Workshop in Monte Carasso

International News

Workshop in Monte Carasso

text: Andrei Eugen LAKATOS
photo: Andrei Eugen LAKATOS, Ina GERMAN, Alexandru IONESCU, Dora COLIDIUC

Argument
In July 2017, in Monte Carasso, Switzerland, a workshop was held in order to study the works of the Swiss architect Luigi Snozzi. The workshop was intended for students of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", who at that time had just finished the 3rd year.
Why Luigi Snozzi? Because he is one of Europe's best-known Swiss architects, whose buildings, built over a career spanning almost 60 years, are scattered throughout Italian-speaking Switzerland. Thanks to his architecture and his urban-scale interventions, Snozzi is considered one of the leaders of the new school of architecture in Ticino, alongside Mario Botta, Aurelio Galfetti and Livio Vacchini. Snozzi's thinking is marked by a strong connection between object and context (whether natural or cultural), creating a dynamic architecture with a modern vision and a contemporary architectural vocabulary.
This year, Luigi Snozzi was recognized for all his contribution and activity on the Swiss contemporary architecture scene with the award of the Gran Premio svizzero d'arte (Swiss Grand Prix for the Arts).
Why Monte Carasso? Because in this small town in the canton of Ticino, in a relatively small area, one can find a large part of the architectural programs studied during years 2 and 3, starting with a house in a rural environment, a single-family dwelling in an urban environment, community living, collective housing and also public and cultural facilities. All these housing typologies and architectural programs can be found in Monte Carasso, many of them designed by architect Luigi Snozzi.
Monte Carasso, a commune of about 2,500 inhabitants, is in fact Luigi Snozzi's life's work, a very good model of coherent urban intervention, perhaps too little known and publicized. Although on a small scale, the principles of the urban strategy implemented by Snozzi can also be applied on a larger urban scale, where an intervention adapted to the context, respectful of the past but anchored in the needs of the present, is desired. Monte Carasso is a lesson in successful urban planning over three decades, and an important contribution to European architectural ^culture1.

Luigi Snozzi

Conte Context: Luigi Snozzi and well-tempered modernism
In the second half of the twentieth century, European architecture's perception of previous eras gradually changed in response to the irreversible transformations taking place in many European cities, where old buildings were replaced by new ones. This is why, since the 1980s, awareness of the importance of the temporal and social dimensions of architecture has developed. Time has shown that the pragmatic approach of modernist architecture can lead to simplistic and personality-less spaces that do not offer much choice for human habitation. This led to the emergence of a critical architectural movement as a protest against functionalist architecture, which could not satisfy its ^utopian democratic demands in practice2.
One such movement is critical regionalism, seen as an approach to architecture that strives to counter the lack of identity of place in modernist architecture by using the geographic, historical and cultural context of the area in which a building is to be constructed to inform its design. Critical regionalism (as used by architectural theorists such as Kenneth Frampton and, with him, Alexander Tzonis, known for the development of modern architectural thinking and the introduction of the idea of critical regionalism) necessarily implies a dialectical relationship with the nature and culture of a place, much more direct than the abstract-formal tradition allowed by avant-garde modern ^{architecture3}. It is obvious that the tabula rasa modernist orientation favoured the flattening of the terrain and any unevenness of the landscape (be it natural, urban or cultural) in order to rationalize the building process by creating a site matrix that was as economical as possible. Paraphrasing Frampton, one could say that ideologically or physically leveling a site (by removing topographical irregularities or demolishing existing buildings) and making it flat (literally and figuratively - leveled by its history, memory and specific characteristics) is clearly a technocratic gesture. This engagement in the act of site cultivation denotes the modernists' conceptual aspiration to the absolute condition of^{placelessness4.}
In this context, Luigi Snozzi's architecture formally subscribes to the modernist language, but proposes an approach to place in the spirit of critical regionalism. This tendency is in line with the Ticino School's search for a critical modernity capable of offering a historical continuity, but without appealing to postmodern historicist language. For Snozzi, adapting the project to the context on the basis of reading, understanding and interpreting its evolution, character and specificity was the basic rule Snozzi followed in approaching any project. This aspect, together with the idea of a strong professional responsibility for the continuity of the context, as well as for the protection of both the built and the natural environment, were the guidelines of Snozzi's architecture. For him, the value relationship to the context - understood as a natural, urban or cultural landscape - was very important, always questioning a context of content, of substance and not of form.

Luigi Snozzi, Sketch for the monumental center plan, Monte Carasso, 1977

Place: Monte Carasso, in the beginning, a simple commune...
More than 40 years ago, in 1977, Snozzi began work on a new urban master plan for Monte Carasso, which aimed to expand and develop the locality while preserving the characteristics of the local architecture. At that time, the small town was facing the risk of losing its traditional and territorial identity by becoming part of the urban fabric of the neighboring city of Bellinzona, which was expanding towards Locarno.
Luigi Snozzi proposed an urban planning strategy that promoted the qualitative and intensive use of the territory, preserving the territorial integrity of the locality and emphasizing the qualities and specificity of traditional architecture.
The urban regulation plan, drawn up by Dolf Schnebli, which was in force at the time Snozzi was invited to make a new proposal, laid down over 250 rules. In contrast, the alternative one proposed by Snozzi had only seven rules (plus one unwritten one), which stipulated the following: 1. Each intervention must take into account and confront the structure and specificity of the site; 2. A committee of three local experts is appointed to examine the projects; 3. No architectural language constraints are imposed. Proposed shapes/volumes, coverage types and materials shall not be subject to any constraints; 4. In order to encourage densification of the built form, all existing regulations regarding setbacks from property lines and street setbacks are removed; 5. The occupancy index is increased from 0.3 to 1; 6. The maximum height of buildings is three stories. In order to allow a roof terrace, an additional elevation of 2 meters above the 3 stories is allowed; 7. Fences on the boundary between the public and private domain must have a height of 2.5 meters (this height has been reduced by the municipality to 1.20 m). Added and unwritten rule: a project that does not comply with the predetermined rules may be approved by the Control Commission if the project demonstrates a correct reading of the site and an architectural intervention ^accordingly5.
The first objective of the development plan was the redevelopment of the central area of the locality, which became the site of the headquarters of various civil and religious institutions. The importance of the new center occupied by the Renaissance Monastery "St. Augustus" (at that time in an advanced state of decay) was emphasized by the delimitation of a new ring road. The route of the proposed street made reference to the (disappeared) enclosure wall of the monastery and was intended to draw a clear boundary between the central void dominated by the volumes of the monastery and the church, as opposed to the rest of the residential fabric, whose densification was foreseen by Snozzi's plan.
The restoration, conversion and restructuring of the Augustinian monastery was carried out in several stages (1979, 1987-1993, 2009), with the aim of transforming it into premises mainly for the elementary school, but also public facilities (an exhibition space and a café) and the creation of outdoor public spaces. With this latest intervention on the former monastery, Snozzi offers a veritable lesson in building with a given context, realizing an extension of the school spaces in a completely new volume that doubles the façade of the church, above the archaeological excavations.

To reinforce the form and status of the new center, Snozzi used the first buildings he designed in Monte Carasso, which included the Casa Guidotti and the Raiffeisen Bank headquarters, both built in 1984. These buildings were intended to support the new artery that delimited the center, defining the street frontages, providing perspective points and becoming the pivot of changes of direction.
At the same time, through the many architectural interventions he made over the years, Snozzi had the opportunity to put into practice the new urban regulations, to reformulate, improve or even negate the urban planning prescriptions he had drawn up. In all the projects he executed in Monte Carasso and beyond, Snozzi sought a balance between the rigor of clean geometric forms, typical of the modernist style of which he is a continuator, and the connection to the surrounding landscape, by subtly continuing the character of a place and establishing a direct relationship between building and context.
For the period of the 1980s (and beyond), the Monte Carasso project marked a special moment in the critical debate on the identity of the city and European architecture. In his article 'Necessary Resistance', Cosmin Caciuc states that 'Luigi Snozzi's interventions in the village of Monte Carasso in the Swiss canton of Ticino prove, three decades on, the relevance of an uncompromising, contextual and sustainable critical regionalism'^6.
The workshop: analysis, critique, perspectives
The aim of the workshop was a critical analysis of Luigi Snozzi's urban planning and architectural projects in the town of Monte Carasso. The analysis aimed to identify the features of the local traditional architecture, the way of articulation with the elements of specific modernist architectural language and the way in which their combination led to the integration of the new insertions in the existing context (with a certain specificity and morpho-typological characteristic).
The main objectives of this study were: 1. To understand the context in which the town of Monte Carasso is located: climate, landscape, local materials, local traditions, way of life; 2. Identifying the defining/characteristic elements of local traditional architecture; 3. Analyze modern insertions in this context with a certain specificity and morpho-typological characteristic and how these insertions have succeeded (or not) to integrate in a certain moment in space and time; 4. Critique (positive and/or negative) of the elements of specific modernist architectural language, how they articulate with the local characteristic/traditional elements and how the combination of all these elements led (or not) to the integration of the new architecture in the existing context.

The criteria that each team followed in preparing the required analysis were as follows: the 7 points of the urban development plan drawn up by Luigi Snozzi; how each project takes into account (or not) the 7 points; what is the relationship between the house, the boundary of the enclosure and the street (the articulation between public and private space/domain); what is the relationship between the plot area and the house (the way of location on the plot, this aspect being relevant in the densification strategy of the small town); what are those elements that give specificity to each project in part (relationship with the context, the architectural solution, the materiality, the typology of the plan).
The activities of the workshop included lectures and seminars and included the viewing of all Luigi Snozzi's interventions in the town of Monte Carasso, discussions and analysis in situ, followed by team work sessions. The workshop enjoyed an extraordinary opportunity: a face-to-face meeting with Luigi Snozzi in a round-table discussion following the lecture on the history of the Monte Carasso project by architect Stefano Moor (Professor at the Haute école du paysage, d'ingénierie et d'architecture, Geneva, Switzerland).
The workshop had a clear educational role, aiming both to broaden the professional horizons of the students and to promote a responsible way of doing architecture, with respect for the environment, history and people, materialized and exemplified by Snozzi's work at Monte Carasso. As Luigi Snozzi is not only a good practitioner of architecture, but also a highly respected teacher, the speech he gave almost 30 years ago on the occasion of his investiture as professor at the École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, will serve as a conclusion:
"We find ourselves today in a world whose very survival is seriously threatened; the symptoms of this situation can be found everywhere, and war is still a structural reality in a society that is tending towards democracy.
I believe that the academic community also bears its share of responsibility for what is happening. It therefore has the task of publicly examining human life from the point of view of its morality, and until academics succeed in reaching an intellectual consciousness sufficient to form responsible and active citizens, to complete the process towards a substantive, substantive democracy, this task will remain the main objective of intellectuals and teachers.
In this sense, I believe that the purpose of architectural education is not so much to create professionally well-prepared architects, but to form critical intellectuals with a moral conscience"^7.

www.e-zeppelin.ro/rezistenta-necesara/
2. J. Debicki, J. F. Favre, D. Grunewald, A. F. Pimentel, Art History - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Enciclopedia RAO, Bucharest, 1998, p. 295.
3. Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture. A Critical History, Fourth Edition 2007, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2010, p. 314, 327.
4. Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance", in the book edited by Hal Foster, Postmodern Culture, Pluto Press, London, 1990, p. 26.
5. Extract from Casabella magazine, no. 834, February 2014.
6. Cosmin Caciuc, "Necessary Resistance", Zeppelin, no. 79. www.e-zeppelin.ro/rezistenta-necesara/
7. Luigii Snozzi, "Introduzione", in the book Stefano Moor, Stefano Moor Architetto, Sottoscala Publishing House, Bellinzona, 2010, p. 3.

Bibliography
CACIUC, Cosmin, "Necessary Resistance", in Zeppelin, no. 79
DEBICKI, J., FAVRE, J. F., GRUNEWALD, D., PIMENTEL, A. F., Art History - painting, sculpture, architecture, Enciclopedia RAO, Bucharest, 1998
DISCH, Peter (ed.), Luigi Snozzi. Costruzioni e progetti - Buildings and projects 1958-1993, Editura ADV, Lugano, 1994
FOSTER, Hal (ed.), Postmodern Culture, Pluto Press, London, 1990
FRAMPTON, Kenneth, Modern Architecture. A Critical History, Fourth Edition 2007, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2010
GREGOTTI, Vittorio, Diciassette lettere sull'architettura, Editura Laterza, Rome, 2000
MOOR, Stefano, Stefano Moor Architetto, Sottoscala Publishing House, Bellinzona, 2010
Casabella Magazine, No 834, February 2014

Summary of the Magazine ARCHITECTURE, NR.6/2017-1/2018
POST-RESTORATION