Catalogue Mendrisio Academy Press
Transversal Territory is a laboratory of urban, environmental, and artistic experimentation at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture. It undertakes transdisciplinary and participatory research on the relationship between us, our bodies, and our built and natural environments. Its unique approach is to explore experiences of—and reflections on—urban space through performative bodywork and on-site artistic installations. This process aims at transcending the conventional paradigms of perception and the understanding of urban space, and at creating a new imagination of it—an augmented reality. Transversal Territory’s innovative research is conducted in annual workshops, in which students and local residents collaborate, and subsequent public presentations of the results.
This volume features 20 performances and installations realized in 2022 in Mendrisio’s Rime-Brech neighborhood, a typical suburban area with its mix of industrial structures, social housing, shopping malls, fast food outlets, parking lots, wastelands, and highways. It is conceived as a map of Mendrisio that spreads across the pages to recontextualize the genius loci in book format.
Transversal Territory. A Transdisciplinary and Participatory Approach in Urban Research
edited by
Mansoureh Aalaii, Antoine de Perrot aka Onzgi
21 x 28 cm, 160 pp.
59 ill. col.
paperback
english / italian
Park Books
ISBN: 9783038603726
€ 29 / frs 29.–
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The intense output of Gino Valle (1923-2003) has been extensively studied in monographs that have already brought out its complexity and contradictions. Our book seeks to reveal nuances that have so far remained undetected in previous studies concerning the collective aspect of Studio Valle’s output and its deep roots in the society of the second half of the twentieth century. Studio Valle was (and still is) a fluid practice, constantly evolving, where over time there have been several groups of partners and colleagues who have responded within the design and construction process to the requests of different clients, both private and public. This new point of view has opened up interesting reflections on the variety of the works, that corresponds to an explicit desire for experimentation. The collective work, together with the stimuli coming from its various social, geographical, cultural and economic contexts, has helped to define this at times contradictory and elusive multiplicity. The selection of works presented in our thematic study in depth is intended to be representative of Gino Valle’s oeuvre produced over a period of over thirty years, from his degree thesis in 1948 to the 1980s, and the breadth of themes that he dealt with partly in his homeland, Friuli, as well as various other parts of Italy and the world.
Texts by: Joseph Rykwert, Pierre-Alain Croset, Francesca Albani, Franz Graf, Pietro Valle, Carlo Dusi, Giulio Sampaoli. Interviews with: Piera Ricci Menichetti, Giorgio Macola.
Gino Valle. La professione come sperimentazione continua / The Profession as Continuous Experimentation
edited by
Franz Graf, Francesca Albani
24 x 28 cm, 240 pp.
170 ill. col. and 108 ill. b/n
paperback
english / italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836657964
€ 49 / frs 49
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38 Design studios, 16 Diploma studios, 104 courses, 106 lecturers, 112 assistants, more than 800 students: a year of teaching activity at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture.
Academy of Architecture Yearbook 2023
24 × 24 cm, 452 pp.
over 500 ill. col. and b/w
paperback
english / italian
ISBN 9788887624984
€ 20 / frs 20.–
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Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen are artists who reflect on the theme of overlapping, duality and layering within their work. In this way, they observe both the subjects of their images and the language of photography by which they represent them, adopting strategies that, starting from repetition and archiving, incorporate some typical processes of scientific research, though without making any claim to being scientific. This is the key to the title of the book, which pays homage to a famous book by Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, borrowing his praise of hybridisation, fusion and fertile encounters between differences.
Typically suspended between art and science, architecture is a constant running through the works by Konrad, Linke and Princen and one of the subjects privileged by the three authors, though none of them can be identified in any way as “architectural photographers”. Within their research, buildings and built space are never observed in themselves, but always on the basis of a relational logic in which these are only some of the numerous topics dealt with.
Konrad Linke Princen. What Mad Pursuit
edited by
Francesco Zanot
16.5 x 23.5 cm, 112 pp.
69 ill. col. and b/w
paperback
english / italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836656981
€ 20 / frs 20
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The Baptistery of Riva San Vitale is the oldest intact Christian building in Switzerland. In 2018, European Year of the Cultural Heritage, the Academy of Architecture, in the course “Methods and Techniques of Architectural Restoration”, began a new research project by cross-referencing the archival documents with information derived from the site survey to analyse the complex’s history and material qualities with subsequent stratifications and explore its “authenticity”.
The publication brings together a number of critical essays and a series of “thematic maps” comparing the material data with the documentary data, as well as the results of the restoration work conducted on the internal decorative apparatus by the course in “Conservation and Restoration” of the Scuola Universitaria Professionale of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). This documentation is a highly complex work of synthesis and at the same time a flexible and detailed instrument for scholars, professionals and officials in charge of its protection.
An extensive catalogue of plates and the complete transcription, edited by Eleonora Alberti, of the Giornale di cantiere edited by Guido Borella accompany the publication.
Texts by: Sergio Bettini, Marco Di Nallo, Paola Iazurlo, Vladimir Ivanovici, Giacinta Jean, Daniela Murphy, Irene Quadri.
Il Battistero di San Giovanni a Riva San Vitale
edited by
Sergio Bettini, Marco Di Nallo
30 x 42 cm, 120 pp.
170 ill. col., 63 ill. b/w
paperback
italian
ISBN 9788887624809
Open Access
36 Design studios, 16 Diploma studios, 103 courses, 105 lecturers, 101 assistants, more than 800 students: a year of teaching activity at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture.
Academy of Architecture Yearbook 2022
24 × 24 cm, 440 pp.
over 500 ill. col. and b/w
paperback
english / italian
ISBN 97888876248953
€ 20 / frs 20.–
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This new monograph celebrates the complete oeuvre of Heinrich Tessenow (1876-1950), regarded as one of the greatest German architects of the first half of the 20th century. The book explores the significance that his buildings, writings and drawings still have today. With precise research into the written, designed and built work, the curator Martin Boesch, an architect and scholar from Zurich, and the authors whom he has brought together here present a new portrait of the figure of Tessenow. Best known for his small residential buildings for workers, craftsmen and the lower middle class, Tessenow actually mastered large scale and urban planning equally confidently. The book focuses in particular on Tessenow’s iconic buildings, such as the Böhler House in Saint Moritz, the school in Kassel and that in Klotzsche, the conversion of the Neue Wache in Berlin and the great hall with columns fronting the beach at Prora. But the contributions of the over thirty scholars collected here cover the German architect’s whole output, organising it into three thematic areas: Building in the Landscape, Projects for the City, The Big House and the Small House.
Texts by: Gerald Adler, Renate Amann, Vitangelo Ardito, Theodor Böll, Martin Boesch, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Michele Caja, Giacomo Calandra di Roccolino, Philipp Esch, Hartmut Frank, René Furer, Wilhelm Hoffmann, Christian Kerez, Karl Kiem, Bettina Köhler, Carsten Liesenberg, José Ignacio Linazasoro, Quintus Miller, Joao Nunes, Luca Ortelli, Nicola Panzini, Steffi Platte, Alessandro Porotto, Peter Prohl, Bruno Reichlin, Nils Schinker, Elia Schneider, Jonathan Sergison, Miroslav Šik, Martin Steinmann, Ann-Christin Stolz, Adolph Stiller, Heinrich Tessenow, Jurjen Zeinstra.
Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici
edited by
Martin Boesch
30 x 28.5 cm, 532 pp.
1300 ill. b/w and col.
hardcover
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836652105
€ 90 / frs 90.-
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The process of the construction of memory that the volume seeks to examine takes the form of a layered and complex examination of the political and social issues leading to the failure to build two important projects devoted to the traumas of World War II: the Memorial to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs designed by Louis I. Kahn, which was to have been built in New York (1967-1973), and Peter Zumthor’s design for the Topography of Terror Documentation Centre in Berlin (1993-2004).
A retrospective study of the history of commemorative architecture in the twentieth century clearly reveals the lack of importance attributed to unbuilt or unfinished memorials, of which, in most cases, only the documentation remains. However, as the American professor of English and Judaic Studies James E. Young suggests, the history of an unbuilt memorial could conceivably be more instructive than an account of one that has been built.
The history of the construction of a memorial is a task of excavation underpinning the complex process of visualising and materialising the intention of memory expressed by a specific group of individuals, in a given place and historical time. A memorial, in fact, is an architectural work conceived to belong to the public space: a highly stratified social, political and aesthetic place, to which the community at the same time assigns a fundamental cultural value. Seen in this perspective, investigating the historical and political dynamics, as well as the aesthetic and architectural factors that presided over the design of a memorial is an act of great historical awareness, since it helps reveal the way a community interprets its own past, in particular its memory of traumatic events.
Anna Bernardi, Architettura e politiche della memoria
19 x 24.5 cm, 232 pp.
122 ill. b/w
paperback
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836653539
€ 35 / frs 35.-
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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
edited by
Nicola Navone
24 x 24 cm, 168 pp.
350 ill. col., 64 ill. b/n
paperback
italian / english
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836655212
€ 50 / frs 50.–
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Built in three phases over the course of a decade, the Scuola ai Saleggi in Locarno crystallized the evolution of Livio Vacchini’s architectural research in the 1970s in a single complex, so becoming a key place for his professional development.
The book brings together the studies of the School undertaken at the suggestion of the Cultural Heritage Office of Canton Ticino. It has a twofold character: on the one hand it offers a methodological approach, an outline of the research preceding action to safeguard the complex; on the other it presents the results of a historical investigation of the School that opens up new and fruitful ways of interpreting Livio Vacchini’s architectural achievement.
Roberta Grignolo, Marco Di Nallo, Livio Vacchini. Scuola ai Saleggi di Locarno (1970-1979)
250 pp.
315 ill. col. and b/w
italian
ISBN 9788887624908
Open Access
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)
edited by Angela Windholz,
Carla Mazzarelli, Mirko Moizi
16.5 x 23.5 cm, 172 pp.
113 ill. col.
hardcover
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836653591
€ 29 / frs 29.‒
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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)
edited by
Mirko Moizi, Andrea Spiriti
19 x 24.5 cm, 384 pp.
282 ill. b/w, 33 ill. col.
paperback
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN: 9788836654635
€ 44 / frs 44
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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 Peppo Brivio. 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
edited by
Franz Graf, Britta Buzzi-Huppert
21 x 29.5 cm, 64 pp.
49 ill. b/w
paperback
english / italian
ISBN 9788887624939
€ 25 / frs 25.–
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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
edited by
Franz Graf, Francesca Albani
24 x 28 cm, 248 pp.
218 ill. b/w, 155 ill. col.
paperback
english / italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN: 9788836632244
€ 48 / frs 48.–
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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
24 × 24 cm, 420 pp.
355 ill. b/w, 220 ill, col.
paperback
english / italian
ISBN 97888876248953
€ 20 / frs 20.–
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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
edited by
Roberto Leggero
14.5 x 19 cm, 256 pp.
29 ill. b/w
paperback
italian, english
ISBN 9788887624946
€ 25 / frs 25.–
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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
edited by
Paolo Perulli
12,5 x 20,5 cm, 112 pp.
paperback
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836652396
€ 15 / frs 15.-
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“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
14,5 x 19 cm, 52 pp.
22 ill. b/w
paperback
italian
Silvana Editoriale
ISBN 9788836650842
€ 10 / frs 12.-
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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
edited by
Michael Gnehm, Sonja Hildebrand
19 x 24,5 cm
216 pp.
88 ill. col., 24 ill. b/w
paperback
english
gta Verlag
ISBN 9783856764098
€ 35 / frs. 35.‒
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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
edited by
Franz Graf
24 x 28 cm, 160 pp.
25 ill. b/w, 103 ill. col.
paperback
english / italian
ISBN: 9788836648689
€ 30 / frs 30.–
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