Rossi’s addition to San Cataldo Cemetery is a paragon of postmodern architecture, seeing the it up close exposes some of the styles shortcomings
... No, you can’t call it a building. This solid terracotta cube is a shipping container for souls, impermanent as a spell in purgatory. From every angle it’s like you’re looking at a cardboard cut-out. As you approach it loses much of its otherworldliness and looks rather flimsy. Beneath each square window is a grey stain from years of weathering. Inside is an unremarkable, utilitarian metal structure intended to provide access to the graves higher up, whose functionality is somewhat outside the typical postmodernist repertoire. ...
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As is often the way with postmodernism, everything is so layered and so laden with irony that you don’t really know where you are anymore. It’s also just a bloody stupid way of designing a building; the intended meaning barely survives the moment when it was first expressed. And then, in the case of San Cataldo, all you’ve got left is a half-empty, unfinished cemetery with assorted maintenance equipment left lying around. Perhaps you can keep drawing meaning from this decay. But lord knows it’s difficult to sustain a deep engagement with life and death after you’ve tripped over a garden hose.
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