ABSTRACT
Many architect-planners have tried to overturn the legacy of modernism by bringing a sense of the past back into buildings and cities. During the public presentation of shortlisted designs for a new art gallery in Colchester, several members of the audience voiced their concerns as to whether the schemes would respect town's architecture. The John Lewis department store by Foreign Office Architects sports a dual-layer glass skin covered with a distinctive branching pattern that was a well-known Leicester trademark back in the heyday of the industry. The theory of contextualism was worked out more scrupulously, however, and it was never about making all architecture look traditional to fit-in in conventional way'. Italian architects earlier in twentieth century had not rejected history with vehemence of some of their French and German counterparts, so it is perhaps natural that one of the most influential theories came from Aldo Rossi in his books The Architecture of the City and A Scientific Autobiography.
