Tendenza

This week’s readings were a bit of a challenge, but the one thing that caught my attention was the idea of the Neo-Rationalist movement, Tendenza, during the 1960s and 1970s. The group of Italian architects opposed the views of modernism and their main focus was to treat architecture as a commodity. They expressed the importance to redefine architecture in terms of “types” that consisted of rules for the rational combination of all its elements. By rejecting the belief that architecture begins and ends with technology, the Tendenza insisted on the social and cultural importance of urban elements, by looking at historical forms and elements as a method to create architectural forms.

One of the movement’s most important project was Aldo Rossi’s great cemetery at Modena. The design expressed new forms during that specific time period. “It [was] a work of inspiration and transformation, and contains the possibility for new types” (MODENA). Rossi defined architecture as designs or forms that carry on over time, to become “types”. These specific types make up the history of an urban environment, which tie into the culture of the present day. 

Aldo Rossi's cemetery at Modena

(MODENA). http://www.uky.edu/Architecture/wakeup/issue4/aaron/welcome.htm.