Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo cemetery, a ‘City for the Dead’.
Construction began in 1978 and to this day stands at roughly fifty percent completion. The site was originally to contain the ossuary cube and a series of rib-like buildings, which terminated in a cone housing the communal graves.
A surreal black comedy set in a decrepit 1960’s housing development. When his mother is drawn into sainthood and the resulting frustrations of his father become too difficult to manage, Thomas, a young boy, becomes obsessed with events on the broadcast news. The liberation of the Belgian Congo is taking place and Thomas becomes Lumumba, one of the contenders as the Congo’s new leader. He is encouraged in this escapism by Plagge, the postman who reads all the mail and knows all of the bizzarre and intimate secrets of the eccentric inhabitants of the estate.
