Analogous City

This augmented reality application enhances a museum exhibit about Aldo Rossi's Analogous City.

This app complements a museum installation focused on The Analogous City, a 1976 Venice Biennale artwork by Aldo Rossi, Eraldo Consolascio, Bruno Reichlin, and Fabio Reinhart. Using augmented reality, the app interacts with a reproduction of The Analogous City (available at http://archizoom.epfl.ch), overlaying layered references onto the artwork.

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

Purchasing the Archizoom-published map reproduction of The Analogous City allows users to recreate the museum installation's interactive experience anywhere. This printed 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 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 projects by Aldo Rossi and his collaborators.

Aldo Rossi described The Analogous City 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.”