Architecture in Canton Ticino,
1945 - 1980
Head of the Project: Nicola Navone, AdM - USI
Post-doc Researchers: Matteo Iannello, AdM - USI; Alberto Franchini, AdM - USI
Associate Researchers: Riccardo Bergossi, AdM - USI; Ilaria Giannetti, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata"; Orietta Lanzarini, Università degli Studi di Udine
Between 1945 and 1980, architecture in Canton Ticino experienced a phase of particular vitality, which would lead to ever fuller recognition of its leading figures in Switzerland and abroad. This period has been the subject, in the past, of widespread critical interest in essays and volumes which, however, have taken the form of reviews of works and projects or have turned their attention to a narrow circle of personalities, often neglecting the nuances, differences or contrasts between the different positions.
On the one hand, this circumstance has meant that some protagonists of that season have fallen into a sort of historiographical oblivion, and on the other that reductive historiographic schemes have prevailed (such as the caricatural dichotomy between “rational” and “organic”). Hence they were inadequate to render the richness of the experiences and the researches conducted at that time.
The project intends to consider architecture in Canton Ticino from as broad a perspective as possible, situating it in the European and international context to bring out the different reference models, the ways in which these models were adopted, reworked, amalgamated or distorted, and the originality of the individual contributions: all in order to write a history of architecture in Ticino in the period identified.
The project seeks to achieve, from a historical perspective and through analytical investigation, a broader and deeper knowledge of a particularly fruitful period of architecture in Canton Ticino, which continues to require our critical attention and provide valid paradigms for current architectural practice.
