Aldo Rossi (1931–1997) was an Italian architect, theorist and designer, one of the leading figures of postmodernism and in 1990 the first Italian to receive the Pritzker Prize. Born in Milan, he studied at the Polytechnic University of Milan, graduating in 1958, and from 1959 helped edit the magazine Casabella-Continuità under Ernesto Nathan Rogers. After working for Ignazio Gardella and Marco Zanuso he turned to teaching, and in 1966 published The Architecture of the City, which became a classic of architectural writing; A Scientific Autobiography followed in 1981. He also designed furniture and objects, including for Alessi. The critic Ada Louise Huxtable called him "a poet who happens to be an architect".
Read moreShow less
His 1971 competition win for the extension of the San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena (1978) made him internationally famous; it was his largest project and is still unfinished. For the 1980 Venice Biennale he built the floating Teatro del Mondo, a theatre for 250 people. In Maastricht he designed the Bonnefanten Museum (1995), and in Berlin, where he had already built a block on Kochstraße in the 1980s, the Quartier Schützenstraße (1998).
