Analogous City

This augmented reality application enhances a museum exhibit on Aldo Rossi's Analogous City, a 1976 Venice Biennale artwork by Rossi, Consolascio, Reichlin, and Reinhart. The app, used with a reproduction of The Analogous City (available at http://archizoom.epfl.ch), overlays digital layers onto the artwork, revealing its constituent references.

Essential for the exhibition "Aldo Rossi - The window of the poet, Prints 1973-1997" at the Bonnefanten Museum (Maastricht), Archizoom EPFL (Lausanne), and GAMeC (Bergamo), the app allows for digital interaction with the installation.

Purchasing the Archizoom-published map reproduction of The Analogous City lets you recreate this interactive experience anywhere. The map includes texts by Rossi, Reinhart, and Rodighiero.

The Analogous City (La Città Analoga) was envisioned as a real urban project. Its components include: Giovanni Battista Caporali's drawing of Vitruvius' city (1536); Galileo Galilei's Pleiades Constellation drawing (1610); Tanzio da Varallo's painting David and Goliath (ca. 1625); Francesco Borromini's plan for San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638-1641); the Dufour topographic map (1864); Le Corbusier's plan for the Notre Dame du Haut chapel (1954); and various architectural designs by Rossi and his colleagues.

As Rossi himself stated in Lotus International #13 (1976): “Bridging past and present, reality and imagination, the analogous city is perhaps simply the city we design daily, confronting and solving problems, with a reasonable expectation that things will ultimately improve.”