No one in Brazil is concerned with thermal bridges, and this is not because we don’t care, but it‘s simply a fact that there is no negative...
Read moreA journey with our students took us to a place where fire could be
experienced with all the senses: the volcanic island of Stromboli, one
of the pearls of the Aeolian Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. To get
there, we had to cross the deep blue sea. The boat bore the name
Eraclide. It made us...
I will present to you a few projects that sort of represent the trajectory of works I have done over the past 13 years. The works are focal points or images between two aspects: on one hand it is the aspect of a cultural context that is characterized by its constant transitions, ambiguities, and an...
Read morePROCESS
Constructing a building can be a long process. This is one of those cases.
OPEN SELECTION. SUMMER 2004
The first step was to produce some brief reflections. On the basis of these, plus curriculum and similar documents, the Jury selected five teams.
My initial interest was in...
Crossing the Bergell valley, the memory of the Giacomettis is present through the way they have described the villages and the landscape: Giovanni Giacometti's landscape visions of the valley, the houses and gardens of Stampa painted by Augusto and the landscape reflected by Alberto from the window...
Read moreGV First of all, I think we have to recognise that architecture and landscape
architecture always deal with culture. This means that we only see
what we know. Without knowledge, you cannot perceive or value the
landscape. In this way, architecture and landscape are similar. Here,
of course, we...
Could you talk about the relationship between your academic activity and your professional practice? In what way do they influence each other?
I consider myself a professional architect. Having said that, I have to point out that this has not always been the case. At the start of my career...
The first concerns of the architecture project when addressing the future construction site are, necessarily, spatial, tectonic and topological; always resting on it, but in some cases fitting into it, and in yet others sinking right into it to root it there. Occasionally, this in-depth colonization...
Read moreBuildings in hot and humid climates have been traditionally cooled by ventilation. Wind catchers or what is in Persian called a Baud-Geer have been employed in the arid central regions of Iran and its neighboring countries to provide natural ventilation and passive cooling. The function of the...
Read moreThe long building sits perpendicular to the topography in the middle of the open land, separating the green in a public park infront and a private garden in the back. Inspired by Luigi Moretti's studies about space-sequences of internal rooms in sacral buildings, Patrica Lehner imagined spaces with...
Read moreThe quality of Tobias Tommila’s project is the tfocus on the expression and identity of a cinema.The program of the “Cineteca Svizzera” is a heterogeneous mix of functions with two cinema-halls which are not more than dark and closed rooms. Nevertheless the expressive shape of the roof which...
Read moreWhen looking at a cross section of the earth, one notices its core to be split into two entities: an inner core that is solid and mostly made out of iron, and an outer core that is liquid. There are charged particles in this part, and its fluid movement generates the magnetic field of our planet. It...
Read moreOne definitely brings a lot of one‘s practical experiences into architecture, a lot of one‘s childhood memories, one‘s experiences throughout life. You are constantly sampling the environment and understanding closely the space and content of your environment. As in our case, when coming from...
Read moreConsciousness and Resistance
I strongly believe that The Arab Spring was definitely a positive way forward, but it lacked a 100-year overdue. It should have been supported by a serious evaluation of movements of change and transformation that took place in Europe since the Enlightenment,...
Confronted to the specificity of the site, Guillermo Dürig’s project avoids the common rethoric of the genius loci. Instead it provokes an immediate engagement with the urban scale, operating in a multi-scale condition that intends to solve the main problems of both city and site. As a long and...
Read moreLocarno's public park in the city centre is one of its main open spaces, establishing a relationship on one hand, between the old town and the XIXth century city extension in the Maggia's delta and on the other, between the Lago Maiore and the Piazza Grande, the main location of the Locarno Film...
Read moreDario Wohler's project raises two interesting questions in relationship with the physical and cultural conditions of the place. On one hand, the dialogue with the strong topographic conditions of the Bergell valley. On the other, the definition of the exhibition space by means of light to create...
Read moreMany of our projects deal with the question of character. If I were to use a metaphor then I would have to say that we are not interested in the language of architecture - no, we are interested in the tone of architecture. I believe that sometimes it is more important the way you speak than in fact...
Read moreMinimizing the building’s footstep on the bounteous ground, Sandro Elmer’s library soars in form of a light steel-structure into the air. Using the surrounding vegetation as a curtain and the elevated view towards the surroundings as a main asset, the project’s ease also epitomizes today’s de-materialization of books into lighter modes of knowledge transfer.
Read moreThe project for a ‘Cineteca Svizzera’ is located on a slope in the upper part of the old town of Locarno. To the north is a district of villas, while towards east, south and west are historic buildings.
The concept of the project by Lukas Germann derives from the given situation: an untended...