This book explores the creative process by which Italian architect Aldo Rossi (1931–1997) carried his theories and methodologies into built form in buildings, drawings and product design, by examining five categories of buildings: urban buildings, monuments, cultural and public buildings, and theaters and cemeteries. He was a man of great culture who read widely in literature, poetry, theology and philosophy, and was an avid filmgoer. He reflected on these readings and films in his essays, in personal notebooks, and in books he wrote over the course of his life. Of interest are those aspects of films and texts that inspired Rossi's fertile imagination, and how their influence can be identified in specific works.

Professor of architectural history and theory, at the University of Southern California (USC), Diane Yvonne Ghirardo has published extensively on twentieth-century Italian architecture, contemporary architecture, gender and architecture, and Renaissance Italian architecture. She received her PhD at Stanford University. In addition to teaching at USC, she has been visiting professor at Rice University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cape Town, and the University of Technology, Sydney. Her major books are Building New Communities (Princeton University Press, 1989); Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture (Bay Press, 1991); Architecture After Modernism (Thames & Hudson, 1996); and Italy (Modern Architectures in History series, Reaktion Books, 2013). She also translated numerous writings by Aldo Rossi, including The Architecture of the City. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (1988), a Guggenheim Fellow (2002), and a Fulbright Fellow (1976, 2001).