In the challenging climate of the Swiss canton Ticino some of the country’s most exciting has been brought to life: Flora Ruchat-Roncati’s monumental ventilation shafts of the A12 motorway tunnel, Luigi Snozzi’s extensive work in Bellinzona and of course Mario Botta’s Church of San Giovanni Battista are just three examples of the outstanding architecture in Ticino. At the same time the canton’s geographical location makes it a real-life yardstick for the impacts of climate change which here appear earlier and with greater force than in other parts of Switzerland.
Against this background and in view of the demographic and economic changes Ticino’s faces, a three-semester student project at ETH Zurich took on the challenge of developing architectural responses to the aforementioned changes. These call for greater resilience, adaptability and resource conservation in architecture, demands that the students have also reflected in different temporal horizons. These are grouped along the keywords temporal, circular and permanent and range from ephemeral structures to modular, demountable and reusable constructions to permanent structures engaging with the geological and historical circumstances of Ticino.
Since the book comprehensively documents each of the students’ projects in photographs, models, drawings, sections and plans it provides deep insights into the ideas development by the students and how they take into account particular aspects of Ticino’s overall environment. In addition, brief texts elucidate the narratives behind each project and underscore the former’s key relevance to imparting new strategies in architecture. An integral aspect of the latter is change as a pivotal component of resilience in architecture, a rationale that indeed should inform contemporary architecture on a global scale. Accordingly, „Anatomy of Change“ is a very timely read that shows how future architects embrace and creatively deal with the challenges posed by rapidly changing environmental forces.
