Catalogue Mendrisio Academy Press

In an era marked by the relentless overproduction of images, bombarding us with a constant stream of visual stimuli often absorbed in mere moments, Pino Musi invites us to pause and grant each image the time it truly merits—reclaiming thus what Gillo Dorfles termed the “lost interval.” As Michael Jakob notes in his introduction to this volume, the buildings captured in Musi’s photographs “seem to confront us directly, demanding, if only for a moment, our undivided attention.” Musi advocates for a mode of photographic vision that transcends the clichés which have rendered countless architectural images predictable and unreflective; he encourages us to attune ourselves to the distinctive modes and qualities that define his work, equipping the viewer with the means to forge novel interpretive pathways. Adding depth to the volume is an enriching dialogue wherein some intellectuals, artists, and architects engage with Musi’s works, intertwining the selected images with their own lived experiences to create a compelling “pas de deux” between text and image.

This volume focuses the attention on one of Manuel Pauli’s earliest architectural projects in collaboration with August Volland and the artist Eva Pauli, which proved decisive for the career of both Manuel Pauli and Eva Pauli. The project for the I Grappoli Holiday Village at Sessa in Malcantone (1957-60) was bound up with the new way of seeing tourism and leisure that developed after World War II, being characterised by a profound drive towards social and cultural reconstruction. It was one of the first holiday villages in Italianspeaking Switzerland to feature a modern architectural vocabulary, commissioned by the VPOD trade union in Zurich.

6850 is a new architecture journal published by the Academy of Architecture at Università della Svizzera italiana. Conceived and curated by the school’s mid-level faculty, the journal aims to serve as a critical and experimental platform for contemporary architectural discourse. The name 6850 refers to the postal code of Mendrisio, the Academy’s home: a place of cultural and geographical intersection between Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Bilingual (Italian/English) in format, 6850 features theoretical essays, visual projects, interviews, archival material, and reflections on teaching, practice, and criticism in today’s architectural field.

This is the first publication of a wide selection of texts by Aurelio Galfetti, one of the leading Swiss architects of the 20th century and the first director of the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. The collection focuses on the main themes that guided his thinking and design work: the profound ethical imperative, the territorial dimension attributed to architectural work, the role assigned to infrastructure design as an opportunity for orderly territorial development, and the idea that training young architects means first and foremost nurturing their critical spirit and encouraging them to do their job thoroughly, without preconceptions and with the generosity that, moreover, shines through in each of these texts.

Zurich Atlas: An Archaeology of Urban Codes and Forms explores how regulatory frameworks have shaped the physical and social fabric of Zurich over time and how, in turn, the evolving city has continuously reshaped those frameworks. The book approaches urban codes not as neutral technical instruments, but as historically layered, politically charged, and culturally embedded forces that actively participate in the making of the city. The book is structured in two main sections. Realms examines five key dimensions of Zurich’s urban fabric - housing; movement and public space; heritage and reuse; public buildings and spaces; and employment - demonstrating how each has been enabled, constrained, or transformed by specific regulatory regimes. Perspectives brings together a series of essays that critically reflect on the legal, political, and cultural underpinnings of urban codes and their relationship to everyday urban life through specific case studies.

Building on the historical analysis presented in Zürich Atlas: An Archaeology of Urban Codes and Forms, Zurich Primer: A Propositional Planning Vision for the City shifts the focus from how urban codes have shaped the city to how these codes may need to adapt to future demands. Central to this inquiry is the challenge of inward densification: integrating an estimated 100,000 additional residents over the coming decades within Zurich’s existing administrative boundaries, as required by Swiss spatial planning law. The book argues that population growth cannot be addressed through housing alone, but must be accompanied by parallel investments in infrastructure, public buildings, mobility systems, employment spaces, and shared amenities. Structured around five thematic fields - housing; movement and public realm; heritage; public buildings and spaces; and employment - the Primer combines analytical drawings of current conditions with carefully developed spatial scenarios. By oscillating between urban and architectural scales, the book articulates a holistic, propositional approach to qualitative densification, advocating the reuse and adaptation of existing structures, reduced environmental impact, and a rethinking of urban codes to support a more compact, sustainable, and socially balanced future for Zurich.

The volume deals with a particularly exciting moment in the history of architecture, when, starting in the early 20th century, electric lighting became part of architectural design. The idea of electric lighting as a “building material” stimulated research, sparked debate, and led to a change in design thinking and, consequently, in the architecture that was built. The continuous intertwining of technical and technological innovations, which had already begun in the previous century, and formal experimentation, increasingly supported by architects with the help of the new professional figure of the lighting engineer, as well as by the emerging electricity distribution and light source production companies and the various industry associations that appeared at national and international level, allowed electric lighting to become the very emblem of modernity. This modernity took shape in urban areas in the form of exceptional architectural lighting for existing buildings and the construction of new illuminated or even luminous architecture. At the same time, when designing interior spaces, the fundamental aspect becomes the balance between the function and aesthetics of lighting and between the use and abuse of light. Through a reinterpretation of the design and construction of some of the most significant buildings from the first and second post-war periods, the book ultimately seeks to highlight how specific knowledge of the materiality of architecture, aimed at conservation, restoration or reuse projects, cannot be separated from an analysis of the use that has been made of light.

«The exhibition Reality Show brings together a selection of works by Stefano Graziani, some pre-existing and others previously unseen, which engage in a dialogue with each other without referring to a single theme. Architecture, objects, nature, cities, people and much more populate his photographs without ever claiming a dominant role but rather appearing as elements of a complex, layered plot. [...] Everything you see in these photographs is real, even if sometimes it does not seem so. Graziani reflects on the status of photography today, within the vortex that brings documentation and simulation together and causes them to clash. His works are simultaneously proof and refutation. This is not an exhibition of reality, but about reality. We are faced with realityon display. Exposed. Reality Show» (Francesco Zanot).

This book documents the lengthy educational activity of Walter Angonese’s Atelier at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio (USI) from 2007 to 2025, in which collective experiences and practices play a crucial role. The book focuses on a main nucleus constituted by a reflection on the method used by Angonese, accompanied by photographs taken by the author that outline his own imaginary. The introductory essays by Hermann Czech, Tommaso Fantini, and Manuel Orazi deal with the theme of teaching and design. The contributions made by Angonese’s assistants over the years in the Atelier underscore the importance of tools like redrawing, the model, or the journey, and the centrality of collegial exercises. Group work emerges as being decisive in order to understand that a design idea requires the same process of construction as a physical building, with effects on the historical judgement of architecture. In the words of Hermann Czech, “Technical knowledge is only truly acquired in the design, and only those who have themselves designed can comprehend the designs of another time”.

From the seventeenth century to the present day, caricatures, cartoons, and comic strips published in newspapers, magazines, and now also on social media channels, convey an unconventional image of the architectural profession, far removed from the more familiar celebratory portraits. As Gabriele Neri writes, "it is an altered image: caricature distorts, exaggerates, and deforms its subject. But it is precisely from this exaggeration that interesting features emerge: between personal attacks and clichés extended to the entire category, the countless variations of graphic satire show us the architect from unconventional perspectives that are rarely explored by official historiography." The original gallery of illustrations published The original gallery of illustrations published in this volume undoubtedly demonstrates what Neri states from the outset: the great attention paid by satire to architecture attests to the importance of the public and social role of this extraordinary profession.

This volume recounts the story of unrealised architectural projects dedicated to the poet Dante Alighieri and the Dvina Commedia, conceived in Italy between the 1910s and 1930s. Thanks to a vast body corpus of documentation and an examination of certain conceptual junctures concerning the notion of national monuments and the relationship between utopia and ideology, this study highlights the complex intertwining of architecture, politics and ideology during those years.

How has architecture changed in Japan in recent years? How have architects responded to the major socio-economic issues that have arisen in the 2000s? As curator Yuma Shinohara writes in the introduction to this slim volume, which is as agile as it is rich in conceptual, cultural and visual ideas, the “new” Japanese architects seem little interested in the refined geometries of their predecessors; Instead, they opt for rough finishes and approach the act of building from a practical and pragmatic perspective. Pointing the way towards original approaches and alternative design methods are a number of architects who prefer restoration and reuse to building from scratch, who are attentive to environmental issues and aware of the fragility of the world we live in.

Who were the first visitors to public museums? How were they received, observed, and regulated? And how did museum institutions help shape – and construct – the very idea of ​​the “public”? This volume inaugurates a new series of studies devoted to the publics of the first public museums (18th-19th centuries). From the Museo Capitolino to the Louvre, from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana to the Rome of the catacombs, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to the public collections of Poland, Thuringia, Romania, and Chile: different geographies and periods that enable us to reconstruct the complex network of norms, practices, and representations through which the museum space developed, dialogued, or conflicted with its public. In the essays collected here, institutional sources are given a new voice, especially those from the period between the 1730s and the late 19th century: regulations, admission registers, correspondence, catalogues, and visitors’ books. What emerges is a shared and largely untold story of mediations, disciplinary strategies, material experiences, and cultural discards: a history that invites us to rethink the genealogy of the modern museum as a living space of relationships, tensions, and negotiations between institutions and publics.

With the dawn of the modern age, the conquest of the third dimension—the aerial domain—set in motion a spatial revolution that irrevocably transformed humanity’s relationship with the city, with territory, and with the planet itself. The view from above introduced an unprecedented form of spatial knowledge, one from the outset charged with profound practical implications: the command of space, largescale planning, control and surveillance, and aerial warfare. At the same time, aerial—or aero-spatial—vision gave rise to fundamental ethical and political experiences, including the emergence of an early global consciousness and the first stirrings of ecological awareness.
Through a historical and philosophical lens, this book investigates the impact of the aerial revolution on both fronts, tracing the continuities and ruptures that have shaped humanity’s gradual conquest of the skies.

A tribute to Luigi Lorenzetti
Luigi Lorenzetti was born in 1964 at Banco (Bedigliora), in Malcantone. He studied at the University of Geneva, where he earned a PhD in Economics and Social History under Professor Anne-Lise Head-König. In 2000, he began his research career in Lugano, at the then Institute of Alpine History (ISALP) of the USI, where Professor Jean-François Bergier was President and Professor Jon Mathieu Coordinator.
In 2006, coinciding with his move to Mendrisio and appointment to the Academy of Architecture, Luigi Lorenzetti took over the coordination of the Laboratory of Alpine History (LabiSAlp) as Professor of the “Territorial Culture” area.
In 2025, LabiSAlp is celebrating its 25 years of activity.

Founded in Stockholm in 2010 by Johan Arrhov (1979) and Henrik Frick (1977), Arrhov Frick has received a number of international accolades and was recently selected to redesign the new Stockholm Museum of Architecture.
Since 2021 Johan Arrhov has been a visiting professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland. In his design studios Arrhov addresses central issues in the contemporary architectural debate, such as the need to build in a simple, environmentally friendly way, and the search for a dialogue between comfort and beauty in architecture.
The result of this continuous research and the activities conducted with students at the Academy (including the design of an exhibition at the Teatro dell'architettura at Mendrisio in 2024), this volume presents the most significant aspects of Arrhov and Frick's work, such as their concern for the environment, the interpretation of architecture as an ever-changing and never-ending process, and the aspiration to simplicity in construction as a mirror of simplicity in life.

ISUP Papers is a new web-based, open-access architectural publication produced by the Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies at the Academy of Architecturein Mendrisio (USI Università della Svizzera italiana), and published three times a year. It promotes a form of architectural enquiry that is interdisciplinary in character and that collectively looks to refine our understanding and appreciation of environments, both urban and rural, led by objects as much as ideas and at scales that range from the small-scale to the territorial. This flexibility is mirrored by the scope of its interests, including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, sustainability and ecology, economics, geography and digitalisation, as tools that support the study of territories and the history and theory of urbanism and landscape architecture more generally.
Published essays and articles will work within a thematic framework establishedby the Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies, but authors themselves will be drawn from all regions, globally, and from the realms of academic research as much as professional practice. Similarly, the ISUP Papers does not restrict itself to a specific geographical area, nor a prescribed tenor or tone. What it encourages instead is a humanistic approach to regional, national and global challenges, with particular attention on environmental sustainability.

6850 is a new architecture journal published by the Academy of Architecture at Università della Svizzera italiana. Conceived and curated by the school’s mid-level faculty, the journal aims to serve as a critical and experimental platform for contemporary architectural discourse. The name 6850 refers to the postal code of Mendrisio, the Academy’s home: a place of cultural and geographical intersection between Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Bilingual (Italian/English) in format, 6850 features theoretical essays, visual projects, interviews, archival material, and reflections on teaching, practice, and criticism in today’s architectural field.

Now in its ninth edition, the prestigious architectural award, which showcases young architects recommended by internationally renowned advisors, has gone this year to Al Borde practice (Ecuador). The catalogue of the award accompanies the exhibition at the Mendrisio Theatre of Architecture (9 May – 5 October 2025). It contains works by all the architects who participated in the competition, with a special focus on those by the winner.

The Castle of Serravalle has been enhanced in the last twenty years by an interdisciplinary project, comprising archaeological investigations (2002–2006) and conservative restoration (2006–2022). The results achieved are important for the history of the strategic site and for military studies in general.
The numerous finds brought to light have enabled us to substantially expand our historical understanding of the Middle Ages, going so far as to backdate the origins of the first castle on the rocky spur to the 10th century. Three centuries later this would be replaced by the one violently destroyed in 1402.
The study analysed the techniques of construction and destruction of the two castles, as well as aspects of the everyday life and cultural and commercial influences that characterised them.
The publication seeks to provide a point of reference for the valley, which sees the Castle of Serravalle as a place of identity and memory in the contemporary landscape.