Like a great deal of Modern architecture at its best, Studio Passarelli's 1963 office-apartment complex functions as sculpture as well as architecture . . .
The building pays respectful homage to two giants of Modern architecture . . .
The lower block presents the street with a face of controlled, dispassionate professionalism . . .
The upper block rejects these virtues utterly, exploding into a complicated, syncopated architectural rhythm full of spontaneity and surprise . . .
As if all this were not enough, the building is graced with wit to boot. On the attic of the lower cube, the glass panels are occasionally popped out and replaced by unexpected concrete flower boxes, as if the upper stories were sending out feelers to explore the viability of the potentially hostile environment below.
And on the Via Romagna side, the curtain wall commits heresy: a number of the glass panels have been omitted to frankly expose the structural elements beneath . . .
It is a virtuoso performance, rigorous in its intelligence and dazzling in its skill . . .