Citta Analoge

For the Biënnale of Venice 1975, Aldo Rossi, Fabio Reinhart, Bruno Reichlin and Eraldo Consolascio produced a large panel of 2 x 2 metres entitled Città Analoga. It is an investigation into the modes of designing cities, especially the subjects that were much at stake at the time: dealing with historic centres and the planning of suburbs. The exhibition panel is an important example of the idea of Rossi, that modern history confronts us with an archive of architectural facts and images, that has to be analysed by architectural theory and which is the basis for future planning. Utilising many sources, it displays the collective effort to master the relation between analysis and planning, and gives an insight in one of the important theoretical issues from the mid 1970s.
Technically, the panel is the reproduction of the original collage that was created in the rooms of the Technical University Zürich, making use of a rather complex mixture of various reproduction techniques. The original collage got lost but lives on in an intermediate version, that is preserved in the collection of Centre Pompidou. Of the final panel, just few copies persist.

This is a city that only exists on paper, and must be visited by eye. In 1973, a group of young Swiss architects, guided by Aldo Rossi, invented a city on the shore of a Mountain Lake. This ‘analogous city’ was a combination of an old, mediaeval town and a modern, planned city. They enjoyed to hide a number of their own projects and many famous historical buildings in the design. For them, it was a way of reflecting on town planning and the maintenance of old cities. For many viewers, it may be foremost a puzzle, but be careful: David (you know, the biblical boy who defeated the giant Goliath) is watching.