New publications

Transversal Territory. A Transdisciplinary and Participatory Approach in Urban Research

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

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

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

Konrad Linke Princen. What Mad Pursuit, Mendrisio Academy Press

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

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

Academy of Architecture Yearbook 2022, Mendrisio Academy Press

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

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

Heinrich Tessenow. Avvicinamenti e progetti iconici, Mendrisio Academy Press

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

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

Roberta Grignolo, Marco Di Nallo, Livio Vacchini. Scuola ai Saleggi di Locarno (1970-1979), Mendrisio Academy Press

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)

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

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