XXX International Planning Seminar Monte Carasso from the 8th of July to the 21st of July 2023
Founder: Luigi Snozzi
Lecturers: Mario Ferrari / Giacomo Guidotti / Stefano Moor
Coordinator: Michele Gaggetta
Invited: Andrea Bassi
Guests: Patrick Bonzanigo / Mario Botta / Raffaele Cavadini / Götz Menzel / Nicola Navone / Adrian Kramp / Manuel Scholl
The International Design Seminar 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. This year will be the 30th anniversary of the Seminar, a milestone that will be celebrated in two separate moments.
The first includes an exhibition by the French photographer Luc Boegly, who has been asked to interpret Snozzi's work in Monte Carasso. The objective is, on one hand, to document the transformations of this piece of land following the similar survey carried out in 1996 by Gabriele Basilico, and on the other hand, to introduce a different and yet similar look at Snozzi's work, in terms of interests and affinities.
This exhibition will be followed, at a later date, by a volume articulated around three texts: an introduction illustrating the premises, objectives and developments of the Seminar; an essay devoted to Luigi Snozzi's experience at Monte Carasso and thus also to the Seminar; and a dialogue on the role of photography in the description of space and territory. The three texts will be accompanied by a rich selection of Boegly's shots, which will constitute the iconographic core of the volume.
While in the past the course participants have investigated topics of interest for the development of Monte Carasso, since 2013 the seminar 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 attended that the aggregation process 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 that knows how to (re)put the spatial issues proper to architecture at 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 Seminar investigates specific strategic areas of the agglomeration, verifying and if necessary modifying the initial hypotheses: assuming the mountains, real 'vertical parks', as transversal limits of the city; recognising the river 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 fullness in the process of urban densification; introducing urban spaces oriented perpendicularly to the valley, to allow the city to experience also its transversal dimension and no longer only its longitudinal one.
From 2014 to 2022, various themes were addressed with different public and private contents: the definition of the northern and southern gates of 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, and the planning of one of the current interventions for the renaturation of the Ticino river.
The 2023 edition of the Seminar confirms the desire to continue reflection on the urban development of the new Bellinzona. During the numerous past editions, the Seminar has dealt with the redefinition of the relationship, with its still unexpressed potential, between the neighbourhoods and the numerous free spaces on the left bank with the river park, imagined as the future backbone of the aggregate city.
The XXX edition will deal with the often forgotten theme of the relationship of the municipalities on the right bank - from Gorduno to Sementina - with the park itself. Cut off from the river by the cumbersome motorway infrastructure and endowed with reduced space behind it, the municipalities on the right bank have, over the years, turned their backs on the great landscape by placing, in this strip of land, everything that the city wanted to get rid of. Occupied by haphazard craft areas, extemporaneous agricultural residues, and inaccessible residential neighbourhoods walled in by hideous noise protections, this strip of land, to the detriment of its potential scenic beauty, now appears as a “non-place” which is difficult to permeate and incapable of establishing a new and qualitative relationship with the river park.
The recent construction of several footbridges seems to be a first attempt to connect the two banks of the river, the two parts of the city: a hope of redemption for the bank of the forgotten.
It will therefore be the task of the Seminar to reflect on this theme, trying to redefine the boundary/relationship between inhabited space and infrastructure while respecting the strong multifunctional character that the area in question has assumed, despite itself, over the years.
The Seminar will have the character of a design workshop and will be supervised by lecturers with the contribution of architects and external experts. Over the years, architects of international stature have intervened such as Michele Arnaboldi, Raffaele Cavadini, Pierre-Alain Croset, Aurelio Galfetti, Mario Botta, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Livio Vacchini, Esteve Bonell, Gonçalo Byrne, Bernard Huet, Alvaro Siza, Roberto Masiero, Francesco Venezia, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Silvia Gmür, Henri Ciriani, Pierre Fauroux, Guillermo Vasquez Consuegra, Angelo Bucci, Vittorio Gregotti, Marco Ortalli, Manuel Aires Mateus, João Luis Carrilho da Graça, José María Sánchez García, Gloria Cabral (Gabinete de Arquitectura), José Ignacio Linazasoro, Jan and Pascale Richter, Bernard Quirot, historian Alessandro Fonti and photographer Gabriele Basilico.
This year, for the final public lecture, the Seminar has the honour of welcoming architect Andrea Bassi. The lecture will take place in the evening of Thursday the 20th of July 2023 and will be held outdoors in the evocative setting of the ancient Augustinian convent.
At the end of the Seminar, the teaching faculty with the help of guest speakers Mario Botta, Raffaele Cavadini and Andrea Bassi will discuss the projects developed by the participants in a final public critique.
