Theatre of the Architecture

In an era marked by the relentless overproduction of images, bombarding us with a constant stream of visual stimuli often absorbed in mere moments, Pino Musi invites us to pause and grant each image the time it truly merits—reclaiming thus what Gillo Dorfles termed the “lost interval.” As Michael Jakob notes in his introduction to this volume, the buildings captured in Musi’s photographs “seem to confront us directly, demanding, if only for a moment, our undivided attention.” Musi advocates for a mode of photographic vision that transcends the clichés which have rendered countless architectural images predictable and unreflective; he encourages us to attune ourselves to the distinctive modes and qualities that define his work, equipping the viewer with the means to forge novel interpretive pathways. Adding depth to the volume is an enriching dialogue wherein some intellectuals, artists, and architects engage with Musi’s works, intertwining the selected images with their own lived experiences to create a compelling “pas de deux” between text and image.

«The exhibition Reality Show brings together a selection of works by Stefano Graziani, some pre-existing and others previously unseen, which engage in a dialogue with each other without referring to a single theme. Architecture, objects, nature, cities, people and much more populate his photographs without ever claiming a dominant role but rather appearing as elements of a complex, layered plot. [...] Everything you see in these photographs is real, even if sometimes it does not seem so. Graziani reflects on the status of photography today, within the vortex that brings documentation and simulation together and causes them to clash. His works are simultaneously proof and refutation. This is not an exhibition of reality, but about reality. We are faced with realityon display. Exposed. Reality Show» (Francesco Zanot).

Founded in Stockholm in 2010 by Johan Arrhov (1979) and Henrik Frick (1977), Arrhov Frick has received a number of international accolades and was recently selected to redesign the new Stockholm Museum of Architecture.
Since 2021 Johan Arrhov has been a visiting professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland. In his design studios Arrhov addresses central issues in the contemporary architectural debate, such as the need to build in a simple, environmentally friendly way, and the search for a dialogue between comfort and beauty in architecture.
The result of this continuous research and the activities conducted with students at the Academy (including the design of an exhibition at the Teatro dell'architettura at Mendrisio in 2024), this volume presents the most significant aspects of Arrhov and Frick's work, such as their concern for the environment, the interpretation of architecture as an ever-changing and never-ending process, and the aspiration to simplicity in construction as a mirror of simplicity in life.

Now in its ninth edition, the prestigious architectural award, which showcases young architects recommended by internationally renowned advisors, has gone this year to Al Borde practice (Ecuador). The catalogue of the award accompanies the exhibition at the Mendrisio Theatre of Architecture (9 May – 5 October 2025). It contains works by all the architects who participated in the competition, with a special focus on those by the winner.

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.

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.

An artist of international renown based in Belgium, Koen Vanmechelen has centered his work on the relation between nature and culture throughout the course of an almost forty-year-long journey. Acclaimed for his exploration of the intersections between art and science, the artist tries, through his projects, to understand and pose questions on the great challenges of the 21st century. Sculptor, painter, performer, filmmaker, as well as a human rights advocate, the artist has rounded out his projects for the hybridization of both animals and plants with the contamination of the figurative arts, of materials and media making formal proliferation within conceptual complexity his own personal earmark on a creative universe that is as unique as it is unmistakable. This catalogue of the exhibition illustrates more than sixty-five pieces ‒ which were all realized between 1982 and 2019 ‒ intended to highlight the more strictly plastic aspects of his body of work.

Texts by: Boas Erez, Mario Botta, Didi Bozzini, James Putnam, Marcus Thelen, Pierluigi Panza, Koen Vanmechelen.

Louis Kahn e Venezia: rapporti umani, progetti, mostre, incontri con gli studenti, conferenze e riflessioni speciali, come quella improvvisata sul tetto di Palazzo Ducale, davanti alle cupole marciane. Ogni capitolo di questa liaison apre pensieri su temi complessi: il rapporto tra la memoria del passato e la cultura del presente; la rilettura dell’architettura antica da parte di un visionario moderno; il rapporto tra architettura e ingegneria in un Palazzo immaginato come un grande ponte sospeso; la ricezione dell’opera di Kahn in Italia e la speranza progettuale della cultura moderna. Dalla somma di queste esperienze emerge la lettura che Louis Kahn fa di Venezia, ancora oggi meritevole di essere approfondita sia in chiave storica sia in relazione ai problemi odierni della città.

Testi di: Elisabetta Barizza, Mario Botta, Fulvio Irace, Gabriele Neri, Werner Oechslin.

The book presents a series of installations, conceived and built by Riccardo Blumer’s students at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture. They are a further stage in a distinctive educational process where the fundamental principles of architecture are learned in particular by reflecting on the role of the human body: emphasising its poietic role (the body that builds objects), its scenic potential (the body as a spatial device in motion) and its function as a unit of measurement of the world. The students then identified two areas of investigation to be combined. On the one hand a simple, archetypical architectural theme (door, wall, path, etc.); and on the other, a reflection that investigates physical phenomena and their relation with the body, using electronics, programming, bricolage, etc. The result is a set of installations, which the observer’s body can interact with, and which gives rise to a meditation on the primary themes of architecture.