The Analogue as a Critical Project

The drawing is from a suite of 33 drawings that inquire into Aldo Rossi’s analogical city, its formal and conceptual principles. In particular this drawing superimposes ten of Rossi’s drawings from the IAUS exhibition catalogue entitled Aldo Rossi in America: 1976-1979 (IAUS New York: MIT Press, 1979). Rossi’s drawings are redrawn by the author, together, one after the other and with brevity. Colour and shadow hatching are excluded. The aim is twofold. On one hand the drawing accumulates the material of Rossi’s analogical city as an inventory of forms and typical elements, including: geometrical forms, urban types and domestic objects. The combinational and compositional principles that underline the analogical city are figured forth and it is possible to identify the following principles: frame, focus, frontality, horizon, figure, ground, series, and inventory. On the other hand a new project is constructed. The overlaying of multiple drawings simultaneously erases Rossi’s project through the mass accumulation of form toward a new representation. A conceptual and formal dialogue is developed with the analogical city. The analogue becomes a critical device toward a methodological and theoretical project.