3 comments
Notes on the Autonomy of Architecture

Posted in PhD by Cameron McEwan on June 22, 2013
3/28
6/4/2014
C McEwan 2013 School-Cemetery [montage] Left: Fagnano Olona School, Right San Cataldo Cemetery, Both
drawings by Rossi.
One place to situate the theme of autonomy in architecture is in Emil Kaufmanns discussion in the 1930s on the work
of Enlightenment architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Kaufmann emphasised formal aspects such as: cubic masses, bare
walls, frameless apertures, and flat roofs. For Kaufmann, the isolation of parts, their dialogue as either repetitive or
oppositional elements, represented a formal autonomy. Autonomy re-emerged in the 1970s when architects challenged
pseudo-scientific and technologically-driven projects, such as: Kenzo Tanges 1960 project for Tokyo Bay with its
raised roadways from which residential units could endlessly aggregate, Buckminster Fullers 1962 domed geodesic
smog shield over midtown Manhattan, Archigrams pop-image megastructures like the 1964 Plug-in City, Paolo Soleris
anamorphic urbanism, and in Italy, Archizooms anarchic No-stop City, a continuous urban structure without
architecture. In projects like these, formal issues are replaced by statistical analyses, technological optimism, and the
potentially infinitely extendable, open-form. This path of development is opposed by those architects who follow the
theme of autonomy in architecture. In recent years, autonomy has been discussed once again in texts by Pier Vittorio
Aureli, Michael Hays, Reinhold Martin, and Anthony Vidler. [1]
The introduction of historical critique into the discipline of architecture is a characteristic the theme of autonomy.
However, it is complicated by two general positions that refer to the argument about what kind of historical critique is
appropriate. One kind of critique proposes an ideological critique of the history of architecture. An examination of all the
contributing factors around architectural form, such as the social, cultural, economic and political, in order to understand
how architecture is produced through power. The other kind of critique proposes a typological critique of the history of
architecture and its formation as the city. An examination of typological-form in order to understand the processes,
principles and formal operations that underline the production of form. In particular, the relationship between the form of
the individual building as it relates to the wider collective realm of the city, and the history of architecture. It is important
to say that both attitudes are independent of one another, but share a commitment to the repositioning of the I of
4/28
6/4/2014
architecture to the us of the city. Whether through understanding the form and role of architecture within the city as a
product of social, cultural, economic and political concern. Or as much for architecture as a product of the historical,
urban and typological structure of the city itself. Again, both positions prioritise the collective mind over the individual.
There is a problematic overlap in these positions because architecture supports social, cultural, economic and political
aspects and is their concrete manifestation. Thus, architectural form cannot be considered as a single, isolated event
because it is bounded by both the material and immaterial reality in which it exists. However, what the theme of
autonomy can do, is open a discussion on what it means to view architecture as autonomous. Thus autonomy refers to
notions of separation, resistance, opposition, confrontation, and critical distance, which can be instrumentalised by the
architect through the production of images, and texts, aswell as buildings. It is worthwhile to note a few specific
examples in the recent history of architecture.
Manfredo Tafuri, in Architecture and Utopia bleakly surmised architecture to be an instrument of capitalist
development used by regimes of power, thinking it useless to propose purely architectural alternatives. However, he said
that it is the conflict of things that is important, insisting on the productivity inherent in separation. In Critical
Architecture Michael Hays writes that architecture is an instrument of culture, and also is autonomous form. The former
view emphasises culture as the content of built form, and depends on social, economic, political and technological
processes. The latter concerns the formal operations of architecture, how buildings are composed, and how architectural
form is viewed as part of a continuing historical project. Aureli develops an autonomy thesis in The Possibility of an
Absolute Architecture, in which he articulates an engagement with the city through confrontation. Aureli writes that it is
the condition of architectural form to separate and be separated. In this act of separation, architecture reveals the
essence of the city, and the essence of itself as political form. For Aureli, it is the process of separation inherent to
architectural form that the political is manifest.
In the work of Aldo Rossi the autonomy of form produced critical distance between the legacy of modern functionalist
architecture and its critique, of which Rossi was a key proponent. To outline an example, we can refer to two projects
undertaken in the early 1970s. A school at Fagnano Olona, and a cemetery outside Modena. Both projects share a
precisely defined bi-lateral plan-form. Extending perpendicular from this axis are wings which arrange classrooms in the
school, and graves in the cemetery. Either end of this central axis is marked by a circular and a square element. At the
school, the circular element is a library which enters into the courtyard, and the square element is a gym hall. At the
cemetery, the former is a conical grave and the latter, a monument to the war dead. Both plans refers to the axially
arranged institutions of prisons, hospitals and asylums. In so doing, function is superseded by autonomous form, and the
history of architecture is collapsed into a single building.
By way of conclusion it is illuminating to recall the political category of agonism posited by Chantal Mouffe in her book
On the Political. We can think once again of the I/us relationship of the opening paragraphs, and more particularly the
interrelated, we/they relationship. For Mouffe, the agonist principle develops from the idea of the political as a space of
permanent conflict and antagonism, and hence a constancy of the we/they opposition. In antagonism there is no shared
ground in the we/they opposition, so opponents are enemies. While in agonism, there is recognition of the legitimacy of
the opponent, so enemy becomes adversary. Remembering that autonomy refers to notions of separation, resistance,
opposition, confrontation, and critical distance, we could say that a crucial meaning of autonomy in architecture is to
constantly produce a form of agonism through the production of images, texts, and buildings.
[1] See for example: Aureli, Pier V. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (MIT Press, 2011), Aureli, Pier V.
The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Reprint 2012 (Princeton
Architectural Press, 2008), Hays, K. Michael. Architectures Desire (MIT Press, 2009),
Martin, Reinhold. Utopias Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (University of Minnesota Press, 2010),
Vidler, Anthony, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (MIT Press, 2008).
This essay can also be found at http://www.aefoundation.co.uk

Share
5/28
6/4/2014
Like
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, autonomy, city, dialectics, form, history, montage, theory, type
2 comments
Thinking about collective memory as material reality

Posted in Discourse, PhD by Cameron McEwan on May 7, 2013
Typology in architecture gives us an apparatus to study the history of architecture, which can also be understood as a
way to examine the collective memory of the city. As can be seen in canonical texts since Vitruvius, such as those by
Alberti, Serlio, Palladio, during the Renaissance, to Durand during Enlightenment, Hilberseimer in the early twentiethcentury, Rossi in the 1960s and others, we can view the process of architectural history unfolding, treatise to treatise,
manual to manual, and manifesto to manifesto. Although not all of these works use the word typology, or type, the
concept is implied because each use classification, description, and historical precedent to formulate a position. For
example, in De re aedificatoria Alberti distinguished between public and private buildings in the city, assigning the Orders
to certain classes of building. Serlios books on architecture catalogued buildings from Ancient Rome in plans, elevations
and perspectives, before describing the typological-form of temples: circular, square, six-sided, eight-sided, oval and
cruciform. Palladios Four Books organised the Orders, private buildings in rural and urban settings, then public
buildings and, buildings of historical significance. In Durands books, the Recueil et Parallle, and the Prcis des leons
darchitecture, the former catalogued existing works of architecture from different cultures and historic periods at the
Follow
same scale. While the latter was divided into three: on architectural elements, on composition, and on analysis of building
types. Hilberseimers Groszstadt Architektur was organised into ten chapters with the first two and final describing the
Follow The
urban condition and proposing a response. Those inbetween address in succession the building programmes of the city
ofindustrial, trade construction.
from residential, commercial, high-rises, halls andArchitecture
theatres, transport,
Analogy
I have noted these texts because as Rossi wrote in The Architecture of the City, the concept of type became, the very
Get every new post delivered
idea of architecture, a fact attested to by both practice, he says, and by the treatise. Although in this sketch of a few
to your Inbox.
texts that deal with theories about type, an emphasis is seemingly placed on type as it relates to classification. It should
be made clear, however, that the idea of type is Join
a dialectical
principle,
637 other
followersbecause it always reacts with, say: form,
construction technique, site irregularities, means of production, cultural particularities, history, and also, the
Enter your
email
autobiography of the architect. Later in The Architecture
of the
Cityaddress
Rossi discusses the concept of collective memory,
via the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who wrote that historical memory reaches us through written and visual records.
Sign me up because collective memory relies on material
The concept of collective memory and of type are closely interrelated,
reality. A material reality which is manifest both in built form and as images in treatise. Built form because buildings
ered byvalues,
WordPress.com
witness the evolution of the city. Images because theyPow
embody
experience, ideas. What is important is that type
constructs a link with history, and produces transmittable knowledge. Accordingly, architecture communicates its own
history through typological ideas.
6/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2013) AE Foundation Locus, Study montage with plan by Palladio [Montage with photographs and CAD
drawing]
One of the premises of the AE Foundation is to understand the history of architecture as central to the education and
practice of the architect. Undertaken within the framework of the AE Foundation Graduate Programme, the project
opposite is for a school in the Lochee part of Dundee. The typological approach has been to distinguish three volumes
that articulate three conditions of the site. The tower fronts the street edge and contains the entrance, administration,
dining, gym hall, and a nursery. Classrooms are arranged around a courtyard which opens into the school grounds.
Between the courtyard and tower is a rectangular volume which holds a library and an art studio. In order to leave and
to arrive at the classrooms, children (and teachers) must always pass through the art and library spaces. The spaces of
creativity and of knowledge.
7/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2013) AE Foundation Locus, Site plan and long section through entrance [CAD line drawing]
For further information about the AE Foundation, an open and independent forum for the discussion and exposition of
architecture, see http://aefoundation.co.uk/
Share
Like
Tagged with: Andrea Palladio, collective memory, dialectics, drawing, type, urban design
2 comments
The Fragment as a Category of Critique

Posted in PhD by Cameron McEwan on February 8, 2013
8/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2012) Three Propositions [Collage]

9/28
6/4/2014
A thesis that starts with an image. A collage by the author, titled Three Propositions. Fragments of images are cut out
and pasted onto cartridge paper which has been coated with a layer of white chalk, over which marks have been made
using pencil and the long side of the chalk. At its centre is Aldo Rossis Analogical City, itself a collage that uses
photocopies. Rossis image is around two metres square and consists of projects by Rossi, his collaborators and his
references, drawn in a mixture of projection techniques: orthographic, oblique, perspective. So we get plan, elevation,
perspective, and oblique sharing the same space and with equal authority. Rossi has drawn a figure, which, in my collage
is displaced vertically and overlaps onto Canalettos vedute painting of an alternative Venice, which Rossi used to
illustrate his concept of the Analogical City.
Canalettos painting depicts three buildings by Palladio as if they were composed in an actual cityscape. They are not.
The bridge is unbuilt and the buildings either side are in Vicenza. Rossi says that an imaginary Venice is built on top of
the real one. The painting is aligned with Sebastiano Serlios 1010 square grid which is at the start of his Renaissance
treatise in Book I On Geometry. In Book II On Perspective, Serlio illustrates the technique of perspective using the
theatre sets that Vitruvius described in De Architettura: Tragic, Satyric, and Comical. I have cut out the one Serlio
draws without the set, leaving only a gridded pattern and the outline of where the walls of the set would be, and placed it
underneath the Analogical City image. On the oblique is another part of Serlios theatre, the semicircular seating.
On top of this and aligned with the seating is a notebook extract by Rossi. To the left of the Analogical City is Jacques
Lacans diagram of the image-screen from the chapter What is a Picture in The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psycho-Analysis. Following the diagram, Lacan says the screen is the locus of mediation. As Freud has said,
memories are projected onto this screen as images, where they are superimposed on one another. Images are thus built
on top of other images. Rossi says the city is the locus of collective memory, and I place Lacans diagram between
Serlios geometric grid, and Rossis Analogical City. It directs the view toward another of Rossis notebook extracts in
which he writes about collage in architecture, the construction of the city by parts, and the Analogical City as a
compositional system that uses existing elements in new combinations, like the Canaletto painting.
The two quotations at the bottom of the collage, in their juxtaposition constitute a narrative framework:
Forgetting Architecture comes to mind as a more appropriate title for this book, since while I may talk about a school,
a cemetery, a theatre, it is more correct to say that I talk about life, death, imagination.
Aldo Rossi A Scientific Autobiography 1981, p. 78.
I would define the concept of type as something that is permanent and complex, a logical principle that is prior to form
and that constitutes it.
Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City 1966, p. 40.
Share
Like
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, Analogical Thinking, analysis, collage, design proposition, drawing, fragment, Giovanni
Antonio Canaletto, Jacques Lacan, sebastiano serlio, Sigmund Freud
leave a comment
Forgetting Fundamentals
Posted in Discourse, PhD by Cameron McEwan on September 19, 2012
10/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2012) AE Foundation Forgetting Fundamentals Montage Panel. [From top: Basilica
11/28
6/4/2014
by Vitruvius, illustrated by Cesariano (1521), Holl (1980) study of H-Type building, Serlio
(c1537) centralised plan (left); Schematised plans of eleven of Palladios villas (c1570) via
Wittkower, Piranesi (1761) study of Roman ruins with temple]
Established in May 2011, the AE Foundation provides an open independent forum for the discussion of architecture.
The Foundation brings together an international community of practitioners, academics and graduates who wish to
pursue architecture seriously with a view to contributing to and disseminating architectural knowledge and understanding.
To, promote the significance of the discipline, to encourage scholarship and foster an active architectural culture, in
partnership with individuals in practice and academia and to be a centre par excellence for intelligent dialogue and
debate in architectural theory, history and practice based in Scotland.
One such discussion was undertaken during the Spring months of this year, 2012, under the general question: can we
talk about fundamentals in architecture? Our exchange was at times flippant, at times philosophical, and at times biting of
each others position. Some of us decided to formalise our thoughts in short essays. What follows is a summary. An
extended version of the essay can be found on the AE Foundation website.
I started with Aldo Rossis rumination on the alternative title for his book A Scientific Autobiography,
Forgetting Architecture comes to mind as a more appropriate title for this book, since while I may talk about a
school, a cemetery, a theatre, it is more correct to say that I talk about life, death, imagination.
It links the building types: school, cemetery, theatre; with their conceptual analogues: life, death, imagination. In this
space of association type in architecture is both material and idea. In a theory of types, we can view the process of
architectural history unfolding, treatise to treatise, manual to manual, and manifesto to manifesto. That is, from Vitruvius,
De architectura, Serlio and Palladios books during the Renaissance, to Durands manual which codifies buildings,
Venturis manifesto, and the pamphlets of Holl. In Rafael Moneos 1978 essay On Typology, republished in a 2004
edition of El Croquis he writes that typology raises the question of the nature of the architectural work itself. In my view,
it is therefore legitimate to postulate type as one place to begin a discussion about fundamentals in architecture.
For the first part, type is a way of thinking in groups, which is, analysis through classification. In architecture, the most
common theories of classification by type have been according to use: national monuments, town halls, prisons, banks,
warehouses, factories, as can be seen in Nikolaus Pevsners 1976 A History of Building Types; and according to form:
centralised plan, linear arrangement, courtyard. Aldo Rossi tell us that the former understanding is limiting because the
use of a building is independent from its form. Buildings evolve over time, so a warehouse becomes an apartment block,
an apartment block becomes an office block, an office block becomes a brothel. Or as, for example, Atelier Bow-Wow
show us in Made in Tokyo, all of these can be contained as a hybrid, so that above the warehouse is an apartment
block, which is below an office, and the building terminates with a penthouse brothel.
Rossis quote, I would define the concept of type as something that is permanent and complex, a logical principle that is
prior to form and that constitutes it, is significant for its location within The Architecture of the City. It mediates
between a quotation by the Enlightenment architectural theorists Antoine Chrysthome Quatremre de Quincy and JeanNicolas-Louis Durand. Both Quatremre de Quincy and Durand acknowledged, in different ways the relationship of
memory and history in the idea of type. Quatremre de Quincy linked type with that which is archaic, elemental and
primitive, and we could say to memory. Free from this metaphysical speculation, Durands technical understanding
geometrised history. And as Rossi has said, history is the material of architecture. Thus in the adjacency of each quote
we get the opposition between the conceptual and the material once more. Rossis quote then, mediates between the
permanent and complex, which is archaic and elemental, something prior to form; and of the logical principle,
which is that constituted by a reading of history.
And of forgetting, Rossi writes,
In order to be significant, architecture must be forgotten, or must present only an image for reverence which
subsequently becomes confounded with memories.
12/28
6/4/2014
Freud tells us that in forgetting, we commit something to the unconscious, where it is worked over during regression,
which is an impulse to the archaic; and then to surface again when remembered, only now transformed, and reverent.
The type is worked over within the collective history of architecture, to be transformed by a kind of temporal and formal
regression.
13/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2012) AE Foundation Forgetting Fundamentals Montage Panel 2. [From top: Durand (1805)
14/28
6/4/2014
Elements of Building, from the Prcis, Rossi (1970) Gallaratese elevation, plan, photograph, Canal side tenement
in Milan, Quatremre de Quincy (c1832) study for a gateway]
Share
Like
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, architecture, dialectics, drawing, form, history, memory, opposition, Sigmund Freud, type,
typology
7 comments
After Geddes: The Valley Section

Posted in Discourse, PhD by Cameron McEwan on July 16, 2012
Town plans are thus no mere diagrams, they are a system of hieroglyphics in which man has written the history of
civilisation, and the more tangled their apparent confusion, the more we may be rewarded in deciphering it. (Geddes,
Cities in Evolution, 1915)
A transect drawing made for the Geddes Institute for Urban Research at Architecture, Dundee. It represents Dundee
and its environs from the agrarian north toward the Cairngorms, through to the post-industrial city, and water edge of the
Tay. The rail bridge and oil rigs are ghosted in.
McEwan, C (2012) After Geddes The Valley Section [pencil and chalk on paper]
15/28
6/4/2014
Share
Like
Tagged with: analysis, architecture, arts, Cities, drawing, fragment, Patrick Geddes
5 comments
PhD Architecture Work in Progress 2012

Posted in PhD by Cameron McEwan on June 15, 2012
Since commencing our PhD in 2009, three of the design-based researchers at Architecture, Dundee, have presented a
modest Work in Progress, free-style exhibition. A grab from the Dundee website reads, PhD research at Architecture,
Dundee is pursued through design and focused around two interrelated themes that support priorities in creative practice
and sustainability: Architecture and Intellectual Culture; and Architecture and the Environment.
I presented study drawings of Fagnano Olona Elementary School, Italy by Aldo Rossi and used the analysis to speculate
about Rossis analogical praxis in the Aldo Rossi in his Study montage and accompanying sketch studies. These
examine the relationship between observation, memory and imagination within an analogical framework and depict the
type-forms, type-elements, monuments and anonymous architecture which are at the foundation of Rossis praxis.
McEwan, C. (2012) Aldo Rossi in His Study [Expo View]
16/28
6/4/2014
Fagnano Olona Elementary School is defined by its courtyard plan-form and axially-arranged accommodation. Within
the courtyard, wide steps lead to the double height gymnasium, from which one can look toward the cylindrical library
with its glazed roof. We can read this analogically and equate the gymnasium with fitness and physical health; opposite
the library which is for knowledge; between these are the square and steps which is where the life of a city unfolds. The
school is thus a city in microcosm.
The city is where Aldo Rossis thesis begins. He developed a theory of types in The Architecture of the City, which
was a theory for the building forms that repeated and endured most in the history of architecture and the city. Out of this
evolved his concept of the Analogical City, a conceptual framework for transposing collective types and individual
monuments from architectural history to be repositioned alongside the most anonymous elements of the city. Mixed, like
Canalettos vedute and Freuds composite dream-image.
McEwan, C. (2012) Aldo Rossi in His Study [Sketch studies with pencil, chalk and india ink on layout paper]
Share
Like
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, Analogical Form, Analogical Thinking, Antonello da Messina, architecture, drawing,
exhibition, history of architecture, montage, type
1 comment
A Model School: Aldo Rossis School at Fagnano Olona

Posted in Discourse, PhD by Cameron McEwan on May 3, 2012
The recently established Foundation for Architecture & Education is an independent forum for the exchange of ideas
about architecture and founded by Samuel Penn and Penny Lewis, who tell us, Architects work within a rich canon.
Defining the position of contemporary work in relation to the vast body of work that has gone before it is important.
The Foundation for Architecture & Education organises events, produce publications and coordinate a post-graduate
course in architectural studies. The premise of which is to provide a framework in which each participant can develop
their understanding of the discipline through the study of built work. The year long course is split into three parts: Model,
which involves the study of a building that exemplifies a particular idea about architecture; Axiom, which demands that
17/28
6/4/2014
participants develop a clear position on their own practice in the context of a broader appreciation of shared concerns
for architecture; and Locus, which offers the opportunity to design a building in a specific location. The building chosen
to study in Model provides the building type to design in Locus. Each year, a new question is asked, which will be
returned to in all of the work undertaken. This year is the question of size: what size should a building be?
This post is about term one Model, which concludes with an Open Review this Saturday 5th of May after a talk and
presentation by architect Raphael Zuber and Christoph Gantenbein on Friday night. The building selected to study is
Aldo Rossis school at Fagnano Olona, a small town, 40 km northwest of Milan. Designed in 1972, Rossi had built only
the Segrate town square in 1965 and the Gallaratese housing block in 1970, completing the school at Fagnano Olona in
1976. Thus, it is considered one of Rossis early works.
18/28
6/4/2014
Rossi A (1972-76) Fagnano Olona Elementary School [Photograph: McEwan C 2011]

The selection of this building is: first, Rossi is regarded as a significant architect and Fagnano Olona school is recognised
as significant in the development of Rossis built and theoretical work. Second, when published, it is often illustrated in
plan only and as with all of Rossis projects, is accompanied by beautiful sketch studies and photographs. However, the
site context and sectional drawings are almost always missing. Third, the building type is sufficiently complex to use as a
base for term three, Locus. Finally, and from a personal point of view, Rossi forms the foundation of my PhD, and as
readers of this blog will know, there was really no other choice
Fagnano Olona school is defined by its courtyard plan-form and axially-arranged accommodation. The elevation is
punctured with large square openings set in line with the internal wall thus articulating the shadow that falls on the external
surface. One enters underneath a large clock, and with the adjacent conical brick chimney (containing the plant), it is like
walking into a painting by de Chirico or Sironi. When I visited (see this post), it was the Summer holiday so the school
was empty and the association of de Chirico was perhaps intensified by this. The chimney marks the entrance and
primary axis of the school, which is organised northeast to southwest between an assembly hall and a linear pergola.
Within the courtyard, wide steps lead to the double height gymnasium on the northeast, from which one can look toward
the cylindrical library with its glazed roof. Double-corridor wings surround the courtyard and contain twenty-two
classrooms (over two floors), staff facilities and a dining hall.
19/28
6/4/2014
Rossi A (1972-76) Fagnano Olona Elementary School [Re-drawn by McEwan C 2012]

It is interesting to note a recent AR. The February 2012 issue has a short section on schools, in which Christian Kuhn
offers four attributes for the building type: flexibility, clustering, common core, and connectivity. We can analyse
Fagnano Olona via these attributes.
Kuhns attribute clustering, is the division of the school into a hierarchy of smaller clusters. We can see this at Fagnano
Olona in the blocks that extend outward from the central courtyard. The longer ones contain four classrooms with a
corridor that is 2.5m, and repeat over two floors. The shorter ones contain three classrooms and a room off the corridor
(the courtyard end), used as an informal teaching/learning space. These cluster blocks are a single storey with a 2m
corridor. The blocks frame an external space with trees and grass.
Flexibility is about the granularity of room sizes and not necessarily about open-plan layout. At Fagnano Olona, the
classrooms are repeated units, arranged within the four linear blocks. The other two block contain staff rooms and the
dining hall. There is variation in this. At the end of each block the final classroom extends to the width of the corridor. A
further subtle variation exists in the northwest end classrooms because the corridor is widened to 2.5m, from the 2m
width of the southeast block. Thus, there are three classroom forms, although a fourth informal one exists as the
teaching/learning space, which is roughly half the size of the small classrooms and constitutes both circulation space and
space for learning.
At Fagnano Olona the common core is the central courtyard with steps. A playground, assembley space, town square
and theatre. But also the informal teaching/learning spaces act quite readily as an indoor meeting place.
The final attribute that Kuhn offers is connectivity: the school as a node in a wider network of learning. He cites other
learning institutions including secondary/primary school, nursery, and library at the local level; with ICT connections at
the global level. At Fagnano Olona, the school includes a library, the circular element in plan, which is also part of the
courtyard and adjacent to the entrance. One imagines this space to be used by the community as, for example an
exhibition space.
20/28
6/4/2014
The significance of Rossis work is in its associative links and typological investigation. Fagnano Olona is no different. A
de Chirico clock and chimney mix with the pergola as a reference to the archetypal hut. The courtyard is a typological
form, a town square, its steps like an amphitheatre. The library which looks like a baptistry. At Fagnano Olona my
interest is in the clarity of composition and investigation of repetition and variation.
Although Rossi is often attacked for dismissing human scale, studying Fagnano Olona in detail reveals the opposite.
From the over-scaled square windows which contain four smaller-sized square windows within, to the subtle difference
in corridor width, the modest teaching/learning spaces and in particular I was struck by the ledge at the entrance
vestibule where children can sit and shelter from the rain, peering, and thinking about that strange chimney, framed by a
large square window.
Share
Like
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, Analogical Form, Analogical Thinking, drawing, form, memory, Model, repetition, scale,
school, size, type
3 comments
Theory of Types/Dream-work: Rossi speaks to Palladio via Canaletto

Posted in PhD by Cameron McEwan on March 19, 2012
]
21/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2012) The Architecture of Analogy PhD Seminar Work in Progress [photograph
Dundee School of Architecture and Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art run a Seminar series in which one (or two)
PhD Candidates present their work in progress. It runs fortnightly at lunchtime, and last week was my turn.
The timing was good. I delivered a lecture to Year 3, two weeks before, which allowed me, first to consolidate my
thinking on how to introduce Rossi (in broad terms); and then, Year 3 were subjected to a minor speculative foray
They may or may not have known this.
The second half of that lecture was on Rossis Analogical City Panel from 1976. An enigmatic montage of Rossi
projects, superimposed with projects of his references, condensed, into a single image. The PhD Seminar started from
here and I visually de-condensed the image, speaking about Rossis conversation with Palladio, via Canaletto and
locating some of the primary urban types. The panel was published in Lotus International number 13, where Rossi
writes of the relationship between reality and imagination, or in his words, the dialectics of the concrete. Imagination as
a concrete thing.
22/28
6/4/2014
Rossi A (1976) Analogical City Panel [montage diagram by McEwan C
23/28
6/4/2014
McEwan C (2012) The Architecture of Analogy PhD Seminar Work in Progress [photograph
24/28
6/4/2014
Share
Like
One blogger likes this.
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, Analogical Thinking, dialectics, memory, montage, type
leave a comment
Its a funny type of memory, that.

Posted in PhD by Cameron McEwan on March 14, 2012
]
McEwan C (2012) After Architect Aldo Rossi A Scientific Autobiography [Mixed media chalk charcoal india ink on
gessoed fabriano
Something between remembering and forgetting? The dialectic that exists in memory, I mean the mis-
In The Architecture of the City architect Aldo Rossi says that the past is being partly experienced in the present. With
Paris and the thesis of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs on Collective Memory in mind Rossi writes, the actual
configuration of a large city can be seen as the confrontation of the initiatives of different parties, personalities, and
governments. In this way various different plans are superimposed, synthesised, forgotten, so that the Paris of today is
like a composite photograph, one that might be obtained by reproducing the Paris of Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I,
Baron Haussmann in a single image. Forgotten. This passage brings to mind one by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
25/28
6/4/2014
who in, Civilisation and Its Discontents uses the city of Rome as an analogy to illustrate the accumulation and
preservation of material in ones unconscious. Freud writes that in mental life nothing that has once existed is ever lost.
He asks us to imagine Rome to be like the unconscious, a psychical entity with a similarly long, rich past, in which
nothing that ever took shape has passed away, and in which all previous phases of development exist beside the most
recent.
And back to Rossi. He concludes A Scientific Autobiography by re-drawing twelve projects. His selection dates from
1962 to 1980, and each are signed summer, estate 1980. These fragments exist alongside one another in the present.
In my investigation of this, each of Rossis twelve projects are superimposed. Like in Freuds Rome, a composite image
is built. Starting with Gallaratese (1970) in Milan, then Segrate (1965), Modena (1979), Venice (1980) and others,
each project is drawn, and then painted over. Drawn then painted over, and the process is repeated for each. Rossis
twelve projects exist in a single image, superimposed. The present image partly experienced by the previous one, or two
or three. The drawing sits somewhere between remembering and forgetting. A kind of mis-remembering.
Share
Like
One blogger likes this.
Tagged with: Aldo Rossi, Analogical Form, Analogical Thinking, architecture, dialectics, drawing, memory, montage,
repetition, Sigmund Freud
2 comments
Older Posts
Summary
The Architecture of Analogy is the title of my recently completed PhD thesis on the architectural production of Aldo
Rossi, the development of which is recorded in this Blog. The purpose in revisiting Rossi is to re-engage with
architecture as a discipline with its own body of knowledge and re-learn how architecture negotiates its formal condition
and its social role. It is to these latter points that The Architecture of Analogy will now turn.
Cameron McEwan May 2014
About
The Architecture of Analogy
The Author
Contents
Discourse
MArch
PhD
Subscribe
26/28
6/4/2014
Join 637 other followers
Sign up
Twitter
Notes on Architecture and Cultural Production #architecture #urbanism wp.me/pNsQI-8M tweeted 2 weeks ago
Excellent talk @profdavidharvey Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism youtu.be/AULJlwoI3TI via
@LSEGeography #LSEcapitalism tweeted 2 months ago
RT @profdavidharvey: Read the prologue buff.ly/1eFLv9t to Seventeen Contradictions and the End of
Capitalism buff.ly/1eFLsul tweeted 2 months ago
RT @BenHuser: by-by #FreedomOfSpeech, hello #fascism - "On the #UKs Equating of Journalism with
Terrorism" interc.pt/MyQxNQ - #jour tweeted 3 months ago
Eisenman Interview by Iman Ansari #architecture as a conceptual, cultural, and intellectual enterprise
archdaily.com/429925/eisenma via @archdaily tweeted 3 months ago
Follow
People
Aidan Williams
Alec Pearson
Ian Harrison
Ian Pollard
June McEwan Artist
Learning Architecture
Martin Baillie
Muto
Paul Feeney
Paul Guzzardo
Rowan Mackinnon-Pryde
Sen McAlister
The Nomad
The Paper Gentlemen
Other Links
AE Foundation
Dundee School of Architecture
Geddes Institute for Urban Research
Level 6 Portfolio
Linked In
mat.zine
Material Unit
Portfolio 2009
Project Context
Rooms + Cities
SSAA
Yuck 'n Yum
27/28
6/4/2014
Alberti
Aldo Rossi Analogical Form Analogical Thinking Analogy analysis
Cities city
design proposition dialectics displacement drawing
exhibition extrusion
Fantasy film form fragment framework
Giovanni Antonio Canaletto history
memory Methodology Model montage opposition origin Painting
Andrea Palladio Antonello da Messina architecture arts association autonomy
memory culture
city theory collage collective
dream
Giorgio Morandi
architecture Jacques Lacan
history of
Patrick Geddes
photograph place planning repetition research Review scale school sebastiano serlio seriality Sigmund
Freud site analysis size street superimposition tacit theory time T ransposition type typology urban
design urbanism
Search
Search
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. The Journalist 1.3 Theme.
28/28

The Architecture of Analogy-2

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Architecture of Analogy-2

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Architecture of Analogy-2

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the purpose of the blog?

What is the purpose of the blog?

What are some examples of how architecture embodies culture?

What are some examples of how architecture embodies culture?

6/4/2014

The Architecture of Analogy

This essay can also be found at http://issuu.com/level6portfolio

Tagged with: architecture, autonomy, city theory, culture, history, urbanism

Notes on the Autonomy of Architecture

This essay can also be found at http://www.aefoundation.co.uk

Thinking about collective memory as material reality

The Fragment as a Category of Critique

McEwan C (2012) Three Propositions [Collage]

After Geddes: The Valley Section

PhD Architecture Work in Progress 2012

McEwan, C. (2012) Aldo Rossi in His Study [Expo View]

A Model School: Aldo Rossis School at Fagnano Olona

Rossi A (1972-76) Fagnano Olona Elementary School [Photograph: McEwan C 2011]

Rossi A (1972-76) Fagnano Olona Elementary School [Re-drawn by McEwan C 2012]

Theory of Types/Dream-work: Rossi speaks to Palladio via Canaletto

Rossi A (1976) Analogical City Panel [montage diagram by McEwan C

Its a funny type of memory, that.

Join 637 other followers

Aldo Rossi Analogical Form Analogical Thinking Analogy analysis

city theory collage collective

architecture Jacques Lacan

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. The Journalist 1.3 Theme.

You might also like