More Pictures of Miami's St. John Newmann

Below are three more pictures of the Saint John Newmann Church in Miami, by architects Javier Cenicacelaya and Iñigo Saloña.

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.

Satelite's Towers

Mario Pani commissioned architects Luis Barragan and Matias Goeritz to design a monument to mark the entrance to Ciudad Satelite. This monument consists of five concrete towers with triangular plans painted red, blue, yellow and white on an elongated plaza surrounded by a freeway. 

As the rest of Satelite, the towers are automobile-oriented: they are best seen from a car. As you drive north towards Satelite they appear unexpectedly, and the street points straight ahead at them. As you approach them you realize their incredible size. Not until you are a couple dozen meters from the towers does the road turn and makes you circle around them. 

A couple years ago, the Mexico City government built a second freeway over the southern section of the freeway that leads to Satelite, to alleviate traffic. Now there are plans to build a second level on the freeway's northern end as well. Even if the towers themselves are not touched, the modification of the freeway that leads toward them would make the experience of them quite different. This would be a tragedy. 

Mexico's Ciudad Satelite was Conceived as an American Suburb

In the late fifties there was a water shortage in Mexico City, so efforts began to direct urban growth beyond the valley where the city was located. Mario Pani, an outstanding architectural and urban innovator, conceived "Ciudad Satelite," a new neighborhood designed to function as an independent town, connected to Mexico City by a freeway. 

A visit to Satelite today makes it clear that Pani's inspiration was the post-war American Suburb, with winding streets and houses with front and back yards--as opposed to the Cartesian street grid of traditional Mexican cities, and the preeminence of the enclosed central garden in Mexican architecture.

Another piece of evidence of what Pani envisioned for Satelite is the American-style shopping mall he designed as the new town's centerpiece--it was the first of its type in Mexico. This mall, on the freeway that communicates Satelite with Mexico City, was surrounded by a sizable parking lot. Architecturally, it was a box with no windows similar to those built in the United States during the fifties. (This building was later demolished, giving way to a much larger mall.)

In the end, Satelite did not turn out quite as Pani and its developers expected. Soon, it was swallowed by Mexico City and became just another urban neighborhood, with radical juxtapositions of use, and areas with high density and heavy traffic. What did remain of Pani's vision was a strong urban identity that is shared today by the people of Satelite.