Mario Botta, Chairman

Born in Mendrisio, Ticino, on April 1, 1943. After an apprenticeship in Lugano, he first attends the Art College in Milan and then studies at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice. Directed by Carlo Scarpa and Giuseppe Mazzariol he receives his professional degree in 1969. During his time in Venice he has the opportunity to meet and work for Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn.

His professional activity begins in 1970 in Lugano. He builds his first single-family houses in Canton Ticino and subsequently all over the world. He has always committed himself in an intense architectural research and since 1996 he is involved as creator and founder of the new academy of architecture in Mendrisio, Ticino where he is Professor and held the directorship in 2002/2003.

His work has achieved international renown and important awards (Merit Award for Excellence in Design by the AIA for the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the IAA Annual Prix 2005, International Academy of Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria, for the Kyobo Tower in Seoul, the International Architecture Award of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the “European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage Europa Nostra”, for the restructuring of the Theatre alla Scala in Milan, and been presented in many exhibitions.

Among his realisations must be remembered the theatre and cultural centre in Chambéry, the art gallery Watari-um in Tokyo, the library in Villeurbanne, the SFMOMA museum of modern art in San Francisco, the cathedral in Evry, the museum Jean Tinguely in Basel, the Cymbalista synagogue and Jewish heritage centre in Tel Aviv, the municipal library in Dortmund, the Friedrich Dürrenmatt centre in Neuchâtel, the MART museum of modern and contemporary art in Rovereto, the Kyobo tower in Seoul, the office building Tata CS in New Delhi and Hyderabad, the Fondation Bodmer museum in Cologny, the church and pastoral centre Pope John XXIII in Seriate, the public library in Bergamo and the restoration of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the new casinò in Campione d’Italia, the church Santo Volto in Turin and the wellness centre in Arosa.

Among the works in progress must be counted the office and residential complex in Treviso, the university library in Trento, the Bechtler art museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Tsinghua University art gallery and museum in Beijing, the Leeum offices in Seoul, the underground stations in Naples, the new auditorium in Rimini, the museum of architecture in Mendrisio.

Valentin Bearth

Born in Tiefencastel in 1957 in the canton of Graubünden, he lives and works in Chur. He studied under Prof. Dolf Schnebli at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where he graduated in 1983. Since 1988 he is joint owner with Andrea Deplazes of the atelier Bearth & Deplazes in Chur and in 1995 Daniel Ladner joined them.Since 2000 he is Professor of Architecture at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio and on September 1, 2007 he is the directorship. From 2003 to 2005, he was visiting professor at the architecture faculty of the University of Sassari in Italy. He has given many lectures in Switzerland and abroad with the aim to convey his primary themes i.e. the links between teaching, research and practice.

His many projects and buildings include: the school with multi-purpose hall in Tschlin (citation as part of the international architecture prize for new construction in the Alps, Sexten 1996), the school with multi-purpose hall in Vella (citation as part of the international architecture prize for new construction in the Alps, Sexten 1999; project in the final round of the 6th Mies van der Rohe Award, Barcelona, Alcopor Prize 2000); Williman-Lötscher apartment building, Sevgern (1998-1999); Rageth alpine cabin, Fanas Cania (1998-1999); Walther apartment building, Malans (2001); gallery for contemporary art, Marktoberdorf (Germany) (1998-2001); chairlift station in Carmenna, Arosa (2000-2001); head office for Public Health Insurance Company ÖKK in eastern Switzerland, Landquart (2002); Gantenbein wine estate in Fläsch (Velux Daylight Award 2007).

Solano Benitez

He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the National University of Asunción in 1986; he was awarded the national prize for architecture 1989-1999 by the college of Paraguayan architects; he reached the finals of the second “premio Mies van der Rohe de arquitectura latinoamericana”; he represented Paraguay at the Biennali in Venice, São Paolo and Lisbon, the capital of Ibero-American culture.

He has been invited to speak at the following universities: in Argentina, at the National Universities of Rosario, Mar del Plata, Santa Fe, Oberà, La Plata, Tucuman, Resistencia and Buenos Aires; at the Catholic Universities of Cordoba and Posadas, Torcuato University in Tella and Palermo University in Buenos Aires; in Brazil, in San Pãolo, at the Mackenzie University, the Escola da Cidade, the Federal University of São Carlos, Umuarama and Belo Horizonte; in Chile, at the Catholic University of Santiago, the Andrés Bello National University and the University Diego Portales; in Ecuador, at the Catholic University of Quito; in Panama, at the Isthmus School of Architecture; in Peru, at the Ricardo Palma University and at the Catholic University in Lima; in Spain, at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid; in the United States, at Arizona State University, Berkeley University of California, San Francisco University and Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

He founded the “Gabinete de Arquitectura”, a professional architectural studio, which he currently shares with his partners Alberto Marinoni and Gloria Cabral.

His recent works include: leisure facilities in Ytú (Paraguay), 1997-1998 (this work reached the finals of the second Mies van der Rohe Latin-American architecture prize”); a tomb in Priribebuy (Paraguay), 2000-2001; the Unilever office in Villa Elisa (Paraguay), 2000-2001; Casa Esmeraldina, Asunción (Paraguay), 2002; Casa Fanego, Asunción (Paraguay), 2003 (with Sergio Fanego); Casa Abu & Font, Asunción (Paraguay), 2005-2006; Casa Las Anitas, San Pedro (Paraguay) 2007-2008; Alambra building, San Lorenzo (Paraguay), under construction.

Barry Bergdoll

Barry Bergdoll is Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, the Museum of Modern Art (NY). In 1985 he joined the faculty of the Department of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University and was elected Chairman of the Department in 2004. He has taught nineteenth and twentieth century architectural history at Columbia. He has also held numerous guest professorships, notably at Harvard University, MIT, and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He has been a fellow at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris and at the American Academy in Berlin.

During his career, Barry Bergdoll has organized, curated, and consulted on many landmark exhibitions in the field of nineteenth and twentieth century architecture, including Mies in Berlin at MoMA (2001) with Terence Riley; Breuer in Minnesota at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2002); Les Vaudoyer: Une Dynastie d’Architectes at the Musée D’Orsay, Paris (1991); and Ste. Geneviève/Pantheon; Symbol of Revolutions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal (1989).

Among the myriad books that Barry Bergdoll has written or contributed to are: Mies in Berlin (2001), winner of the Philip Johnson Award of the Society of Architectural Historians in 2002; Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (1994), winner of the AIA Book Award in 1995; European Architecture 1750–1890 (2000), in the Oxford History of Art series; Home delivery: fabricating the modern dwelling (with Peter Christensen, 2008).

Barry Bergdoll serves as the President of the Society of Architectural Historians, is a member of the Architecture and Design Committee of The Museum of Modern Art, and is on the editorial board of Architectura (Berlin and Munich).

Luis Fernandez Galiano

Luis Fernández-Galiano (1950) is an architect, professor at the School of Architecture of Madrid's Universidad Politécnica and editor of the journals AV/Arquitectura Viva. A member of the Royal Academy of Doctors, he has been Cullinan Professor at Rice University, Franke Fellow at Yale University, a visiting scholar at the Getty Center of Los Angeles and a visiting critic at Princeton, Harvard and the Berlage Institute; and has taught courses at the Menéndez Pelayo and Complutense universities. President of the jury in the 9th Venice Architecture Biennial and in the XV Chile Architecture Biennial, expert and juror of the Mies van der Rohe European Award, he has curated the exhibitions El espacio privado in Madrid and Extreme Eurasia in Tokyo, and has been on the jury of several international competitions. Among his books are La Quimera Moderna, Fire and Memory (MIT Press), Spain Builds (in collaboration with New York's MoMA) and Atlas, Global Architecture circa 2000 (with the BBVA Foundation).