Cemeteries are among the architectural programs with the greatest symbolic value. They suggest rituals, rigor and solemnity while offering some comfort or hospitality, if not for those who bid farewell to their loved ones, at least to "guarantee" a dignified afterlife for those who have passed away. The San Cataldo Cemetery, designed by Aldo Rossi and Gianni Braghieri, fulfills the first part of the previous statement. Partly because the project was not entirely built, austerity and empty spaces predominate. But when considering the proposed project, perhaps the aridity would remain, and the harshness would be felt more forcefully. Composed of buildings with almost abstract, pure shapes, without noble details or cladding, the cemetery project is a good example of Aldo Rossi's production at the time of its conception, around 1970.
Winner of the Modena municipality competition for the expansion of the existing cemetery, designed by Cesare Costa in 1876, Rossi and Braghieri's proposal explores the architectural type, an important part of Rossi's theoretical discourse since the 1960s. For the Italian architect, types were the essence of architecture, as vague as the definition itself. In a way, Giulio Carlo Argan's definition of type illustrates Rossi's shapes: "reduction of a complex of formal variants to the common basic shape." These basic shapes, so striking in San Cataldo, can be seen in numerous projects by Aldo Rossi, in different configurations and always with different functions. At the time of the competition results announcement, interpretations of Rossi's elements revolved around the typological theory. They also revolved around the detachment of shapes from buildings' function in their contemporary or previous projects, and the meaning they evoked.
Part of this approach was due to the project's descriptive memorial, in which Rossi presented some "lineages" of his project. The complex's shape replicated the neighboring cemetery. Highly influenced by Enlightenment thinking, Rossi attempted to regain civic representation through architecture. His production referenced positivist architecture. Should he have done it? After modern exhaustion at the end of the 20th century, was it not anachronistic to resume the essentially utopian monumentality of the previous century? Wouldn't it be risky, especially after the Second World War? The project generated controversy. While some authors approximated the cemetery's architectural language to totalitarian monuments, others analyzed it based on its author's writings and career.
The presentation text of the project in the competition indicates some important points for Rossi: the theory of types – Rossi insists that San Cataldo corresponds to the image of the cemetery that "everyone" has -, the attempt to resume the civic and institutional dimension of death and memory, and the positioning (which reinforces the first point) that architecture overlaps with functions, programs and occupants - Rossi refers to the cemetery as the home of the dead, and reinforces that there is no distinction, in terms of design and creation, between architecture for the living or for those who have already gone.
The objective and distant tone of the text explains the common interpretation at the time of its disclosure. Rafael Moneo, for example, focuses on the project's design methodology and how this construction of ideas is reflected in the cemetery. Despite permanence through memory, the feeling of separation through death is described through its desolation and inevitability. In addition, the explicit placement of the institutional sphere as a mediator of loss trivializes the individual. This is even though the idea was to include the dead in the social dimension in a celebratory way. The comparison between the set's buildings as the home of the dead, and the cemetery as a city, also contributes to the uncomfortable reading of the end of life. In Moneo's view, the harsh tone of the text stands against the pure shapes of the project. It demonstrates more the rationality behind its creation than the subjectivity of the individual who drew them. San Cataldo reflects the architect's professional ideas and not his intimate or personal issues.
Manfredo Tafuri defends the Rossian language within the architecture theory. The author argues that Rossi's architecture is silent compared to others, and even to itself. It seems hermetic, constructed from an arbitrary system of signs defined by its creator. As the 1960s saw an infinite number of architectural expressions emerge, Rossi started longing for places where time seemed suspended, like Mario Sironi. He also released his architecture from reality. His architecture became increasingly closed and nostalgic for another era. Using a language parallel, Tafuri argued that the central point of communication in architecture, for Rossi, is lost. The silence of its shapes can only demonstrate the communication system's finiteness. It is as if San Cataldo ceases to "say" anything, which symbolically, due to the program, represents mourning silence.
San Cataldo's austere and rigid interpretation of Aldo Rossi is the common thread between the two authors. The architect is, therefore, his work: rigorous architecture accompanied by a rigorous theoretical basis, and idealistic in the sense of being impossible to attain. For Rossi, typological theory, architectural history knowledge, and the desire to restore reverence for architecture in the social sphere. For San Cataldo, the basic shapes, reference to classical cemetery examples, and the image of the inevitable and desolate separation of death.
Of course, these are partial views of the architect and his project. They are interpretations that reveal some aspects of Rossi but also reveal the interests and questions of those who propose to analyze it. Eugene J. Johnson, on the other hand, makes a morphological analysis of San Cataldo and separates each of its elements to make a possible genealogy of shapes that make up the cemetery. The focus is not on the type or crisis of the architectural discipline in the 1960s. Instead, it is historical evidence that indicates why Rossi chose certain positions for elements, their shapes, and even the colors of finishes. Naturally, Johnson's suggestions touch on points already mentioned by other authors. When analyzing the conical tower of San Cataldo, which would be the common grave, the references mentioned pass through Etienne Louis Boullé, a recurring Enlightenment specimen in Rossi's vocabulary, or Giorgio de Chirico, frequently associated with his silent shapes.
An analysis like Johnson's is beneficial not only for formal analysis exercises and repertoire construction but also for presenting a translation of Aldo Rossi's vocabulary. It also highlights the obvious: there is no tabula rasa in creative processes, especially in Rossi's case. Throughout his career, Rossi wrote extensively, and it is possible that his retrospective views on San Cataldo changed in each text. The architect who designed the cemetery was one, and the one who wrote his autobiography - published ten years after the competition - another. It seems unlikely that his interpretation of his work did not change, as it was widely debated to the point where the architect himself got tired of talking about it.
For those who come into contact with San Cataldo, fed by their interests and repertoires, the cemetery transmits various meanings. Through photography, Luigi Ghirri seems to reinforce the idea of architectural type. He says that by mediating the gaze, photography reinforces the model of what is represented. The idea or image of the photographed object fixes itself in a certain mental category of the observer, who may recognize them in different contexts, sometimes between the familiar and the unknown. Ghirri attributes these characteristics to Aldo Rossi's work.
Another possible interpretation of the San Cataldo cemetery with Aldo Rossi is the overlap of the subject with the architect. For Diogo Seixas Lopes, supported by all the authors already mentioned, Aldo Rossi can be positioned as a melancholic figure in architecture. By combining Rossi's personal life events with the period of project conception, the context of the discipline at the time, the Italian’s theoretical positioning, his writings, and the shapes and program of San Cataldo, Seixas Lopes makes a symbolically rich reading that does not deny any of the previous ones but underlines another aspect. San Cataldo would be the expression of disconsolateness with death from a personal perspective too: Rossi was hospitalized when conceiving the project. Throughout Seixas Lopes' writing, the fragility of the body, the crisis of theory, and the sense that the individual is small before such broad, complex, or inevitable issues separate Rossi from the canon.
It is not possible to say whether Rossi himself would approve of this approach. What is certain is that San Cataldo continues to allow for various interpretations, adding to the range of symbolic combinations and meaning possibilities over time. As long as it mobilizes relevant meanings, Aldo Rossi's cemetery will remain a reference, a monument. Permanence is a key aspect of his theory, and in this regard, San Cataldo has fulfilled its function, which would certainly please its creator. In more figurative terms, the different readings of the same Aldo Rossi demonstrate his complexity, as well as that of his observers. This can only benefit all parties involved.
Note
ARGAN, Giulio Carlo. On the Typology of Architecture.
NESBITT, Kate. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965 - 1995
