The alphabet of memory. Bridges, times and types: John Hejduk, Andrea Palladio and Louis Kahn in Venice

Abstract

The obsession with creating a universal method of classification has been a constant in the history of art, literature and architecture. Medieval alchemists, Renaissance patrons and avant-garde nihilists were involved in the chimerical task of codifying the world through disparate taxonomies; in the 20th century, architects such as John Hedjuk or Louis Kahn based their compositional theory on the construction of their own alphabet for each new project. A suggestive catalogue of primary architectures capable of revealing historical permanences as if it were the letters of a primitive alphabet: the "house", the "temple", the "market" or the "tower" build a collection of archaic lexemes –referring to Aby Warburg and his Atlas Mnemosyne– that show how the world can be explained through a brief architectural alphabet. This article delves into one of those axioms, "the bridge," an icon that traces the foundational connections of three unbuilt projects: John Hejduk's masquerades, Andrea Palladio's Rialto Bridge, and Louis Kahn's Congress Palace. With Venice as a physical and dreamlike support, these three projects prove how their creators reduce the idea of a project to a constructed aphorism.