Analogous City

This augmented reality application enhances the museum exhibit on Aldo Rossi's Analogous City, a collaborative artwork from the 1976 Venice Biennale (Rossi, Consolascio, Reichlin, Reinhart). The app, used in conjunction with a reproduction of the Analogous City (available at http://archizoom.epfl.ch), overlays interactive layers onto the artwork, revealing the complete source material of the collage.

This application is integral to the Aldo Rossi - The window of the poet, Prints 1973-1997 exhibition at the Bonnefanten Museum (Maastricht), Archizoom EPFL (Lausanne), and GAMeC (Bergamo).

Purchasing the Archizoom-published map reproduction of the Analogous City allows users to replicate the museum installation's interactive experience anytime, anywhere. This printed map includes texts by Aldo Rossi, Fabio Reinhart, and Dario Rodighiero.

The Analogous City (La Città Analoga) was envisioned as a true urban design. Its components include, but are not limited to: 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 Aldo Rossi and his associates.

As Aldo Rossi himself described in Lotus International #13 (1976): “Between past and present, reality and imagination, the analogous city is perhaps simply the city to be designed day by day, tackling problems and overcoming them, with a reasonable certainty that things will ultimately be better.”