Dear friends, for the next four weeks OfHouses invites you to enjoy the tenth — and final — installment of our 7 Houses from the '70s series, this time dedicated to the architecture of Ticino.
This issue owes its existence to an exhibition about another exhibition. Irina Davidovici's and Frida Grahn's Tendenzen at 50: Portrait of an Exhibition (gta exhibitions, ETH Zurich, 2026) revisited the legendary Tendenzen – Neuere Architektur im Tessin (Globus Provisorium, ETH Zurich, 1975), examining it both as a historical event and as a vehicle for the dissemination of architectural ideas. Alongside original display panels, drawings and archival material, the exhibition featured Studio Christ & Gantenbein's delightfully irreverent 1:4 reconstruction of the 1975 exhibition, together with Stefano Graziani's newly commissioned photographs of several of the buildings originally on display. More than a fiftieth anniversary, it was a reminder that exhibitions do not simply document architecture, but they shape the way architectural history is written.
When Tendenzen opened in November 1975, it set out to do much more than present recent architecture from Switzerland's Italian-speaking canton. Even its title made that clear: the provisional Die Tessiner gave way to Tendenzen – Neuere Architektur im Tessin, shifting the emphasis from a group of architects to a plurality of positions. The plural mattered. Ticino emerged not as a stylistic school but as a place where different — and often conflicting — architectural influences coexisted: Palladio next to Le Corbusier, Rossi beside Kahn, Terragni in dialogue with vernacular construction. The exhibition and its now-iconic catalogue propelled an extraordinary generation of architects onto the international stage — among them Mario Botta, Aurelio Galfetti, Luigi Snozzi and Livio Vacchini, alongside the older Peppo Brivio and Dolf Schnebli — and quickly became one of the defining architectural events of its time. After travelling to Lausanne, Bellinzona and Basel, it continued for almost a decade touring Munich, Karlsruhe, Innsbruck, Vienna, Salzburg and Barcelona, while a succession of international publications established Ticinese architecture as a global point of reference. What united the architects of Tendenzen was never a common style, but a shared condition: working from a cultural periphery while remaining deeply connected to the architectural debates unfolding in Zurich, Milan and Venice, and cultivating an unusually collaborative way of practicing architecture.
Our two Ticino issues follow that same spirit (yes — our next issue is dedicated to Ticinese houses not from the '70s!). Rather than returning only to the celebrated icons, we revisit houses that have quietly slipped from view: forgotten, altered, or simply overshadowed by more famous works. Stay tuned; it’s going to be awesome!
(Cover: Mario Campi, Franco Pessina, Niki Piazzoli /// Polloni House /// Origlio, Ticino, Switzerland /// 1979-81. Photo: E. Hueber.)
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