This augmented reality application enhances the experience of Aldo Rossi's Analogous City, a 1976 Venice Biennale artwork by Rossi, Consolascio, Reichlin, and Reinhart. The app complements a reproduction of the artwork (available at http://archizoom.epfl.ch), overlaying digital layers of contextual references onto the physical piece.
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 unlocks the digital installation's interactive elements.
Purchasing the Archizoom-published map reproduction of the Analogous City allows users to recreate the exhibition's interactive experience anywhere. This map includes texts by Aldo Rossi, Fabio Reinhart, and Dario Rodighiero.
The Analogous City (La Città Analoga) was envisioned as a real urban project. Its collage incorporates diverse sources: Giovanni Battista Caporali's drawing of Vitruvius' city (1536), Galileo Galilei's Pleiades constellation drawing (1610), Tanzio da Varallo's 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 Notre Dame du Haut chapel (1954), and various architectural projects by Rossi and his colleagues.
As Aldo Rossi himself described 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 overcoming challenges, with a reasonable hope for eventual improvement.”
