Studio Territorio Ticino

Studio Territorio Ticino, photo Alfio Tommasini
Studio Territorio Ticino, photo Alfio Tommasini

International and local. This is how the USI Academy of Architecture has qualified itself since its foundation. A school of architecture that is open to the world but rooted in its own territory, curious, permeable to the most innovative ideas but solidly linked to the tradition to which it belongs, always attentive to the social and cultural dynamics of Ticino. Evidence of this is provided by the research, projects and in-depth studies that the school has dedicated to Ticino over the years and that are constantly being renewed: a veritable laboratory of ideas, analyses and proposals offered to the entire community. The work of Studio Territorio Ticino is part of this tradition.

Studio Territorio Ticino starts from the geo-morphological dimension of Canton Ticino, referencing the complex altimetry that so profoundly affects its spatial perception. It is an Alpine area with mountains facing each other across a valley floor of changing breadths.
The city has been at the centre of the architectural and planning debate in recent decades and in Canton Ticino this trend has translated into a concentration on the valley floor, a narrow strip of land with countless flows and activities that has become the setting for the Canton’s urban phenomenon. This general approach has favoured a longitudinal trajectory, allowing a precise and detailed reading of urbanisation in relation to the principal infrastructural axes that innervate the Canton area.

Studio Territorio Ticino acknowledges this major cultural legacy and offers continuity while at the same time striving to complement this already consolidated research path. Continuity in terms of not ceasing to work on the valley floor, seen as an ideal place of transformation which should be constantly reanalysed, recontextualised and monitored. Complementing in the sense of focusing on a more “transversal” reading of the area. This transversal approach is intended less in the figurative sense – because a whole host of inputs and interpretations already underpin research on the valley floor – and more in the strictly spatial sense: adopting a transversal “section” as the preferred means of reading the cantonal area and reconsidering the valley floor based on the multiple links that bind it seamlessly to the peaks of the mountains rising at its sides.

The Studio Territorio Ticino website is a compendium of the activities carried out to date, but it is also a project and a declaration of intent: an open map of the pre-alpine region and the lakes that penetrate it, where each activity is specified in its relationship with this territory and establishes an interactive relationship with its space and thus with the map itself.
Studio Territorio Ticino is directed by Martino Pedrozzi, assisted by Vincenzo Tuccillo.

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