The Life of Architecture Is Always Important

When I was a student at Politecnico, I was always cited by the professors as an example not to follow! This means, undoubtedly, that my architecture provoked something passionate and something hateful, and I don’t know frankly why. But I believe every one of us expresses himself in his own work, and there is something personal in my work, which I passed along.

I believe that the major importance of life is based on moral and poetic principles. I always think of several moments and memories. The memory of the city is very important; the collective memory not the personal memory. In this sense, I find the life of architecture always important.

The emergence of relations among things, more than the things themselves, always gives rise to new meanings.

Because every aspect of the building is anticipated, and because it is precisely this anticipation that allows for freedom, the architecture is like a date, a honeymoon, a vacation—like everything that is anticipated so that it can occur. Although I also love what is uncertain, I have always thought that only small-minded people with little imagination are opposed to discreet acts of organization; for it is only such efforts of organization that in the end permit contretemps, variations, joys, disappointments.

An architectural project is a vocational or a love affair; in either case, it is a construction. One can hold oneself back in the face of this vocation or affair, but it will always remain an unresolved thing.

The houses of the dead and those of childhood, the theater, or the house of representation—all these projects and buildings seem to me to embrace the seasons and ages of life. Yet they no more represent themes than functions; rather they are the forms in which life, and therefore death, are manifested.

by Aldo Rossi