Neo-Rationalism

1. Italian movement, also called Tendenza, of the 1960s and 1970s. Opposed to the dogmas of International Modernism and to the prevalent tendency to treat architecture only as a commodity, it stressed the autonomy of architecture and the need to redefine it in terms of types with rules for the rational combination of all its elements. Rejecting the notion that architecture ends and begins in technology, it insisted on the social and cultural importance of existing urban structures, and reasserted that the huge vocabulary of historical forms was a fecund source for fertile creation. This offended the orthodoxy of the Modern Movement, and so the pejorative label Neo-Liberty was applied to its earlier manifestations by, e.g. Banham. Important texts of Neo-Rationalism were Rossi's Architettura della città (Architecture of the City—1966), Grassi's La costruzione logica dell'architettura (Logical Construction in Architecture—1967), and Gregotti's Il territorio dell'architettura (The Realm of Architecture—1966). Rossi's great cemetery at Modena is the movement's most celebrated work (1971–85). The Krier brothers Kleihues, Reichlin and Reinhart, and Ungers have been associated with Neo-Rationalism.

2. To confuse matters, (perhaps deliberately) the same label has been applied to those who (like the New York Five) have been seen to return to the ‘white’ architecture of International Modernism and the Weissenhofsiedlung of the 1920s.

Bibliography

• Bonfanti et al. (1973)
• Klotz (ed.) (1988)
• Klotz (1988)
• L. Krier (ed.)(1973)
• L. Krier &Pavan (1980)
• A. Rossi (1982)
• A. Rossi et al. (1973)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
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