Aldo Rossi: From scale to scale

Domus presented the Teatro del Mondo or Venetian Theatre – a floating structure designed by Aldo Rossi in 1979 for the 1980 Venice Biennale – in issue 602 (January 1980).

- Fulvio Irace

It was the first with Alessandro Mendini at the helm and from graphic design to editorial content it marked a radical shift for the magazine that Gio Ponti had handed over to the young Milanese architect a few months earlier. The contents changed but, crucially, so did the form of communication – starting with the cover which showed the faces of those featured in the issue for the first time. In that case, it was Aldo Rossi in an Occhiomagico portrait on which Emilie van Hees had used acid to produce unrealistic colours. Superimposed diagonally across Rossi’s lemon shirt was a teaser of the title of the mini-essay written for the occasion by the historian Manfredo Tafuri: L’ephemere est eternel. Tafuri’s complex interpretation of the work’s genesis and its potential meanings included two topics that are still of special importance: an (inevitable) comparison with the Teatrino Scientifico of 1978 and the recurrence of the octagonal-tower type in Rossi’s graphic and design production.

Midway between architectural mock-up and Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise, the Teatrino Scientifico is a portable museum of Rossi’s recherche, its small size (80 x 70 x 55 cm) placing it in the category of objects. The Venetian Theatre is a parallelepiped with a square base (9.5 x 9.5 m) from which rises an octagonal tower 11 metres tall. Tafuri believed the Teatrino Scientifico reduced the architectural figures around it to players in a static