Perpetuating Architecture. Martino Pedrozzi’s Interventions: On the Rural Heritage in Valle di Blenio & Val Malvaglia 1994-2017

For more than 20 years, Swiss architect Martino Pedrozzi has been working on the partial reconstruction of derelict dwellings on alpine pastures in the mountains of southern Switzerland. His interventions in Valle di Blenio and Val Malvaglia, at altitudes around 6,500 ft in the canton of Ticino, are part of a scheme to protect and preserve the cultivated landscape shaped by generations of local farmers grazing their cattle. Pedrozzi collected and put in place again stones that had been used as building materials for the ancient dry-stone walled structures, which have been abandoned in recent decades. This recomposition is meant to reconstruct a public space and to retain landmarks in the barren alpine landscape, and to form a monument for the civilisation that has been sustained by it for centuries. This book documents Pedrozzi’s work and highlights the problem of rural exodus: a constant phenomenon in the history of human life, caused by conflict, economic change, natural disasters, and climate change. Here it is about mountain dwellings no longer used because alpine agriculture has been given up in favour of better opportunities and more comfortable ways of life. Text in English and Italian. AUTHOR: Martino Pedrozzi runs his architectural studio in Mendrisio, Switzerland, where he has also been directing the Workshop on International Social Housing at the Academy of Architecture since 2003.
5 colour, 82 b/w illustrations