Rossi's Housing Block in Gallaratese, Milan

This housing block made Aldo Rossi famous. In the seventies it was published in magazines all over the world as a premonition of the architecture to come: an architecture solidly rooted in history (Rossi often cited traditional Italian housing compounds as his inspiration) and an architecture that assumed an active role in the formation of urban communities (the building's porticos and plazas were conceived as spaces for people to gather and interact with each other).

Unfortunately, the architecture advanced by Rossi came, opened the door to stylistic irony and historicist sentimentality, and then disappeared from architecture magazines (and became a marginal phenomena in architectural practice).

Visiting the Gallaratese compound today is enlightening in many ways. Its directness is still a compelling argument for an architecture whose use can be easily identified--an architecture that points towards the archetype of its typology--and can thus be understood in relation to other buildings, as a piece of a larger urban context. 

The problem is that the context where this housing block was built did not develop quite as Rossi would have wished. Other housing complexes in the area are organized in heartless apartment towers and slabs surrounded by parking lots and empty space. The Gallaratese district lacks an articulated urban fabric. The Rossi compound is thus isolated--its isolation is heightened by a wall that surrounds it, and warning signs at its entrances that caution against trespassing. Rossi's public spaces are not so public anymore. 

Visiting the Gallaratese housing complex is also enlightening because it lets you see what books and magazines often do not--Rossi's block does not make much sense when seen separately from Carlo Aymonio's. Aymonino and Rossi evidently worked together in the design of a single complex, with common structural and spatial patterns. Rossi's slab is enveloped by Aymonino's V-shaped building; the public areas between them serve as articulations. 

Aymonino's building in this complex did not become quite as famous as Rossi's, perhaps because it is more complicated in its design, and heavier, in a way that recalls Rudolph's brutalism. Rossi's design, on the other hand, was direct, to the point, and genuinely different from what was being built at the time.