SWISS ARCHITECTURAL AWARD 2022 Award ceremony and opening of the exhibition

Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling
Photo Wang Ziling

Teatro dell'architettura

Date: 4 May 2023 / 19:00 - 21:00

Thursday 4 May 2023
7 p.m.
Auditorium Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio

Free admission subject to availibility

The Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana, is pleased to announce that on May 4, 2023 the renowned Swiss Architectural Award 2020 – promoted by the Fondazione Teatro dell’architettura – will be conferred to the winner Xu Tiantian, founder of DnA Design and Architecture (China).
On the same eve the Swiss Architectural Award 2022 exhibition - promoted by the Academy of Architecture, Università della Svizzera italiana - will open his doors to the public, from May 5 to October 22, 2023 at the Auditorium of Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio.

Attendees: Mario Botta, president of the Fondazione Teatro dell’architettura and jury president at Swiss Architectural Award; Walter Angonese, Dean of the Academy of Architecture – USI, member of the jury; Dieter Dietz, Dean of the Section d’Architecture, EPFL-ENAC and member of the jury; Nicola Navone, Award secretary; Marco Della Torre, Dean’s office coordinator and head of exhibitions of the Academy of Architecture – USI.

As part of the event, Xu Tiantian, the winner of the Swiss Architectural Award 2022, will hold a public lecture on her work and on the context in which she operates. In this way she will start her collaboration with the Università della Svizzera italiana as Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio.

The jury of the eighth edition of the Swiss Architectural Award - chaired by Mario Botta and composed of Walter Angonese (Director of the Accademia di architettura, USI), Stéphanie Bru (winner, with the Paris-based studio Bruther, of the seventh SAA edition), Dieter Dietz (Director of the Section d’Architecture, EPFL-ENAC) and Tom Emerson (Dean of the Departement Architektur, ETHZ) - unanimously conferred the Swiss Architectural Award 2022 to Xu Tiantian for the reuse of the Shimen Bridge over the Songyin River (2016-2017), the tofu factory in Caizhai Village (2017-2018), and the reuse of the Jinyun quarries (2021-2022).

The works presented by Xu Tiantian, were described by the architect as "acupuncture" interventions that aim to revitalize historic settlements or pieces of landscape. These projects, located in both Songyang and Jinyun counties (a rural area in Zhejang province (China) characterised by a landscape whose traditional structure has been preserved on the one hand, and on the other threatened by the depopulation process induced by the migration of younger people to the region’s urban centres), convinced the jury for the successful combination between the civic instances animating them (as they aim to serve local communities) and the quality of the proposed architecture, characterised by a marked attention to the context, by a precise and poetic attitude at the same time, and by the blending of different scales and themes, between architecture and infrastructure, between permanent and ephemeral, between reuse and ex-novo intervention.

Award Ceremony and Public Lecture