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Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

Now in its eighth edition, the prestigious architectural award, which showcases young architects recommended by internationally renowned advisors, has gone this year to the Chinese architect Xu Tiantian. The catalogue of the award accompanies the exhibition at the Mendrisio Theatre of Architecture (5 May-22 October 2023). It contains works by all the architects who participated in the competition, with a special focus on those by the winner.

Eighth edition 2022
Winner
Xu Tiantian (China)

Candidates
Bernardo Bader (Austria), Barão Hutter (Switzerland), Giulio Basili (Italy), Bloco Arquitetos (Brasil), Manuel Cervantes (Mexico), dekleva gregorič architects (Slovenia), Domat (China), Estudio Flume (Brasil), Estudio Macías Peredo Arquitectos (Mexico), Graux & Baeyens (Belgium), Grillovasiu (Switzerland), Go Hasegawa
(Japan), Carla Juaçaba (Brasil), Mariam Kamara (Niger), Ryan Kennihan (Ireland), LACOL Arquitectura Cooperativa (Spain), lopes brenna (Switzerland), Rozana Montiel (Mexico), Nickisch Walder Architekten (Switzerland), RAMA studio (Ecuador), sugiberry (Belgium), TEd’A Arquitectes (Spain), Terra+Tuma (Brasil), Tropical Space (Vietnam), Raphael Zuber (Switzerland).

Swiss Architectural Award 2022

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888), Mendrisio Academy Press

In 1886 the international competition was announced for the reconstruction of the façade of Milan Cathedral, one of the most important competitions in that period. This volume traces its long and controversial history, and much more: photographs, engravings, reliefs and publications now kept in the Library of the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and formerly owned by the Ticinese architect Augusto Guidini, one of the members of the competition jury, guide readers to the jurors’ table, revealing the organizational procedures of an international architectural competition in the late nineteenth century, as well as of the criteria adopted to assess the projects presented. For the first time the book brings together as a whole the rarest and most surprising element in the innovative method developed by the jurors: a photographic archive of all the historical projects for the cathedral façade all the way to the projects submitted to the competition. The result is a narrative in images that testifies to the reception of Gothic and the variations of taste in the various periods. The history of the cathedral façade thus becomes a mutable history in which time also unfolds, with its continuity and its ruptures, accumulating on the monument that is a symbol of the city of Milan.
Texts by: Carla Mazzarelli, Mirko Moizi, Daniela Mondini, Angela Windholz

Quale Gotico per Milano? I materiali della giuria per il concorso della facciata del Duomo (1886-1888)

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535), Mendrisio Academy Press

By analysing issues of an attributional, iconographic and iconological nature, and studies in depth of the relationship of sculpture and architecture with social issues ‒ such as the management and organisation of building sites, the relation between the centre and the periphery, and the ties between workshops and individual craftsmen ‒ this volume offers a complete tool for understanding the complex panorama of sculpture in the State of Milan from the late 14th century to the early decades of the 16th century. The broad timespan examined, during which the Visconti were succeeded by the Sforza and then the French, enables us to follow the cultural and stylistic changes that characterised Milanese art between Late Gothic and the late Renaissance and to focus on the work of those sculptors who most influenced the artists contemporary with them: above all, the Masters of Campione and Carona, Jacopino da Tradate, the brothers Cristoforo and Antonio Mantegazza, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, Cristoforo Solari and Bambaia, active, on various occasions and on several levels in the major building sites in the area, namely the Cathedral of Milan and the Charterhouse of Pavia, veritable centres of irradiation of Lombard figurative culture in the period. Furthermore, the emphasis placed on the movements made by the native workers in these Milanese regions and on the cultural and artistic exchanges that accompanied these movements, performed above all by the so-called “masters of the lakes”, means that the research it presents goes beyond the boundaries of Milan, ranging from Spain to modern Silesia and taking in Liguria, Venice, Ferrara, the Rome of Andrea Bregno and in the Sicily of Domenico Gaggini, bringing out the great scope of the themes addressed in the various contributions brought together in this volume.
Texts by: Alessandro Barbieri, Beatrice Bolandrini, Massimiliano Caldera, Laura Damiani Cabrini, Grégoire Extermann, Laura Facchin, Giuseppe Fazio, Rosa López Torrijos, Predrag Marković, Fernando Marías, Giovanni Mendola, Mirko Moizi, Charles R. Morscheck, Thomas Pöpper, Marco Scansani, Martina Schirripa, Federica Siddi, Mariusz Smoliński, Andrea Spiriti, Michela Zurla.

Scultori dello Stato di Milano (1395-1535)

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

Peppo Brivio, Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969, Mendrisio Academy Press

This tenth issue of the series “Quaderni” from the BSc course in “Construction Systems and Processes” is devoted to the Casa Valleggione (1965-1969), by Roberto Bianconi. The second year students at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, guided by professor Franz Graf, carried out practical work on the House articulated in the collection and analysis of original documentation, the redrafting of the building plans and the production of axonometric projections and constructional models made to scale. A selection of the material collected for the course, with the original drawings and period photographs, together with a historical reading of the building, a structural analysis and a selection of students’ works make up this issue, which is intended not only to demonstrate the presence in Ticino of a notable architectural work, but also to furnish the operators responsible for its conservation with pointers about appropriate ways of carrying out maintenance or restoration work.

Peppo Brivio. Casa Valleggione, 1965-1969

The book presents a journey through some of the most significant architectural works by Angelo Mangiarotti (1921-2012), the Milanese designer, architect and sculptor who made a profound impression on the cultural landscape of the post-war period. The aim is to highlight the achievement of a designer-builder who explored different themes – residential buildings, workplaces, exhibition spaces, all of them documented here – with a critical and speculative approach that sought to create a distinctive and innovative architectural language. The quest for simple and elementary forms, capable of transcending differences in scale, function and materials, is common to both Mangiarotti’s architecture and his product designs, equally the product of an ethical outlook which respected people and was sparing of his resources .

Texts by Franz Graf, Francesca Albani, Thomas Herzog, Kinue Horikawa. Testimonies by Anna Mangiarotti and Mario Botta. Photographs by Giorgio Casali.

Angelo Mangiarotti. La tettonica dell'assemblaggio / The Tectonics of Assembly

34 Design studios, 15 Diploma studios, 98 courses, 96 lecturers, 103 assistants, more than 800 students: a year of teaching activity at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture.

Accademia di architettura Annuario / Yearbook 2021

Montagne e territori ibridi tra urbanità e ruralità, Laboratorio di Storia delle Alpi, USI, Mendrisio Academy Press

Si possono descrivere i territori di montagna e i territori ibridi o “rurbani”, come luoghi nei quali urbanità e ruralità coesistono in uno scambio costante e dinamico? Oppure li si deve considerare come il risultato della contrapposizione tra mondo urbano e mondo rurale? Il compito dell’osservatore e dello studioso è comprendere gli intrecci o individuare i limiti dell’uno e dell’altro? Dai contributi riuniti in questo volume emerge la necessità di leggere il territorio montano e le ibridazioni tra urbano e rurale, attraverso un approccio transdisciplinare. Non esiste un solo punto di osservazione e una sola ragione osservativa. Ma se i territori sussistono solo in relazione al modo in cui li viviamo, li descriviamo e ce ne appropriamo, è indispensabile moltiplicare e far interagire diversi punti di vista per poterne cogliere la struttura profonda.

Montagne e territori ibridi tra urbanità e ruralità

Paolo Perulli. Economia della velocità, Mendrisio Academy Press

The mobile, liquid, interconnected society presupposes and requires ever higher speed in the movement of people, goods and information, but produces counteractions. This is the least explored face of globalisation, yet it is crucial. Without the great fleets of the shipping industry there would be no global economy of goods designed in America, produced in China and distributed worldwide. Without widespread computing and the means of instant delivery there would be no Amazon economy. Without digital platforms there would be no gigantic market for organised large-scale distribution. Without high-speed trains, there would be no movement of people between large cities that has changed the way we live and work. A historical change has therefore taken place within a few years: from the mass automobile industry to the informational, cognitive and personalised mobility of the new century. With capital and technology commitments, consumption of environmental resources and impacts on ecology and daily life and people's identities. Aspects of a larger and more subtle phenomenon, that of social acceleration. Which also produces alienation and disintegration. And today it requires a radical rethinking caused by the pandemic. What are the goals that the whole of society is running after? This book explores the economy of speed, the technical knowledge that makes it possible and the social and environmental paradoxes arising from it.

Texts by: Simonetta Armondi, Giuseppe Berta, Sergio Bologna, Andrea Bottalico, Luca Garavaglia, Paolo Perulli, Marco Ponti, Pier Paolo Puliafito, Marcello Tadini.

Economia della velocità

Quarantotto pagine: Paolo Zermani, Fondamenta, Mendrisio Academy Press

“The New over the Old was the title of the course I have held at the Academy in recent years, with the term ‘over’ indicating not so much the desire to conceal as conscious integration. In the relation between these two words lies the transition to the project, which we can identify as an attempt to represent the new distance between things. After sharing a path through my works, because the project is taught through projects, and I would not know how to do otherwise, but also with the precise support of a survey of the data accumulated in places, the final critical work of each student began, applied each year to a different Italian city. With the help of the five points (place, time, land, light, silence) identified as an interpretational sequence and trace to modify space, and abetted by the quiet of the studio sessions, we translated sensations into measurements, in keeping with a method aimed not at offering free or abstractly creative solutions, in the belief that architecture is transformed and cannot be improvised” (Paolo Zermani).

Quarantotto pagine: Paolo Zermani, Fondamenta

Architectural History and Globalized Knowledge. Gottfried Semper in London, Mendrisio Academy Press

Gottfried Semper’s years of exile in London (1850-55) were a time of highly inspiring experiences. The London of the Great Exhibition offered the German architect an immense trove of objects for study and an intellectual environment that provided seminal impulses for his innovative cultural-historical theory of architecture. The present volume, resulting from a collaborative SNSF research project of the Institute for the History and Theory of Art and Architecture, Università della Svizzera italiana, and the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich, positions Semper as both an observer and actor in this period. It goes beyond focusing on Semper as an individual person and considers his work as a designer, teacher, and writer of architecture against the backdrop of the historical, architectural, and disciplinary surroundings.

Texts by: Elena Chestnova, Murray Fraser, Michael Gnehm, Sonja Hildebrand, Mari Hvattum, Claudio Leoni, Kate Nichols, Alina Payne, Philip Ursprung, Caroline van Eck, Dieter Weidmann, Beat Wyss.

Architectural History and Globalized Knowledge. Gottfried Semper in London

Il volume ha come oggetto la colonia Olivetti a Brusson, in Valle d’Aosta, costruita su progetto degli architetti Leonardo Fiori e Claudio Conte. Esempio emblematico delle politiche sociali di Adriano Olivetti, questo edificio rappresenta un caso di studio eccezionale per diversi motivi. I progettisti furono selezionati dopo un concorso che vide la partecipazione, nel 1956-1957, di oltre trenta professionisti, tra cui Carlo Scarpa, Marcello D’Olivo, Vico Magistretti. L’analisi dei progetti in gara offre dunque uno spaccato dell’architettura italiana, chiamata a cimentarsi con temi complessi e innovativi. Da un lato, il contesto alpino richiese una profonda riflessione sul rapporto tra architettura e ambiente naturale; dall’altro lato, l’aggiornamento delle teorie educative implicò la ridefinizione di una tipologia – la colonia – che il fascismo aveva caratterizzato a fini propagandistici. Nella colonia di Brusson si mise inoltre a punto un inedito sistema di prefabbricazione che si ripeterà, ogni volta aggiornato, in numerosi edifici negli anni successivi.

La Colonia Olivetti a Brusson Ambiente, pedagogia e costruzione

Aurelio Galfetti. Costruire lo spazio The Construction of Space, Mendrisio Academy Press

The three essays brought together here offer a specific reading of different phases of Galfetti’s achievement. Starting from a single project, they demonstrate how the idea of a territorial architecture has always linked the project in his work (on every scale) to the place, the landscape and the territory.

Texts by: Franz Graf, Nicola Navone, Laurent Stalder.
Interview by Francesca Albani.

Aurelio Galfetti. Costruire lo spazio / The Construction of Space

Tracce di una scuola. Accademia di architettura a Mendrisio 1996-2021, Mendrisio Academy Press

This book presents an outline of the foundation and growth of the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, established in 1996 as a faculty of the coeval Università della Svizzera italiana. The school was immediately distinguished by an educational range that sought to create a dialogue between different disciplines, only seemingly remote from architecture, with historians, philosophers, artists and scientists engaging with the work of architects and urban planners. And in retracing the first 25 years of the Academy, the author, a world-famous architect and one of the founders of the school, also recounts architecture experienced as a generational commitment in the face of environmental changes.

Mario Botta, Tracce di una scuola. Accademia di architettura a Mendrisio 1996-2021

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Swiss Architectural Award 2020, Mendrisio Academy Press

Seventh edition 2020
Winner
Bruther (France)
Candidates
Al Borde (Ecuador), Arrhov Frick (Sweden), Bernardo Bader (Austria), Barbas Lopes Arquitectos (Portugal), Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico), Riccardo Butini (Italy), Carmody Groarke (England), Ricardo Carvalho (Portugal), Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury (Bangladesh), DECA Architecture (Greece), Angela Deuber (Switzerland), Edition Office (Australia), Estudio MMX (Mexico), Nick Gelpi (USA), Guidotti Architetti (Switzerland), Carla Juaçaba (Brasil), langarita navarro arquitectos (Spain), MAPA (Brasil), Shingo Masuda + Katsuhisa Otsubo (Japan), Daniel Moreno Flores (Ecuador), Erika Nakagawa (Japan), OFFICE (Belgium), Camilo Rebelo (Portugal), Robust Architecture Workshop (Sri Lanka), Sabín Blanco Architects (Spain), SIAA_ (Brasil), Taylor and Hinds Architects (Australia), TEd’A Arquitectes (Spain), Terra+Tuma (Brasil), Francesca Torzo (Italy), Christian Wassmann (USA), Xu Tiantian (China).

Swiss Architectural Award 2020

Annuario 2020. Accademia di architettura, Mendrisio Academy Press

26 Design studios, 14 Diploma studios, 97 courses, 90 lecturers, 116 assistants, more than 800 students: a year of teaching activity at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture.

Accademia di architettura Annuario / Yearbook 2020

Paolo Portoghesi, I ponti di Borromini, Mendrisio Academy Press

“This evening, to avoid boring you with familiar matters, I will talk about Borromini as a bridge builder, though physically he never built any. To understand the sense in which the word ‘bridge’ is to be understood, I will give the definition that a philosopher gave, which I will have occasion to speak of again. ‘The bridge rises light and powerful above the river. It not only connects two banks that already exist. The connection established by the bridge firstly causes the two banks to appear as banks. It is the bridge that properly opposes one to the other. The one bank is detached from and opposed to the other by virtue of the bridge. The banks then do not simply bound the river as the nondescript edges of dry land. With the two banks, the bridge each time brings one and the other expanse of the surrounding landscape. It brings the river, the banks and the surrounding land into reciprocal closeness’. The banks that Borromini’s bridges distinguish and connect are many. Those we will talk about are six: the North and the South of Europe; decoration and the architectural organism; the forms of architecture and their meanings; composition and decomposition as a design method; virtual and real; architecture and life” (Paolo Portoghesi).

Paolo Portoghesi, I ponti di Borromini

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco, Mendrisio Academy Press

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco, Mendrisio Academy Press

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco, Mendrisio Academy Press

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco, Mendrisio Academy Press

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco, Mendrisio Academy Press

Through an analysis of the artistic and social dynamics underlying the organisation and direction of the important construction site of Como cathedral, on which painters, master glass-makers, goldsmiths and sculptors were active, and by retracing the historiography of the four brothers Rodari, the volume reconstructs the work of Tommaso and his workshop, reordering the chronology of some works and proposing a linear path from his early to his late activity.

Preface by Giovanni Agosti.

Mirko Moizi, Tommaso Rodari e il Rinascimento comasco

«Along with Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre, Paris of 1932, and Adalberto Libera’s Casa Malaparte in Capri of 1938, the Villa Girasole, finally launched on its diurnal cycle in 1935, now begins to assume its rightful place as one of the eccentric masterpieces of twentieth century architecture» (Kenneth Frampton).

Texts in English and Italian by Kenneth Frampton, Aurelio Galfetti, Valeria Farinati.
Photographs by Enrico Cano.

Villa Girasole. La casa rotante / The Revolving House

The result of a competition held in the summer of 1967, the Swimming Baths of Bellinzona by Aurelio Galfetti, Flora Ruchat-Roncati and Ivo Trümpy offers the first concrete manifestation of that “territorial architecture” that has been a feature of architecture in the Ticino from the late sixties down to its most recent developments. Drawing on largely unpublished materials preserved in the Archivio del Moderno, supplemented with drawings, photographs (historical and current), documents from the private archives of the architects, and other public and private records, the volume presents a critical reading of the work while retracing its history: from the competition to the development of intermediate variants down to the drafting and completion of the final project.

Texts by Bruno Reichlin, Nicola Navone, Martin Steinmann, Franz Graf and Monica Sciarini.
Colour photographs by Enrico Cano.

Il Bagno di Bellinzona di Aurelio Galfetti, Flora Ruchat-Roncati, Ivo Trümpy

Built in Milan between 1954 and 1958 to provide a home for children in difficulty, the Marchiondi Spagliardi Institute by Vittoriano Viganò represents, through its innovative educational program, its “neo-Brutalist” vocabulary and its material nature, a phase of outstanding interest in European architectural research. This volume presents a critical reading of the work by many voices, conducted through the interpretation of previously unpublished materials from the Viganò family, the architect’s professional archives, and the archives of the client, the contractor and other professionals.

Texts by Bruno Reichlin, Letizia Tedeschi, Alberto Grimoldi, Franz Graf, Francesca Albani, Gianni Ottolini, Valeria Farinati.
Photographs by Ugo La Pietra and Enrico Cano.

L'Istituto Marchiondi Spagliardi di Vittoriano Viganò