June 29 – July 12, 2019
Director: Luigi Snozzi
Instructors: Mario Ferrari / Michele Gaggetta / Giacomo Guidotti / Stefano Moor
Special guest: José Ignacio Linazasoro
The Monte Carasso International Design Seminar has been for twenty-five years an integral part of the planning process started by Luigi Snozzi in 1979 for the Monte Carasso municipality that today is a neighbourhood of Bellinzona.
In the past, participants have studied issues of interest for the development of Monte Carasso, while in the last six editions the Seminar has been focusing on a wider area, addressing a topic of pressing relevance: the aggregation of municipalities in the Bellinzona District, that occurred in 2017. The aim is to raise awareness among the general public and politicians in order to promote a territorial reorganisation that considers the whole area whilst respecting individual peculiarities, so that the aggregation won’t be a mere political and administrative act. Hopefully, the “New Bellinzona” aggregation process will invest sufficient economic, political and social resources in the region to support a shared and aggregated regional planning. A type of planning which should (re)place the spatial issues of architecture at the centre of concerns and debate. The
city of Bellinzona expects and deserves change.
After the first draft of the Masterplan and its key principles in 2013, in the following years the Seminar has investigated specific strategic areas in order to verify and - if necessary - modify the assumptions formulated in the Masterplan, such as: assume the mountains, real “vertical parks”, as transversal limits of the city; recognise the river park as a central spine that by itself structures the entire region; set clear limits to the longitudinal development of the city, in order to counter the unlimited occupation of the valley; achieve a better balance between empty and crowded spaces within the city in the process of densification; introduce urban spaces oriented towards the valley narrow part, so that the city can live both the transversal and the longitudinal dimension. Following an in-depth analysis of the Semine neighbourhood in 2014, the redefinition of the north and south “city gates” in 2015 - 2016 and the reorganisation of the city centre in 2017, in 2018 the Seminar has redefined the second longitudinal
axis that crosses the entire city and has the potential to regenerate it: the railway.
This year the Seminar will focus once more on the Monte Carasso delta, addressing the topic of revitalising the mouth of the Sementina stream as well as the construction of a new secondary school. The Seminar is conceived as a design workshop and will be attended by instructors supported by architects and external experts. At the end of the Seminar the teaching staff assisted by the special guest, will make a public assessment of the projects developed by the participants.
During the Seminar public conferences by Swiss and international architects have been organised. Famous architects 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, and Gloria Cabral (Gabinete de Arquitectura) have held conferences during the previous editions of the Seminar, along with historian Alessandro Fonti and photographer Gabriele Basilico.
In addition, architects such as Aurelio Galfetti, Martino Pedrozzi, Francesco Fallavollita, Roberto Briccola, Jan Perneger, Olivier Bourez, Paul Humbert, Nicola Navone, Aaron J. Wegmann, Wilfried Schmidt, Rolf Seiler, Andrea Frapolli, and Lucien Colin, as well as geographer Gian Paolo Torricelli and representatives of the architecture firms Bonetti and Bonetti, Baserga Mozzetti and Canevascini Corecco have given lectures aimed at making the participants more familiar with the local and international architectural context.
The public conference by architect José Ignacio Linazasoro will take place on the night of July 11, 2019 and will be held outdoors, in the evocative setting of the former Augustinian convent.
For further informations please click here.
