ABSTRACT
The feeling of the loss, in our time, of this original link between man and place by the universal Mobilmachung drives people, consciously or unconsciously, to live together but without being part of a community. We can ask ourselves: does the loss of the original link between place and individual mean the loss of the city’s soul? And again: is it possible to think of a city, an image of a city, without a common origin among its citizens? This is the decisive and indirect question that emerges from the history of Athens and into which Aldo Rossi’s reasoning ventures. According to Rossi, Athens is a clear idea of a city because it develops from the inside towards the outside according to a tripartite layout in which the primary generating elements of the urban form are articulated and recognizable. Athens is a clear idea of a city and yet, Rossi continues, it is also an unachievable urban idea: a city that “remains as the purest experience of humanity, in conditions that can never return.” In light of these considerations, this text is to examine the link among place, individuals, and urban form.
