The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio (TAM) of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) presents, from 8 May to 20 December 2026, three new exhibitions promoted by the Academy of Architecture: “Architectural Construction in Ticino, 1939–1996. Materiality and Tectonics”, “Pino Musi. Continuum” and the installation “Sleipnir and the Labyrinth of Doors” by students enrolled in the Design studio Forte at the Academy of Architecture.

The public opening will take place on Thursday, 7 May at 6.30 p.m.

On the ground floor of TAM, the exhibition “Architectural Construction in Ticino, 1939–1996. Materiality and Tectonics”, curated by Franz Graf with Britta Buzzi, Carlo Dusi, Alessandro Bonizzoni and Sebastiano Verga, offers a reinterpretation of over fifty years of Ticino architecture through one hundred buildings selected for their significance from a constructional point of view. Documented through drawings, models, images and archival documents, the buildings are examined in terms of their physicality, in which materials, techniques and structural systems become tools for understanding the tectonics and poetics of the architectural works.

The exhibition project stems from two decades of research conducted by the Construction and Technology Area of USI Academy of Architecture. Analyzing and redrawing the buildings, the students gradually created an open catalogue of “modern” buildings of Ticino, highlighting their structural value and educational potential.

The exhibition highlights in particular twelve buildings, each accompanied by a publication featuring critical texts, documentary material and dedicated scholarly contributions. The exhibition also includes a selection of models, reports from Radiotelevisione della Svizzera Italiana (RSI) and a photographic series by Roberto Conte in 2025.

On the second floor, the exhibition “Pino Musi. Continuum”, curated by Michael Jakob, presents a selection of black-and-white photographs that investigate form, materiality, and the perception of space. Conceived as a site-specific project, the exhibition enters into dialogue with the circular architecture of the gallery and unfolds across six thematic sections. Each section features extended photographic scrolls, sequences of images that coalesce into a single panoramic narrative. Visitors are invited to engage with the central concerns of Musi’s practice, where photography and spatial reflection converge, transforming the act of seeing into a mode of knowledge. The themes explored include the relationship between ruin and the origins of architecture, the meaning of dwelling, the transformations and transitions of built space, and the tensions between surface, form, and incompleteness.

The exhibition is further extended by three large-format works dedicated to the recent restoration of Notre-Dame in Paris, alongside a selection of artist’s books that attest to Musi’s sustained engagement with bookmaking as an autonomous and interdisciplinary mode of expression.

In the atrium of TAM, the installation “Sleipnir and the Labyrinth of Doors”, curated by Duilio Forte, features the sculpture Sleipnir, set within a labyrinth of doors designed and built by students from the Academy of Architecture, transforming the space into a symbolic and architectural path that explores the relationship between humankind, space and design process.

For further information: www.tam.usi.ch/en