ARRHOV FRICK: URSPRUNG Origine/Origin

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents ARRHOV FRICK. URSPRUNG Origine/Origin, curated by the Swedish architecture firm Arrhov Frick and with photography works by Mikael Olsson, open to the public until March 2, 2025.

The Mendrisio Academy of Architecture promotes an exhibition in the making to bring the public closer to new ways of thinking / imagining possible projects for modifying our living space, both collective and private, according to principles dictated by new needs and new constraints bound up with the living and the environment.

In the course of autumn 2024, the Teatro dell’architettura was the common ground of four simultaneous processes: a Design Studio, the Public Lecture series of the fall semester 2024, a serie of installations and fragments from Arrhov Frick firm’s design research and method. These parallel processes are together making the exhibition whose title Ursprung will provide the shared frame of reference, according to Arrhov Frick: “Ursprung can be the source of a river, an architecture, a thought, oxygen, a fire, the sun or the moment before. Both in Swedish and German, the word tells about origin, whether it would be memories, an existing situation, a climatic condition or a circular system.”

The exhibition
The exhibition paths is marked by twelve thematic sections, all of which refer to the design research and method of the Swedish architecture firm Arrhov Frick. They are accompanied by numerous drawings by the architects and large images by Swedish artist and photographer Mikael Olsson, who has developed a personal approach in his way of interpreting architecture, namely a radical re-vision and re-presentation through the photographic medium.

From September to December 2024, the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio was inhabited and experienced by the students of the Academy of Architecture attending the Arrhov Frick autumn USI Design Studio. Week by week, they set up an archive of research, projects and a series of 1:1 scale prototypes. They also collaborated in seminars and workshops with lecturers and experts in various fields, involved to produce a series of reflections and works to be displayed in the exhibition. All this has led to the creation of a sort of a veritable agora, also intervening in the environmental and spatial conditions of the Teatro dell’architettura through the site-specific installations. The purpose is to reactivate the possible relationships between the inside and outside of the building by exploring principles related to construction, reduction of energy consumption and basic fundamentals of architecture as space and light.

In this way URSPRUNG becomes a platform open to dialogue on various topics, which in turn led to further aspects to be explored with reference to architecture, in a convergence of synergies between thought and practice in a place, the Teatro dell’architettura, devoted to the dissemination of architectural and urban culture.

Public lecture series
URSPRUNG also shaped the public lectures series at the Academy of Architecture during the fall semester of the 2024/25 academic year, featuring the following guests:
–“A Place Made of the Existing” by Jean-Philippe Vassal, architect, Lacaton & Vassal, Paris
–“Passive / Active” by Paul Bouet, architecture historian, ENSA Paris with Olivier Dambron, civil engineer, Atmos lab, London
–“Open-ended” by Amy Perkins and James Binning, architects, Assemble Studio, London 
–“Circular Strategies” by Tina Ekener, architect, baubüro in situ, Basel 

The lectures took place at the TAM and are available on the Vimeo channel of the Academy of Architecture.

Additionally, an upcoming publication on the URSPRUNG Origine/Origin project, will be released by Mendrisio Academy Press.

More information on opening hours and guided tours: www.tam.usi.ch