New publications

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

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

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