Diploma 2024

The Diploma 2022/2023 will be set in Milan, under the direction of Professor Riccardo Blumer, who has identified various authors, selected on the basis of the fields they work in (architect, artist, theatre director, photographer, set designer, music critic, TV producer, gallerist, illustrator, philosopher, historian), who will present a reading of Milan, each through a “story” of their own, linked with specific places in the city, even from different periods.
Through these “stories” the design studios will be free to give an architectural interpretation of the places evoked, completing, imagining or modifying them, in keeping with the principle that the city is architecture and so the “stories” are precisely dependent on the “forms”. Each author will give the students a lecture in a different place in Milan, with the purpose of making a “journey” through the city. Thanks to collaboration with the Consulate General and the Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Italy, some meetings will take place at the Swiss Centre in Milan, in the building designed by Armin Meili.

Cinque anni fa un’indagine del “New York Times”, intitolata Perché Bruxelles è la nuova Berlino?, confermava una tendenza in atto nella capitale belga, dove artisti da tutto il mondo si riversano in città, si aprono gallerie e si tengono eventi. Come per tanti altri posti che hanno sperimentato un trend simile, si possono individuare molte ragioni di questa fioritura culturale, che tuttavia si riconducono semplicemente alle condizioni stesse della città: cosmopolita e poco costosa. E inoltre, con spazi disponibili. Al di là dei luoghi d’arte visibili – musei e gallerie, teatri e sale da concerto, istituzioni consolidate o spazi industriali riconvertiti – ci sono posti dove gli artisti possono vivere e lavorare, uscire e scambiarsi idee. La produzione di cultura avviene (anche) in locali e salotti, uffici e loft, studi e atelier. Il nostro obiettivo è indagare questi spazi e identificare un prerequisito urbano per una categoria così sfuggente come la cultura. Inoltre, vogliamo esaminare come ci siano tipologie spaziali che possono venire finalizzate a nuovi utilizzi (culturali). In questo progetto di Diploma ogni atelier si occuperà di un particolare tipo di spazio, scegliendo tra circa 150 siti che a Bruxelles negli anni passati sono stati oggetto di concorsi di architettura. Al lavoro daranno un contributo anche numerosi artisti che vivono e lavorano a Bruxelles, confrontandosi con le tipologie spaziali proposte. La nostra speranza è che il Diploma non solo stabilisca un nesso significativo tra la produzione della cultura e il ruolo strumentale dell’architettura all’interno di questo processo, ma che nel suo insieme fornisca anche un ritratto alternativo della città, contribuendo alla sua storia culturale.

Diploma 2021 will be developed from Firminy, an icon of the modern movement’s conceptual approach to architecture and the city. Firminy-Vert was designed in the mid-fifties in a still industrial city, during post-war reconstruction, followed by Le Corbusier’s work, now a Unesco world heritage site.
This urban situation combines the ordinary – the “normal city” as Richard Sennett would say – together with the extraordinary, banality with “junkspace”, as well as exceptional pieces and generous landscape features, a medium-scale urban system with a strong relationship with its countryside and peri-urban hinterland.
From this, we propose an experiment, an architectural fiction, an updated counter-vision of the modernist “dream” nurtured by the feedback that the last five decades and the contemporary challenges suggest. Instead of taking the existing situation as the Diploma context, we want to 1/ launch reflection on a prospective basis from the situation in the mid sixties, 2/ extend the boundaries from the modernist site of Firminy to its interdependent territorial features, from the shrinking core of nearby Saint-Etienne to the peri-urban countryside.
Through this experiment, we will not be thinking about what should have happened, but about what could have happened, as an open system of alternative development, where architecture gives outcomes to manifold interdependent situations: the post-industrial city and its shrinking core, the very heart of Firminy-Vert and Le Corbusier’s work, which remains untouched like a Cistercian cloister, the industrial remains, the nearby villages progressively densified, the main collective hotspots and facilities, the infrastructures, the countryside, which used to be the romantic background to the modernist masterpieces and has become the natural extension of an urban lifestyle and resource system.

With the Diploma 2020 we will stay very close to the Academy and focus on Ponte Chiasso, the border-crossing between Chiasso and Como, examining a circle of 3,5 km radius to include a variety of situations and sites that are affected by the border: its specific economic and social implications, its infrastructures and the differences of currency, value, laws and political entities.
The students will be researching the urban, social and economic situation and develop their own programs and typologies, addressing constraining problems and tasks – like migration and integration, affordable housing, inclusive city quarters, redirecting urban flows or creating new models of mobility and sharing. In the sense of sustainability we will try to achieve the most positive with the least negative impact.  The topic of Integration points towards a general integrative and affirmative attitude – integrating foreign and native, old and new, architecture and nature and the project with the urban, social and economic context.

The 18/19 Diploma will have Cagliari and its many problems of continuity as its central theme, with the school’s work being capable of contributing in important ways to their solution. The set of selected project sites comprehensively illustrates the themes of a city in profound transformation, in a period of an exceptional conjunction of circumstances. The political phase that the city is experiencing provides an outstanding opportunity to define and consolidate Cagliari’s great potential, in a complex process in which architecture participates as an important instrument and founding element. The Diploma work seeks to contribute to the successful outcome of Cagliari’s contemporary challenges by a process aimed at demonstrating the relevance of concrete project opportunities, as both elements of urban architecture and structural parts of a complex and coordinated system, capable of constructing the factors making for cohesion in a fragmented city.

This year's Diploma project focuses on the region and the city of Bergamo. In particular, the study will cover the development process that supports commercial, social, cultural, urban and economic experiences.
The historical part of the city remains the reference point of the local system and of the connective fabric consolidated by an interconnected network of activities with their own capacity for productive growth in the regional context. It is precisely this local aspect that the Diploma of the Academy wants to explore, working on 13 areas in strategic locations of the city.
The work of the Diploma will be supplemented by precise plans agreed upon by the Direction of the Academy and the city administration, thus giving the future architect the ability to provide answers to the questions that will emerge during the exploratory phase of analysis and research.
The final projects will then be displayed in an exhibition that will be set up in Bergamo in autumn 2018.

Salzburg closely matches Aldo Rossi’s definition of the “city of parts”; parts of the city conceived and designed, and which thanks to a very distinctive morphology and urban topography – despite different thematic and linguistic approaches – succeed in connecting to form a unified whole.
In Diploma 2017 no programmes will be set, recognising the architect's ability to find answers to questions raised during the exploratory phase of the research. Rather, the work will be accompanied by certain keywords, related to the idea of Stimmung (atmosphere) as Adolf Loos understood it. The final projects will then be exhibited at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg in autumn 2017.

Salzburg Exhibition

The objective of this year’s Diploma course is to make an urban survey of the city of St. Moritz, investigating the potential for enhancing the landscape in some areas of strategic importance. Founded as an exclusive health spa and summer resort, famous for its leading role in the birth of winter sports, St. Moritz is without doubt one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. The glittering setting of the fashionable side of the holiday resort, backed up by an advanced infrastructure network and the historic architecture of the splendid Grand Hotels, transformed the old village in the Engadin into a cosmopolitan urban centre. Since World War II, the proliferation of second homes and the crisis of the hotel industry have been at the centre of a process of “urbanalisation”, typical of all the Alpine valleys, which risks compromising the town’s main resource, the beautiful landscape of the valley. The recent federal law on second homes has created the conditions to rethink this type of development and the search for an alternative model could perhaps start from the revaluation and reinterpretation of the hotel typology, not only as a temporary dwelling but also as an opportunity to improve the public spaces of its existing urban development.

Every project reflects five fundamental conditions: site, size, type, function and material. Such conditions may vary and produce a wide range of combinations. When one of them is assigned, the others vary within a specific set of possibilities until they all react on each other and give form to an idea.
For Diploma 2015 we are going to set a collection of topics for each of the five parameters.
The topics, equal in number to the design studios, will be announced in the Autumn Semester 2014, and a series of introductory lectures will follow. Each design studio will be then assigned one of the topics by lot.
The general site for Diploma 2015 is Switzerland.

The Diploma represents the conclusion of the research project "Public Space in the 'Ticino City' of Tomorrow" funded by the National Foundation within the program NRP 65 "New Urban Quality". It proposes a territorial reading articulated into four “districts” (areas with specific geographic and morphological characteristics): C1 Ticino River North; C2 Ticino River South; C3 the Ceresio Basin; C4 the Insubria Triangle.
For each district the research has developed projects of public space on different scales: district (1:25'000) and urban (1:5'000). The Diploma projects are the selection of the strategic issues identified and will have to be developed on the urban and architectural scales.
The projects proposed form part of a territorial strategy, and deal with issues related to: landscape, public space, infrastructures, mobility and densification.
The whole set of Diploma projects is an opportunity to extend the results obtained and help improve the dialogue between the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and the public administration on issues regarding the culture of the territory.

This year’s Diploma projects will deal with various zones of Barcelona, each having a specific relation to the existing urban fabric, but all subject to real requests for change by the city’s urban planning department. Some projects consist of building on the built, hence with a minimum margin of freedom, and will help consolidate the urban space. Others propose new buildings, with their own identity but capable of communicating with aesthetically quite different buildings or, by their situation as marking a limit, of acting as filters between different situations.
One of the themes to be developed will be social housing, with opportunities to discuss and experiment with relations between domestic places and public places: housing for families and young or old people can be combined with other facilities that will generate a redefinition of urban space.
With regard to the issue of reuse, the project is located at Fabra i Coats, a nineteenth-century industrial complex. The aim is to redevelop the buildings and the voids which meet within them so as to give them a new function in the fabric of their neighbourhood.
Finally, there is the question of the city centre, that centre which Ildefonso Cerdà had already envisaged in his expansion plan for Barcelona (1859) and which at present is a huge void. Should it be turned into a great green lung that will give oxygen to the city, or instead accommodate buildings that will help create a public space of outstanding quality?

The object of the study, commissioned by the Administration of the Port of Lisbon, comprises the whole area of its competence, from Belem to Matinha: it is the frontier between Lisbon and the Tejo (Tagus), covering an area of about 14 km. Unlike what might be expected of a purely legal boundary, it cannot be reduced to a line: it is a frontier with breadth, a strip of land with its own characteristics, a third entity in dialogue with both its sides. This is a territory which the levels of the river and the platform of land endow with a strong continuity, and a radically horizontal orientation. This condition is also reinforced by the great routes that have been added to the landscape, juxtaposed or superimposed on it: the streets, the electric tramlines, the railway, the bridge, aircraft and the subway.
Apart from the transverse signs that unify it, a territory of this size is inevitably varied in its development. The historical survey we have made enables us to understand the process of growth and consolidation of the river front, identifying and framing its exceptional heritage in its spatial and temporal context and comprising the logic underlying the different morphological and functional units that are recognizable today.

The overall ambition for this year’s Diploma work is to carry out a very broad urban investigation of London. Throughout its history, London has always resisted easy understanding and characterisation, as well as fiscal policy constraints. Today it is the largest urban conglomerate in Europe in terms of population and land area.
As a way of structuring the work of the London Diploma, we will take one of London’s oldest infrastructural elements: the high streets and ancient roadways, some of which are almost 2000 years old. These provide one of the rare structuring elements to the city and their role within the transport infrastructure means they can effectively support the future growth and expansion of the city.
Twelve high streets or “development corridors” have been selected as the focus for this year’s work. Each Diploma studio will work on one, and within these sites have been identified for individual projects, so that no two students will work on the same site. The result of the Diploma work will be an unprecedented urban investigation completed in advance of the Olympic Games that will be hosted by London in 2012.

The Diploma work for the academic year 2009-2010 intends to explore the problems involved in the architectural and urban transformations of the city of Varese caused by the recent developments in its territory.
This project grew out of the conviction that the indispensable solution to the problems that arise in the organism of a city should be viewed in close relation to road infrastructures, landscape and the local context. This constitutes a unique opportunity for the design of new areas with architectural solutions that emphasize planning principles with a concern for the social fabric and an improved quality of life. This interpretation of the relationship between urban planning and architecture will be verified through the typological design of specific and defined spaces in different zones of the city, given prominence by the administrative policies of the City of Varese concerning issues that have long been debated and remain unresolved. Far-reaching transformations are planned in these areas of study, prefigured with new residential, cultural, sporting, tourist, religious, infrastructural, artisanal, commercial and social developments.
The territory of Varese is flat and dry due to its orographic development, unsuited to agriculture but favouring the development of industry. The city, located at the foot of the mountain complex of the Sacro Monte and the massif of Campo dei Fiori, has 84 000 inhabitants and has been the capital of the province of Varese since 1927.
It was a prehistoric settlement in 2000 B.C. and an important site in Roman times. In the eleventh century its original core became a market of some importance, as a meeting place for people from beyond the Alps and those in the plain for the exchange of agricultural and craft products. The sixteenth century saw the first development of the silk trade and in the early seventeenth century numerous manufactories were set up in the zone. The seventeenth century also created the Sacro Monte, a devotional path lined with fourteen chapels and culminating in the shrine of Santa Maria del Monte. In this same period the local nobility built rich residences facing the lake. In the late eighteenth century Varese became the seat of the ducal court of Francesco III of Este, administrator of the Duchy of Milan. In the second half of the nineteenth century rail links opened up new national outlets for local industries, while development outside the city walls began when a series of villages (the "castellane") begin to be fused with the city’s most ancient historical fabric. In these spaces villas in Liberty (Art Nouveau) style were built. After World War II expansion accelerated infill building in the urban fabric existing down to the present.

The Diploma 2009 is devoted to Lausanne and the Métamorphose project. This is an ambitious program by which the local authority intends to relaunch the city through precise political choices made to sustain a renewed urban quality (housing, shops, public facilities, transport). The Métamorphose project seeks to create a coherent synthesis between the dynamics under way in the city of Lausanne by combining a program of sustainable development with the city’s new master plan and with the opening of the subway Line 2; a set of factors which will underpin a large and important urban transformation to be carried out over the next fifteen years and which will affect an urban surface area covering 67 hectares and in particular two sites: the south area (Vidy, Bourdonnette) on which will rise new major public facilities, such as the stadium and the Olympic pool, and the north area (Plaines du Loup, Pontaise), intended to create an eco-district on the Pontaise site.
But the themes and chosen locations for the Diploma work also Involve other parts of the city, lying outside the Métamorphose project, which entail issues bound up with restoration, the design of the landscape and the more general organization of the territory. The project on Lausanne is therefore an opportunity to rethink the city in its parts and relationships, working on the very meaning of the contemporary city, an elusive and uncertain concept which will be combined with refl ection on different scales about different topics and with different areas of intervention.
The city, understood as a large artefact, represents the field of inquiry and reflection. Its characteristics, spaces and the parts of which it is composed define a more or less coherent image. Our purpose is to move beyond the design of the individual architectural object and seek to build new fragments, new parts of a possible city.

The Diploma work for the academic year 2007-08 will deal with the problems entailed by the transformations of the territory of “Ticino City” induced by the construction of the high-speed railway under the Alptransit project. This project grew out of the conviction that the indispensable solution to the problems of international circulation on rail and tyre, public and private – obviously seen in close relationship to the local road system – is a unique opportunity for planning a new territory, different from and better than that created on territorial planning principles in the past century.
This interpretation of the relationship between urban planning and architecture will be verified through the planning of special public spaces, in various zones affected by the course of the new railway line, in open-cut sections included between the south portal of the base tunnel of St Gothard and the north portal of the tunnel of Mount Olimpino, which will take the Alptransit through Chiasso to Italy. In these zones (Bodio / Biasca, Claro / Castione, Sementina / Camorino, Lugano / Pian Scairolo, Mendrisio / Stabio, Chiasso / Como) we can imagine deep-seated territorial transformations, accompanied by new developments (residential, commercial, manufacturing, sporting, etc), generated by the new roads.
Essentially the Diploma will examine the possibility of conferring form and dignity on the city that will grow up along the major roads of communication. The new developments should be related to a strategically designed layout and plans for new public spaces which are absolutely essential for the correct construction of the city.

Among the various aggregations of contemporary Swiss cities (such as Geneva, Zurich, Berne, San Gallo, Winterthur or Freiburg), we have chosen the group of towns on the Plateau consisting of Olten, Aarau and Zofingen. This area, while forming a very complex whole, like all contemporary diffused settlements, also embodies certain prominent geographic factors and some relatively simple structural features that justify an architectural project to be completed in 14 weeks.
As part of the analysis of the territorial dynamics of the district, the diploma course will seek specifically to explore the theme of housing in the contemporary Swiss city, concentrating on the example of Olten. Olten has an extensive housing program which envisages construction of widely different types of homes. Apart from the theme of housing, Olten also lends itself to the study of architectural subjects such as the museum, railway station and shopping mall, typologies that should never be studied separately from housing and the overall urban project. To attain this object it is desirable that each of the architectural design studios should address the subject of housing by relating it to the other topics mentioned, so that each design studio provides a view of the town articulated in its various components.

The choice of the areas bordering on historical Venice, distributed mainly on the lagoon zones of Marghera and Mestre, is owing to the fact that they involve a particularly complex range of project issues bound up with the current processes of modernization and conversion of both traditional landscapes and brownfield sites.
Venice’s metropolitan area on the mainland is a territory that is largely fragmented but also studded with historical remains and marked by great signs of its industrial heyday in the post-war period. This makes it possible for the projects to explore the general problems bound up with territorial conversions in infrastructural terms, without forgetting the ecological issues raised in particular by reclamation of these zones. But an area of this kind will also enable us to understand the current dynamics of mobility in the territory bound up both with the economy of the North-East of Italy and the network of services requisite to favour tourism in Venice. In addition, the presence of a substantial legacy of industrial architecture suggests that some projects should explore methods and techniques for their reuse.
So each Diploma design studio will have its own specific sphere of action, corresponding to a privileged theme, to be framed within a general study of the integrated conversion of Venice’s metropolitan territory.

The choice of Padua is bound up with the fact that today it embodies the complex themes of contemporary development in the Mediterranean area, distinguished historically by a strong cultural identity. Padua in the context of what is known as the “northeast of Italy” constitutes the “hub” of a cluster of cities (Venice, Treviso, Vicenza, etc.) that in actuality form the foundation for a metropolitan area. For this reason the architectural project is proposed as an instrument of intervention in the present city and is distinguished from the urban project because it is not time-bound: it can and should be realized as a complete whole right from the start. Each design studio will therefore take the urban territory as its place of intervention, with a special concern for the city and its immediate periphery. In the intervention each design studio will be able to choose a project zone and a topic.