Autumn/Winter 2016 | the Bartlett School of Architecture
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No 5 | Autumn/Winter 2016 | The Bartlett School of Architecture Faith The Saint and the Architect CONJECTURES ON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY FROM LOYOLA TO ROSSI Words by Andrea Alberto Dutto rosaically speaking, the very idea of —the Spaniard’s embrace of his Renaissance faith stands for believing in that which life, while also evoking faith as a metaphor for P is assumed to have no possible rational something else, namely Rossi’s autonomous explanation. At the same time however, faith has and immortal architecture. the power of rationalising experience or, rather, We really couldn’t choose a better starting of expressing the events of life in a logical, point, for this speculation on self-narrative, than convincing and ultimately truthful form. It is for Loyola’s Autobiography. Loyola wrote this book this reason that the biography can easily become to describe his approach to Christian religion the narrative of faith, especially the religious one, as a long process mediated by several personal since it establishes an effective proof on which vicissitudes, most notably by the experience of the worshipper can grasp a reason to believe. war and prison. In fact, it was over a period of Similarly then, the autobiography can also be convalescence due to war injuries after the Battle addressed to ground a personal project of faith. of Pamplona of 1521, that 30-year-old Íñigo Here the description of life events loses its purely discovered Christian literature through attentive documentary quality and rather acquires, for the reading. It is very possibly at this point that writer/protagonist, a truly operative value. This Loyola convinced himself to become a condition is famously corresponded in the worshipper: a choice started by conflict and Autobiography (1555) by Íñigo López de enabled by books, more precisely biographical Loyola (also known as Ignatius of Loyola), books, such as Jacobus de Varagine’s Golden Spanish knight and theologian of the Counter- Legend—the Medieval bestseller on the life of Reformation, who experienced Christianity first the Saints. Through such personal readings, and foremost through his tumultuous life. But Loyola convinced himself to address his own the relationship between the experience of faith life as a speculative project. and the facts of life is also addressed by This is probably why he, in his Autobiography, Self-examination in Five Points, from Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, ed. 1673 another champion of modernity. Aldo Rossi’s decided to refer to himself in the third person, Autobiography (1981), written more than suggesting a shift in point of view, with the writer 400 years later, mirrors—as we shall see acquiring a higher position—perhaps that of the The Library 116 LOBBY No 5 LOBBY No 5 117 The Library Divinity—and tackling his personal vicissitudes one, inspired by none other than Max Planck, with a degree of distance. Through this method father of quantum physics. Rossi then stresses of writing, Íñigo appears as a subject, a token the precise scientific commitment that underlies who is only accomplishing the Divine will. Through the presence of architecture in his own life. It detachment and a critique of his own existence, could be daringly argued, however, that Rossi’s Loyola built his faith much like an architect. He Scientific Autobiography concerns nothing but made use of other biographies and of his own life the accomplished rationalisation of his own faith experience as tools of construction, maintaining towards architecture. Indeed, he doesn’t simply at the same time the familiarity and the aloofness witness the presence of architecture, but he of a designer. truly promotes the possibility of grounding the Building an Autobiography using external experience of architecture as a fully under- events quickly turns the experience of life into standable fact—much like life through faith. a project, grounded into the specificity of a Particularly interesting, then, is the way he avoids personal legacy. Curiously enough, a similar mentioning himself as a creator of architectures, vicissitude is remarked, several centuries later, echoing Loyola’s third-person narrative, while at by Aldo Rossi. Already when discussing his the same time underlining how architecture is imposing bibliographical accomplishments, Rossi something that should be understood through stated that many texts he owned were used as life experiences alone. For Rossi “the dimensions “material of construction”. And in his Autobiography of a table or a house […] permit everything that in particular, Rossi skilfully appropriated every- is unforeseeable in life.” thing he met along the way, turning it into integral Moreover, Rossi’s scientific claim is countered parts of his personal architectural narrative. by his numerous references to the transcendental Fragments of different sources are juxtaposed or domain of ascetic authors. This link could be joined together, generating new meanings; pieces ascribed to a quite opportunistic attempt to of forgotten ruins, skeletons and carcasses are all grasp from this literature a specific language, flattened onto the same ground, suggesting that used in turn to express his own. St. Augustine’s architecture is not only made by objects, but first Confessions, for instance, provide Rossi with a and foremost by the necessity to build something language through which he’s able to express the —whether it is a building, a book or one’s own development of life ahead of architecture, much life. Indeed, Rossi’s Autobiography really turns like the Golden Legend inspired Loyola’s lifelong architecture into life itself. For instance, the speculative project. ‘osteological’ architecture of his Modena Cemetery Both Loyola and Rossi embrace the potential is related to his accident in Turkey where he “identi- of the autobiography as a true project. Both of fies death with the morphology of the skeleton them, as distant as they are in time and space, and the alterations it could undergo.” Hence, for have conceived their experiences and Rossi, architecture replies to the unpredictable circumstances in a perspective wider than an circumstances of life, mirroring its volatile accidents. unrelated succession of events. Íñigo sees faith Through his book, written on the ashes of the as the only possible way to make a sense of the Italian neo-romantic Tendenza group, Rossi marks mysteries of life. Those same mysteries become a strong detachment from the Postmodern and the very essence of Rossi’s architecture, which rather makes architecture an object of deep is made of imperfections, accidents and intimacy. Indeed, through his biographical oeuvre fragilities. Moreover, it seems that Loyola’s Rossi truly declares how he sees himself: not as a intimate detachment towards his own existence producer, but rather as a product of architecture. becomes—in turn—Rossi’s way of approaching There’s no possibility of disjoining the narration and explaining the architecture of his life. Thus, of his life from the architectures he mentions, their books are meant to challenge the reader’s Ex Voto, Shrine of St. Maria del Pozzo, Capurso 1829 because they all take part in the same experience. experience, in an effort to make life itself adhere Rossi’s text makes architecture appear inevitable to a wider architectural project that can overcome because it unavoidably embodies the events of our physical finitude. The conjectural thread that life, much like Loyola’s mysterious faith drives unites these two life-long speculators can his capricious existence. then shed some light on the importance of Famously though, Rossi doesn’t simply architecture as a life commitment, and of conceive an Autobiography, but rather a scientific faith as the device to make it so. The Library 118 LOBBY No 5 LOBBY No 5 119 The Library .