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Moneo, Libeskind and a question of influence

This paper developed from a trajectory of research into the thinking and influence of Aldo Rossi the Italian Neo-rationalist architect, whose status and career were the subject of an earlier chapter contributed to An Architect’s Guide to Fame (2005). It is distinct in its intent to consider how different strands of Rossi’s theoretical purchase on concepts of order and contingency are associated with the recurrent theme of temporality, which informs a critical assessment of two museum buildings of the 1980s by architects of quite different theoretical persuasion and formal interests, Rafael Moneo and Daniel Libeskind. The study presents a closely focused formal analysis of the narrative structure of the two museums, which, while divergent in style and content, present parallel modes of spatial composition but also align with aspects of Rossi’s theoretical legacy (which both architects engaged in different ways, early in their respective careers). The implication here is of a slippage between discursive architectural theory, and design practice, where a set of ideas initially formulated by a now largely marginalized architect, come to inform both the formal development and retrospective critical interpretation of two iconic buildings. What is generally assumed to be a complicit relationship between Rossi’s ideas and buildings comes to be understood not as two sides of the same coin, but instead as aspects of a discourse which retains significance for contemporary architecture (however distant that may be from its initial premises).