Territory as Palimpsest: The legacy of André Corboz
Teatro dell'architettura
Start date: 14 October 2022
End date: 15 January 2023
The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition "Territory as Palimpsest: The legacy of André Corboz", promoted by the Academy of Architecture - USI, with the Institute for the History and Theory of Art and Architecture – ISA and the support of the Academy of Architecture Library and of the Borromini Chair, from October 14, 2022 to January 15, 2023.
The exhibition, curated by André Bideau and Sonja Hildebrand, aims to examine the complex corpus of works by André Corboz, an art and city historian from Geneva, whose library and documents collection are preserved in the USI Academy of Architecture Library in Mendrisio (ref. Fondo A.Corboz) and whose interests ranged from Palladio to the Territorial Grid of the United States, from planning during the French Enlightenment to postmodern Switzerland.
To this day, Corboz's metaphor of the “territory as palimpsest” remains pertinent. His writing was increasingly aware and critical of the constructed nature of the territory from the 1980s on. To Corboz both landscape and the urban condition were terms needing to be constantly questioned and problematised. In doing so, he addressed issues that have remained crucial, in particular in the polycentric, urbanised Swiss landscape that has been undergoing a dramatic spatial evolution.
