During the Milan charette for the Kuala Lumpur twin towers competition Aldo ROSSI and partner Morris ADMI had invited me to participate as their associate architect in a private competition for the HQ of EuroDisney outside Paris. But where to pilot the design was still object of sharp discussion between the two associates. Resonant of post-Cold War tensions.
Summoned late August to Milan, via Santa Maria della Porta 9, to begin working on the Team DISNEY project I found myself in the midst of a battle, alone with just Luca MEDA and Aldo ROSSI, wildly provocative but very goods friends from way back.
Exchanging now and then faxes and ‘phone calls with the New York SdA office, Luca and Aldo entertained themselves in the time being by composing this collage based on that day’s issue of a milanese daily, substituting for the images their own photographs, with one of Morris as a secessionist leader bent on total confrontation. The latter was indeed surprised and almost inclined to renounce his idea.
I too had my own idea. Given that the staff of the Milan office had already behaved somewhat cowardly towards me (to the point of convincing ROSSI not to sign with me the competition project for the National Museum of Scotland that I had developed single-handedly, from his embryonic sketches, beneath their gaze) I was rather more favourable to the experience of collaboration in New York, with North American colleagues who had overtly appreciated my work on the Edinburgh project.
In any event, I recognised in this collage (perhaps more by Luca than Aldo) that same playful atmosphere and desire for complicity that had inspired my loyalty in the first years of collaboration. Ultimately that came to be spoilt by third-party influences and external occurrences. I am weak, AR had confessed to me once. Likewise he would let Morris ADJMI get the upper hand. The project’s design was in the end mostly developed in New York.
Parent or related pages :
Architectural competitions / Concours d’architecture / Concorsi di architettura
Architecture & planning / Architecture et urbanisme / Architettura e urbanistica
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