New publications

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

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

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)

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

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