Aldo Rossi and the cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena

The passage of time, the vestiges of death, and the history of the place, in combination with other references of Jewish cemeteries built in the nineteenth century, were concepts adopted by architect Rossi to create this "metaphysical" space.

 

Aldo Rossi is considered one of the theoretical pillars in the history of contemporary architecture. The Milanese architect (1931-1997), through his work and writings, revealed the importance of urban events and architecture as part of a historical, social and political fabric.

For Rossi, the architectural dimension of the urban is complemented by the urban dimension of Architecture: a reciprocal relationship that allows to understand the complexity of cities and their memory. Another important concept that develops is that of typology that, for him, constitutes the essential basis of the project process. In his book The Architecture of the city, he explains that the so-called typological form refers to a general design of the architecture that puts in evidence local, regional, etc. To become elements of a regulation: "a form which, after being clarified by the relationship with different realities, becomes a way of facing reality".

From these ideas he developed the project for the San Cataldo Cemetery in the city of Modena, Italy. The passage of time, the vestiges of death, and the history that the place kept from a century ago, in combination with other references of Jewish cemeteries built in the nineteenth century, were, in this case, the analogue route that Rossi introduced for the design of space.

The project, was the winner of a national contest launched in 1971, which had as a theme the enlargement of an old neoclassical cemetery projected by Cesare Costa around 1850. The intervention in the cemetery respected the preexistences by giving continuity to the existing walls. Later it was incorporated a portico, a kind of covered street, that gave an urban character to the architecture and at the same time welcomed the services necessary for the operation of the place.

The typological form of the cemetery was characterized by the porticoed straight paths, along which the urns were arranged. These circulations placed in a perimeter and central form were developed both on the ground floor and in the upper levels. At the center of the ground were projected regularly ordered Columbas and enrolled in a triangle similar to a rib cage whose central spine dilates to the base. At the ends of this axis Rossi arranged two elements in a definite way: a cube and a cone. Under the cone he placed the mass grave and in the cube, the Memorial of the dead in war and the ossuaries.

Only the scale of these elements gives them the monumental character and according to analysts, they materialize the meaning of death and memory. The cubic construction with its regular vains has the structure of a house without floors or roof, similar to the vestiges that leaves an old construction in ruins. These vains have no enclosures, they pierce the wall: It is the "House of the Dead", conceived by Rossi as an incomplete space, prone to oblivion and abandonment.

It should be mentioned that for the years in which the enclosure was built, the architect suffered a car accident, and after being a long time in hospital, he began to theorize about the structure of the body: "The question of the fragment in architecture is very Important as it may be that only the ruins, express a complete fact… I'm thinking of a unit, or a system, composed exclusively to re-mount fragments. " And it is that both the elements of the 19th century cemeteries retaken by Rossi, as the new ones, create a system that seems to connect by means of an osteological configuration: There are arranged the pieces, the memory and the time unite them.

The cemetery project was not fully built. Like the "House of the Dead" It was an unfinished place. However, Rossi stated at the time that he assumed it naturally, because life, as architecture is immersed in a prolonged process that carries its own destruction. Its ephemeral character is common to all human creative manifestations.

By laureate Martínez Figueroa