BRASILE, TICINO: AVANGUARDIE TETTONICHE CONTEMPORANEE

These houses belong to two places located at the “ends” of the world. Their comparison might appear unusual, if read outside the horizons and cultural connections that link the Brazil of the Paulista tradition to Ticino and that make these landscapes two of the most authoritative outposts of contemporary architectural and structural research. They are two normal houses, but at the same time ex- traordinary. At least for the particular way of welcoming and interpreting, in the act of their rooting to the earth, the geographical (and cultural) identity of the places chosen for their construction. It is the audacity of the structural form that defines, unequivocally, the character of these houses, which is determined in relation to the powerful forms of the earth. These works confront the settlement/constructive principle of suspension, declining within very different tectonic inter- pretations of reinforced concrete. In their mutual necessity, the idea of confronting the principle of the construction of spaces suspended from the earth – through statics conceived for “forms in equilibrium” – highlights two very different ways of interpreting the idea of domesticity in the face of the forms of nature and the “law” of places.