Faxing Architecture

In 1986, Aldo Rossi opened a satellite office in New York City to oversee his first major design commissions on the other side of the Atlantic. This moment marked a transition from traveling to establishing a permanent presence in the United States. And, more importantly, it turned Rossi’s practice into a transnational organization. It is fair to say that most of his subsequent projects were developed on the Milan - New York axis. The trait d’union was the fax machine, which allowed materials and ideas to be exchanged with an unprecedented level of immediacy. This research paper explores how faxing impacted the production of architecture within this decentralized system, intersecting multiple key topoi of the architectural discourse of the time. While the literature on Rossi tends to focus on the work and the loud theoretical apparatus that accompanied it, his (largely unexplored) American archive compels us to engage with the process of working and the silent technological apparatus that made it possible