07/08/2026
Architecture lingering past its legitimacy
Rossi titled a late drawing: "This is long ago, and now this is past."
A sense, he wrote, of architecture not just continuing in time — but lingering beyond its rightful passing. Remaining after it should have ended. After its representational power is gone.
I find this in the Norman towers that nobody knows what to do with. In the baroque facades of towns that are slowly emptying.
They outlast the reasons for their existence. And in that lingering — that stubborn, purposeless remaining — something true is said about time.