...which seemed to form "around Tami, as well as Galfetti, Snozzi and Vacchini", as Roberto Masiero has written (1999). In the words of Kenneth Frampton (1999), this so-called "school" has demonstrated "great sensibility towards the poetics of structure, right from the neo-Wrightian motorway bridges designed by Rino Tami in the early 1960s". Aurelio Galfetti was born in Biasca on 2 April 1936, the son of Alda and Ugo Galfetti. He attended the Cantonal Grammar School in Lugano, graduating in 1954. He was already keen to follow a career as an architect, and had his first work experience with Tita Carloni. He enrolled at the Federal Polytechnic of Zurich, where he qualified as an architect in 1960. Encouraged by Paul Waltenspühl, he "discovered" Le Corbusier, who would become his main influence, even more than Wright - his earliest love - Louis Kahn, Otto Wagner, Mies van der Rohe and others. In 1959 he designed "what can be considered the true architectural incipit of the new developments in Ticino, the Rotalinti house". (Masiero, 1999). His formation was completed through numerous pilgrimages, first of all on the trail of Le Corbusier, then of all the other masters of the twentieth century, and even of newcomers when their work inspired debate. He never travelled to America, however, for as he told me during an interview he only flew for the first time at the age of fifty. The conversation in question took place at his home in via D'Alberti in Bellinzona. Galfetti recalled the moment of his arrival in the capital (from Lugano, where he had his second studio, after beginning his career in his native Biasca). Here he continued to reflect on themes which were already dear to him, developing a conception of town-planning and architecture centred on a perception of the territory in which an awareness of orographic aspects and the development of infrastructures and of the life of the city itself is combined with an awareness of history, producing a complex morphological conception where architecture, city and territory come to form a unicum, requiring a holistic, innovative vision destined to stir up heated debate: as Aldo Rossi has put it, what we are faced with is Galfetti's "analogous city", a series of interventions that become nerve centres of the expanding tissue of the city, beginning with the project for the Public Baths in 1967. As soon as he graduated he opened his own studio in Lugano, collaborating with Flora Ruchat-Roncati and Ivo Trümpy and then, in 1970, beginning a fruitful four-year partnership with Livio Vacchini - the author, together with Alberto Tibiletti, of the Macconi building in Lugano, a true architectural jewel. There followed a collaboration that might well be called emblematic, in that it brought together Rino Tami, one of the pioneers in Ticino of the use of reinforced concrete, generally in line with a rationalist language, Luigi Snozzi, who from the outset had been engaged on a dual front, practical and theoretical, and the tireless young Mario Botta, who had already achieved international fame and was destined to play a leading role in Switzerland. It was this team, together with Vacchini, Dolf Schnebli, the above-mentioned Ruchat-Roncati and Trümpy, Gianola, Campi and Pessina, as well as Elio Ostinelli, Fabio Muttoni and others, who gave rise to the legendary "Ticino school". Galfetti was a guest tutor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in 1984, and at the Ecole d'Architecture of Paris - Belleville UP8 in 1987. In 1996, together with Mario Botta and with the support of the Rt. Hon. Buffi and others, he founded the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, University of Italian Switzerland, becoming its first director.   Galfetti has already, on several occasions, described his own house, which occupies the upper part of one of two twin blocks that are differentiated by the colours used for the exteriors, white and black (which is also what the two blocks are called). "The attic of the Casa Nera is my house," declared Galfetti in 1999 (Masiero). "A summer living-room, a winter living-room, like the Villas of long ago. A covered court, on the third floor, which must be crossed to get from the bedroom to the kitchen. The space is for passage, and is highly transparent. The curtains that close off the terrace rustle in the wind," like the sails of a boat that "comes down to the valley, from the mountains to the lake," as the house is oriented along the longitudinal axis of the valley. During our conversation, he explained the development of the project. Initially the building was to be divided into two similar entities linked by an analogous organisation of space, with an open void in the middle: above it the house, below the studio; this idea was soon abandoned in favour of a different division that envisaged a series of small apartments for rent on the lower floors. So the building is divided vertically into two parts: a more rarefied level and a densified level, making the overall project both complex and problematic. Discussing every modification with his wife Lola, "a demanding though sensitive client", said Galfetti with an engaging smile, there emerged a "living structure that first of all I had to like, and then had to be pleasant to live in", a house to live in designed around autobiographical and affective elements, based on extreme symmetry, sobriety and comfort. During the elaboration of the project, Galfetti began a sort of introspective reflection that led him to question his own language, carrying out a deep examination of all its elements and eventually arriving at a sort of logical model reminiscent of Carnap. What was called into question here was the very idea of designing projects. The project could be considered as a very lucid, though also tormented self-criticism, a maturing and a fruitful reflection on his own creative path, which implies a final, though resolutive falsification in the manner of Popper. The visual impact from the top of the block, as we look out from the terrace overlooking the side of the valley where Castelgrande lies, is described by Galfetti in the following Leonardesque terms: "There is a close link between Castelgrande and Casa Nera and the three levels, the three walls. In the foreground is my wall, in reinforced concrete: the present time; then, following on without interruption, come the walls and the towers of Castelgrande, the time of history; beyond them, finally, is the barrier of mountains, which corresponds to ancient geological time. History and the contemporary era, nature and the work of man meet and enter into dialogue in this tight tectonic structuring." Galfetti continued: "I always like to have two opposite poles: opening-closure, mountain-lake, forest-plane, which also counter and enter into dialogue with the two architectures to which I always refer, external and internal, or with other wide-reaching poles such as the always enlivening conflict between history and the contemporary era." The peculiarity of the project lies in the pulverisation of the materiality always present in architecture, brought about also by the symmetry and geometry of the colours, extremely evident in the chromatic diversification between exterior and interior: black concrete outside right up to the corners, white inside. An abstraction which, in my opinion, is added to a form of symbolisation evoked for example by the roof-terrace, a symbolic opening towards the sky. Aurelio Galfetti himself confirmed this, murmuring almost to himself: "The universe is no longer unknown and you no longer have to escape from its sight or protect yourself. You must be free to see your sky." The challenge of this liberating architecture, on which many critics and philosophers have written, from Pagano to Ragghianti, and on which many others will write, from Reichlin to who knows who, is by no means at an end, and contemporary man can continue to fight for his own freedom, which according to Immanuel Kant is corroborated by true knowledge: is this ultimately the challenge that Galfetti himself has taken up? Is he, in this sense, therefore a neo-Kantian and a neo-illuminist? If this is plausible, at least partly, then the symbolic substance of all Galfetti's work, and in particular of his own house, reveals the very meaning of his architecture. It also reveals the growing focus on the territory that makes Galfetti one of the pioneers of a new commitment, more complex than in the past: the territorialist architect who through his own personal practice investigates and dissects reality without submitting to the ontologism of the past, or to anything else, and verifies its vitality, the synonym of liveability for man himself. What exactly does this mean? To find our way to an answer, and to highlight what is at stake, that is the value of Aurelio Galfetti's proposal, we might turn to the correspondence between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, their statement that the universe, perhaps also the universo et mondo of Vico, that is the modern universe, is supported by the mind of men. It is not possible here to carry out an exhaustive comparison with the other architects who contributed to the neo-rationalist and later the anti-postmodern climate that has characterised the Ticino Canton. I will restrict myself to a few words of comment. Although Snozzi achieves a similar structural shell, at least apparently, there is clearly no relation with Galfetti in his elaboration of interior volumes or in the spatial and argonomic organisation of the individual units, given that his work is marked by a complexity and sense of torment that are not present in Galfetti, who is more classical in every sense. He creates rationalised spaces on an "open" H-shaped plan that negates the complications of Snozzi, who works around non-repetition, or rather on varying iteration. As for Vacchini, at first glance he might seem to be close to Galfetti in that they share a discrete and congruent use of materials, a linear development of the project, based on clear geometric effects, and a special sensibility with regard to the interference of technology. On closer examination, however, the similarity soon evaporates, given that their spatial and formal ideas are actually contrasting. What of Mario Botta? Exploring the house we discover that Galfetti does not dig down into the belly of the block, he does not create within it a den, a cave in which to take shelter and from which to look out - by means of deliberately created perspectives, telescopic views - on the outside world, as happens in many of Botta's works, but through calculated cuts, conceived according to a personal idea, creates a continuum, albeit based on a rhythm between interior and exterior. It is therefore a method that in its own way reproposes the esprit de geometrie and all the finesse of Descartes, re-elaborating the encounter between exterior and interior, both called on to share the space of the architecture. In his own house, and more generally in the two twin, complementary blocks, Galfetti creates a unicum that is taken up and developed in the other houses built in the same area - this time oriented orthogonally with respect to the first pair, in terms of the town-planning aspects of the project. Or rather the territorialistic aspects, constantly measuring it against the territory seen both as an artistic entity and as a living being (Ragghianti, 1984). This, perhaps, is the highest challenge announced here, an anticipation of the more recent and controversial developments in architecture, and also the true difficulty on which Le retour d'Ulysse that he embodies in more than one sense is founded, as Jacques Gubler puts it (1994). A challenge which seems to represent a problem in terms of critical comprehension.  < BACK Rolando Bellini