Selection of articles in english

The Coldrerio intergenerational neighborhood transforms Parco San Rocco into an urban common. With a care home, community center, and residences, the central square and shared spaces foster proximity, inclusion, and reciprocity across generations.

Einfaches Wohnen redefines refugee housing as dignified living. Wooden modules, shared and flexible spaces, a central courtyard and external walkways turn the temporary into a home, affirming care, justice and integration as architectural principles.

The House for Almost Everything blends private dwelling and communal life. Its adaptable hall, pivoting roof, and flexible spaces transform the home into a responsive hub, hosting workshops, meals, and events, embodying an architecture of care, reciprocity, and civic belonging.

The Caslano retirement home redefines care architecture, blending domestic scale with civic presence. Spatial continuity, flexible layouts, and visual connections to gardens create a home-like environment where autonomy, social interaction, and dignity coexist seamlessly.

Situated between Novazzano and Balerna, the Federal Asylum Centre by Lopes Brenna acts as a territorial mediator: a linear structure balancing road and railway, order and waiting, institutional rigour and human dignity, transforming a threshold into a place of encounter.

In Cery-Prilly, the new psychiatric hospital redefines care: open to light, gardens, and community, it transcends the institutional model to create a healing environment where patients are welcomed as inhabitants, with dignity and a sense of belonging.

Stepping up means imagining tomorrow with care: a practice rooted in memory yet open to change, weaving voices, media and histories into a living archive that turns fragility into strength and builds a culture of responsibility.

Welcoming refugees means designing dignity and belonging: open spaces, porous thresholds, and participatory infrastructures turn temporary shelter into community, promoting justice, relationships, and care as core architectural and urban principles.

The domestic dimension of care transforms living into an active practice: cohabitation, shared spaces and interdependence support fragility and autonomy, restoring dignity and relationships to residents, from the younger generations to the elderly, within inclusive and participatory cities.

At the Ämtli für Städtebau in Zurich, ZAS* presented its vision for the future of the former Kinderspital. The evening, framed by the film Abriss and an open discussion, questioned demolition as default and explored what it means to reuse, resist, and rethink today’s necessary Age of Disobedience.

This interview with Sandy Attia and Matteo Scagnol offers a nuanced reflection on school architecture as a civic and cultural act. Rooted in context, pedagogy, and typology, their approach resists standardization and reclaims architecture’s power to shape learning, memory, and collective identity.

School architecture is not just about buildings, but about shaping spaces that nurture, include, and build community. This issue explores the school as a civic, ethical, and social project—balancing freedom and belonging, responsibility and shared imagination.

The new Saleggi kindergarten pavilion blends into the existing park, with a modular layout centred around a central atrium. Flexible spaces, carefully calibrated skylights and essential materials create a bright and functional environment, complemented by Piazza del Noce and the playground.

The new school complex in Tesserete blends into the urban context with a linear volume overlooking a natural school park. The exposed concrete structure interacts with the landscape, enhancing light, flexibility and the relationship between the building and open space.

The extension of the Cadro school continues the existing composition with a new volume for collective functions and an independent nursery school. Open spaces and courtyards connect architecture, landscape and educational programme in a continuous and coherent dialogue.

The renovation of the school in Vezia brings the historic building up to modern standards while preserving its material and formal identity. New volumes and flexible spaces enhance the relationship with the square, integrating energy efficiency and educational functions into a coherent and sustainable project.

The new Molino Nuovo kindergarten transforms a fragmented block into a well-organised urban centre, with flexible teaching spaces, an active green roof and a large public playground that strengthens the link between the school, the neighbourhood and the city.

The extension of the school campus incorporates a reinforced concrete base that enhances the existing structure. Modular spaces, metal structures and rhythmic façades ensure functionality and order, giving the complex a unified and contemporary image, rooted in the landscape.

A new pavilion expands the Manno nursery school, echoing its original layout and blending into the landscape with a sober and coherent design. Light, structure and space interact in a single classroom opening onto the garden.

Perched above the Gulf of Naples, Dolf Schnebli’s Swiss School (1964–67) is an architectural landscape: a terraced complex where Mediterranean light, Eastern memories, and pedagogical vision converge. A city within the city, where the school becomes topography and teaching becomes space.

The new kindergarten in Lamone fits neatly into a complex urban context, redefining spaces and relationships with sober, permeable architecture. A new boundary organises the balance between existing margins, open spaces and collective functions.

The San Vittore school complex is laid out like a small horizontal citadel, integrated into the open landscape. Flexible spaces and protected connections encourage educational interaction, while essential materials and natural light define a sober and rooted architecture.

In A Moratorium on New Construction (Sternberg Press, 2025), Charlotte Malterre-Barthes urges architects to face their role in ecological and social crises. Through nine action-driven chapters, the book calls for redefining value, resisting extractivism, and adopting care as a radical design strategy—especially in cities like Zurich, where building no longer ensures inclusion.

The restoration, carried out by Durisch Nolli Giraudi Radczuweit, does not alter the substance of Alberto Finzi's building but reinterprets it to give new life to the school structure.

What defines a school’s character today? This essay explores the evolving tradition of school architecture in Ticino and South Tyrol, tracing its roots, tensions, and typological continuities through exemplary projects and interviews with key architects.

The Rialto indoor swimming pool, built in Basel in 1934, has been extensively renovated. Reuter Architekten brought this avant-garde and architecturally striking building into the present day with a series of skillful interventions.