A free event open to everyone, spread across Mendrisio, Bellinzona and Lugano.
The program will animate the "Città Ticino", in line with the philosophy of the biennale svizzera del territorio.
Thursday 1 October — Mendrisio
6.30pm — Academy of Architecture, USI – Agorà Lio Galfetti
The theme of care, the common thread running through this sixth edition, opens up a reflection on the transformations of dwelling: innovative practices and processes, typological research, strategies in response to climate change, housing policies, and the relationship between private and shared dimensions. A discussion that brings together different perspectives, design scales and geographical contexts around a shared question: the role of architecture as an act of care towards the city and the territory.
Welcome
Riccardo Blumer, director Academy of Architecture, USI
Ludovica Molo, director Istituto Internazionale di Architettura
HOUSING WITH CARE
Encounter - language: Italian, English
with
Sophie Delhay, architect, Sophie Delhay Architectes (Paris), associate professor and head of the Section of Architecture at EPFL
Giacomo Guidotti, architect, guidotti architetti (Monte Carasso), professor at the HES-Haute École Spécialisée in Fribourg and at the Accademia di architettura, USI
Marta Peris and José Toral, architects, Studio PERIS+TORAL ARQUITECTES (Barcelona), professors at ETSAB and visiting professors at EPFL, with Josep Maria Borrell Bru, architect and director of IMPSOL, Metropolitan Institute of Land Development and Property Management, Barcelona
Followed by a round table with
Daniela Sanjinés Encinales, architect, urban researcher and doctoral candidate at ETH Zurich, and Fernando Túlio Franco, urban planner and public policy manager, lecturer at ETH Zurich, co-founder of ZeroCem Institute
Chaired by Tiziano Schürch, architect and urban planner, Studio Tiziano Schürch (Lugano), co-president of FAS Ticino
Friday 2 October — Bellinzona
9.30 am — Departure fromGiubiasco Station
12.30 pm — Arrival at Bagno Pubblico di Bellinzona
Urban walk in collaboration with the Sezione dello sviluppo territoriale of the Dipartimento del territorio, the City of Bellinzona and Federico De Molfetta, studio De Molfetta Strode (Lugano).
A walk as collective exploration: from Giubiasco, seven stops cross a city in transformation, from industrial fringes to public spaces, from renaturation areas to new residential and school hubs. Each stop is an occasion for listening and exchange, animated by contributions from speakers invited to share reflections and experiences, along a single guiding thread: Handle with Care, an invitation to care for the territory with attention, responsibility and imagination.
Speakers: Sophie Agata Ambroise, landscape architect, Officina del Paesaggio (Lugano); Nina Bassoli, architect and curator, editorial director of Lotus International (Milan); Cristina Bocchi, architect and planner, president of the Ticino section of the Swiss Federation of Urban Planners (FSU-TI); Tiziano Bonoli, Mobility Section, Cantone Ticino; Anna Maspoli and Martino Avilés, members of Cooperativa di abitazione Radice; Federico de Molfetta, landscape architect, De Molfetta Strode (Lugano); Laurent Filippini, Ufficio dei corsi d'acqua, Dipartimento del territorio; Federica Giudici, Head of the Social Affairs Sector, City of Bellinzona; Mattia Lepori, Head of the Territory and Mobility Department, City of Bellinzona; Ludovica Molo, director Istituto Internazionale di Architettura; Stefano Moor, architect an professor at Seminario Internazionale di Progettazione di Monte Carasso; Fabiola Nonella Donadini, former Head of the Planning, Land Registry and Mobility Sector of the City of Bellinzona and board member of EspaceSuisse Ticino; Sandro Peduzzi, Ufficio dei corsi d'acqua, Dipartimento del territorio, Angelo Schillizzi, Head of the Planning, Land Registry and Mobility Sector, City of Bellinzona; Alex Sollero, Sezione dello sviluppo territoriale, Dipartimento del territorio; Maarit Ströbele, urban planner and political scientist, editor at Hochparterre, president of Associazione Metropoli Svizzera;
Followed by community lunch curated by Associazione Femm Tütt cuochi volanti
DISCOVER THE FULL ROUTE WITH ALL THE STOPS
Friday 2 October — Bellinzona
2:00 pm — Istituto di Ricerca in Biomedicina (IRB)
Free admission with advance registration at biennalesvizzeradelterritorio@i2a.ch
The reflection continues through two round tables, which shift the focus from landscape to territory. The first addresses climate transformations and responsibility towards ecosystems, exploring the relationship between safety, biodiversity, conservation and design, infrastructure and landscape. The second round table questions the vocation of a peculiar territory such as Ticino — a land of passage between northern and southern Europe, but also a territory of slower rhythms, between the Swiss plateau and the Lombard metropolis — picking up a theme already raised in the previous edition of the biennale. The discussion brings the history of the Canton and the legacy of the Ticino school into dialogue with a reading of the existing built environment and its potential, in order to define its specificity and identify the tools to act on the territory today.
Welcome and institutional greetings
Mattia Lepori, Head of the Territory and Mobility Department, City of Bellinzona
Davide Robbiani, professor and Director Istituto di Ricerca in Biomedicina
Carola Barchi, architetta, Galfetti Associati (Massagno)
Ludovica Molo, director Istituto Internazionale di Architettura
TERRITORY AND AGENCY
Conversation - language: English
Chaired by Rina Rolli, architect and founder of OFREIA (Zurich/Ticino)
with Martin Hubermann, architect, founder of Estudio Normal and Monoambiente (Buenos Aires), and Oliver Burch, architect, 8000.agency (Zurich) and member of ZAS* – Zürcher Arbeitsgruppe für Städtebau, both members of the Pro Helvetia delegation.
LA CURA DEL PAESAGGIO
Roundtable
Chaired by Ariane Widmer, architect and urban planner (Lausanne)
with
Raimund Rodewald, biologist and landscape expert, former director of the Swiss Foundation for Landscape Protection (SL-FP)
Martina Voser, professor at ETH Zurich and partner at mavo Landschaften (Zurich)
Roberto Mossi, geographer, Ufficio della natura e del paesaggio, Dipartimento del territorio
Philipp Urech, landscape architect (Zurich)
4:15 pm — Institutional greeting
Raffaele De Rosa, director of Dipartimento del Territorio del Canton Ticino
LA CURA DEL TERRITORIO
Roundtable - language: Italian
Chaired by Ludovica Molo, director Istituto Internazionale di Architettura
with
Alexander Grass, journalist and author of the book Grenzland Tessin
Nicola Navone, director of the Archivio del Moderno-USI and professor at the Academy of Architecture-USI
Mosè Cometta, geographer and philosopher (Fribourg)
Paola Viganò, architect and urban planner, StudioPaolaViganò (Milan/Brussels)
Friday 2 October — Lugano
7:00 pm — Parco di Villa Saroli
Opening of the Actions
The 10 installations selected through the Call for Action will be unveiled and will be on view to the public through November 28.
Institutional greetings
Raoul Ghisletta, Head of Dicastero Immobili, City of Lugano
Luigi Di Corato, Director of the Culture Division, City of Lugano
Presentazione delle Action
Marc Frochaux, chair of the Call for Action selection committee
with the team of Istituto Internazionale di Architettura
Aperitivo — Action Edible Curtains by Johanna Roth, Alanis Diem, and Anne-Sophie Bruderer (Zurich)
Pop-up bar curated by La Soleggiata and Food trucks by Capichurri, La Bottega di Gandria and Triticum Bakery
DJ set — DJ Costa in collaboration with Radio Gwen
Saturday 3 October — Lugano
9:30 am — Consulate General of Italy
Welcome and institutional greetings
Uberto Vanni d’Archirafi, Consul General of Italy
Filippo Lombardi, head of the Department of Urban Development, City of Lugano
Ludovica Molo, director Istituto Internazionale di Architettura
CARE FROM THE FRONT
10:00 am - Opening - language: english
Architecture as a practice of care, between activism and direct engagement in the most marginal contexts. The discussion spans inclusion and diversity as design tools, the mending of territorial fabric in remote areas and abandoned regions, and co-construction with indigenous communities as a model of participation.
Presentations by
Anna Puigjaner, architect, MAIO (Barcelona), professor of Architecture and Care at ETH Zurich
with
Xu Tiantian, architect, DnA Design and Architecture (Beijing)
Pascual Gangotena, architect, Al-Borde (Quito)
A seguire, dialogo con i vincitori e le vincitrici della Call for Action
HERITAGE AND LEGACY
12:00 am - Conversation - language: english
Chaired by Giulia Ricci, deputy editor of About:
with
Yuanye Deng, editorial director of Wallpaper* China, Ph.D. candidate in architecture at Tongji University and MIT (Shanghai), Ahmed Mansourarchitect, co-founder, and professor at the Built-Environment Institute for Applied Studies (Cairo) and Thilina Perera, multidisciplinary designer and director of curatorial affairs at the Geoffrey Bawa Trust (Colombo), members of the Pro Helvetia delegation.
12:30 pm - Parco di Villa Saroli
Community lunch — Action (IN)VISIBLE GESTURES by how:about x fuoriluga (Zurigo/Lugano)
ore 14.00 — Consolato Generale d'Italia — Start of the afternoon session
PLANETARY METABOLISM
Encounter - language: english
A critical re-appropriation of metabolic thinking in the face of the climate crisis, to rethink the material processes of the built environment. Architecture as a continuous process in which matter, energy and cultural meaning circulate from the scale of construction to the planetary scale. Sustainability thus becomes a new historical consciousness, rather than a mere technical objective.
Chaired by Heike Biechteler, architect and curator, lecturer at HSLU, chair of the Call for Pecha Kucha selection committee
with
Sascha Roesler, architect and theorist, professor at the Academy of Architecture, USI Mendrisio
John Palmesino, architect and urban planner, Territorial Agency (London)
Followed by a panel discussion and the announcement of the winners of the Call for Pecha Kucha
RADICAL CONTINUITIES
4:00 pm - Encounter - language: english
Reuse and the transformation of the built environment, between restoration as a practice capable of generating new architectural languages and a research approach that spans different scales — from the city to the constructive detail — moving between invention and the transformation of matter.
Chaired by Marc Frochaux, storico dell'arte e architetto, caporedattore di espazium revue
with
Catherine Gay Mentzel, architect, GayMenzel (Monthey)
Adrien Meuwly, architect, Comte/Meuwly (Zurich/Geneva), professor at ETH Zurich
Followed by a roundtable discussion with
Nzinga Biegueng Mboup, architect and researcher, Worofila (Dakar) and Fan Jiujiang, architect, Continuation Studio (Hangzhou), both members of the Pro Helvetia delegation.
COUNTER-ARCHIVES *
6:00 pm - Conversazione - language: english
Since 2011, Makaremi has been investigating the 1979 Iranian revolution and various forms of resistance and uprisings around the world - particularly those led by women - exploring how marginal stories and narratives can be preserved against official accounts. The dialogue addresses the care of personal memories and the concept of counter-archives as a practice of resistance, capable of safeguarding the collective identity of a people in the face of state violence.
between
Chowra Makaremi, author and anthropologist at the CNRS in Paris
and Cyril Veillon, director of Archizoom and ACM, EPFL Lausanne
* Related event – Friday 2 October, 6:00 pm, Villa Saroli
Documentary film screening
Hitch, une histoire iranienne by Chowra Makaremi
In original French and Persian, 72'
Saturday 3 October — Lugano
7:30 pm — Parco di Villa Saroli
Closing remarks and thanks.
Evening walk — Action May the earth be light upon you di zattere (Milano).
Pop-up bar curated by La Soleggiata e Food trucks by Capichurri, La Bottega di Gandria and Triticum Bakery.
Closing DJ Set — curated by Spazio Fervida and how:about x fuoriluga
Side acts
From 1 October to 28 November 2026
Piazza Besso, Lugano
Action Sit For A While by SKNYPL (Azamat Nyrov and Aleksandr Plotkin)
Friday 2 October
3:00 – 6:00 pm, Villa Saroli
Workshop – Action Collective portrait of (in)visible gestures Poster Making by how:about x fuoriluga
6:00 pm, Villa Saroli
Documentary film screening
Hitch, une histoire iranienne by Chowra Makaremi
A film that explores the care of memory as an act of resistance: the search for truth and justice through the places, objects and gestures that preserve its traces.
Saturday 3 October
12:30 pm, Parco di Villa Saroli
Community lunch - Action (in)visible gestures by how:about x fuoriluga
1:00 pm, Parco di Villa Saroli
Reading by Paola Viganò
Introduced by Sophie Marie Piccoli
12:30 – 6:00 pm, Villa Saroli
Live radio with Radio Gwen
2:00 – 4:00 pm, Villa Saroli
Kid's workshop, 6 –11 years old
Pop up – Case di carta curated by Elanor Burgyan
Building a house also means learning to care for it: inside, a thousand stories and small universes are waiting to be imagined together.
Info & registration: kids@i2a.ch
3:00 – 5:00 pm, Lugano
Performing Maintenance: 10 words, 10 gestures, 10 works. Taking care of public art in the city of Lugano.
The action transforms the centre of Lugano into an open-air laboratory, proposing 10 "encounters" with the care of public art. Initiative organised by SUPSI-DACD, Institute of Materials and Constructions and Istituto Design, within NRP 81 Baukultur, in collaboration with the City of Lugano's Culture Division.
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