Founder: Luigi Snozzi
Lecturers: Giacomo Guidotti / Stefano Moor
Assistants: Elia Antognini Andrea Langlois
Coordinator: Michele Gaggetta
Guest lecturer: Solano Benítez
Guests: Martin Boesch / Patrick Bonzanigo / Mario Botta / Alberto Caruso / Raffaele Cavadini / Sophie Delhay / Elli Mosayebi / Nicola Navone
The International Architecture Workshop Monte Carasso is an integral part of the planning process initiated by Luigi Snozzi in 1979 for the municipality of Monte Carasso, now a district of Bellinzona.
While in the past the course participants have investigated topics of interest for the development of Monte Carasso, since 2013 the Workshop has been dealing with a broader territory, tackling a highly topical issue: the aggregation of the municipalities of the Bellinzona region, which took place in 2017. The objective is to raise public and political awareness in order to promote a territorial reorganisation which is attentive to the entirety of the region and at the same time respects individual specificities, so that aggregation does not become a mere political-administrative act. It is to be hoped that the process of aggregation of the new Bellinzona will invest sufficient economic, political and social resources in this region, in favour of a shared and aggregated territorial planning. A planning policy capable of restoring the spatial issues specific to architecture to the centre of the debate.
After proposing a masterplan in 2013 and stating the principles on which it is based, from year to year the Workshop investigates specific strategic areas of the agglomeration, verifying and if necessary modifying the initial hypotheses: positing the mountains, real 'vertical parks', as the transversal limits of the city; recognising the riverside park as a central spine that structures, in its autonomy, the entire agglomeration; setting clear limits to the longitudinal development of the city to counteract the unlimited occupation of the valley; balancing voids and solids in the process of urban densification; introducing urban spaces oriented perpendicularly to the valley, to allow the city to also experience its transversal dimension and no longer only its longitudinal one.
From 2014 to 2024, various themes were addressed with different public and private contents: the definition of the northern and southern gateways to the city, the redevelopment of some neighbourhoods, the reorganisation of the city centre from Viale Stefano Franscini to Viale Giuseppe Motta, the redesigning of spaces along the railway axis, the planning of one of the current interventions for the renaturation of the Ticino river, and the connection of the neighbourhoods on the right bank with the river park, the new Tilo train stop in Piazza Indipendenza with the reorganization of the surrounding public spaces.
The 2025 edition of the Seminar confirms the desire to continue the reflection on the urban development of the new Bellinzona by taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the relocation of the railways plant in Arbedo-Castione. This infrastructural displacement liberates a vast central area near the AlpTransit station that the city intends to occupy with a new mixed-content neighbourhood. The seminar work will be supported by the studies already developed on this area and will have to deal with the new connection with the urban fabric and in particular with the reuse of the existing structures and traces.
The Workshop will be coordinated by lecturers with the contribution of architects and external experts. Over the years, architects with an international reputation have intervened such as Manuel Aires Mateus, Michele Arnaboldi, Andrea Bassi, Esteve Bonell, Mario Botta, Angelo Bucci, Gonçalo Byrne, Gloria Cabral, Raffaele Cavadini, João Luis Carrilho da Graça, Henri Ciriani, Pierre-Alain Croset, Gilles Delalex, Pierre Fauroux, Aurelio Galfetti, Silvia Gmür, Vittorio Gregotti, Bernard Huet, José Ignacio Linazasoro, Roberto Masiero, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Marco Ortalli, Bernard Quirot, Jan e Pascale Richter, José María Sánchez García, Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Livio Vacchini, Guillermo Vasquez Consuegra, Francesco Venezia, historian Alessandro Fonti and photographers Gabriele Basilico and Luc Boegly.
This year, for the final public lecture, the Workshop has the honour of welcoming the Paraguayan architect Solano Benítez, a leading figure in contemporary Latin American architecture. The lecture will take place in the evening of Thursday the 17th of July 2025.
At the end of the Workshop, the teaching faculty with the help of guest speakers invitati Solano Benítez, Mario Botta, Alberto Caruso e Raffaele Cavadini will discuss the projects developed by the participants in a final public critique.
The Workshop will be concluded by a special event: the presentation, organised in collaboration with USI-Academy of Architecture, of the volume Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman, published on the occasion of the major exhibition held in 2024 at the Casa da Arquitectura in Porto. The event will provide an opportunity to discuss, with the co-editor of the volume and other prestigious guests, the legacy of the work of the great Brazilian master, linked to Luigi Snozzi by deep friendship and esteem.
