A Scientific Autobiography [Paperback]

Aldo Rossi (Author), Lawrence Venuti (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 1984

Postscript by Vincent Scully

Based on notebooks composed since 1971, Aldo Rossi's memoir intermingles his architectural projects, including discussion of the major literary and artistic influences on his work, with his personal history. His ruminations range from his obsession with theater to his concept of architecture as ritual. The illustrations—photographs, evocative images, as well as a set of drawings of Rossi's major architectural projects prepared particularly for this publication—were personally selected by the author to augment the text.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As nostalgia has swept the architectural community in recent years, one of the most Proustian design sensibilities to emerge has been that of Italian architect Aldo Rossi. The enfant terrible of Italy's 1960s Tendenza group, which fulminated against the modern movement, Rossi published influential polemics and kept an equally eloquent personal record in the form of notebooks, which MIT has published as the handsome A Scientific Autobiography.... His own reminiscences—convents and castles, the emotional pull of holy statuary, Melville's dramatics, an adolescent's fear of death, a young artist's ways with life—fill his lyrical, erudite notebooks."
—Portfolio

Language Notes

Text: English, Italian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 125 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (April 26, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262680416
• ISBN-13: 978-0262680417
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,463,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an unappreciated masterpiece, October 18, 2002

By 

curt dilger (phila usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scientific Autobiography (Oppositions books) (Hardcover)

This is my second favorite book of all time on the subject of architecture. The over appreciated invisible cities, by Italo Calvino, still holds at number one. But this book is sadly left behind. Difficult and dense, it is nonetheless one of the most profound and poignant reflections on architecture and man's place in the world. Rossi shows us just how intimately architecture is connected to man's search for happiness, and how it participates in our mortality, our will to live. Read this and love the human project just a little bit more.