Aldo Rossi - 1968 - Scandicci town Hall project

In Rossi's view, building was a simple matter of being familiar with the elements of architecture and establishing a sequence. Because of this sequential character of architecture, an architects work was not unlike that of a storyteller. After all, a town hall was but a courtyard for dignified entrance - befitting a public space - into diverse spaces for assembly and the performance of administrative functions.

Here, an entire series of spaces strung together by a corridor culminates in a hall where politicians can meet and discuss public issues. I would say that the whole sequence of spaces has no other object than to manifest the presence of this hall - public space par excellence dominating the whole. This, to Rossi, is what a town hall was all about.

For him, architecture possessed that quality of transparency that makes it a self evident chain of elements made meaningful by the functions they are destined to serve, a chain of elements differing little from that first encounter with architectural order that children experience when they play with wooden blocks.

Building was just that; a matter of manipulating elements. It was a matter of having the courage to accept the reality of architecture without fear of identifying it with those images through which we learned to distinguish the differences of diverse types.- Rafael Moneo