The Academy in "instrument flight". (travel note)

Dear students, professors, lecturer, assistants, collaborators of the faculty,

by publishing this note on the Academy's website I allow myself to involve also that wider community of supporters, guests and friends who, even if in an indirect and silent way with respect to the teaching activity, contribute to make the school alive. Involving them also means to me thanking them.

I have taken the definition of "instrument flight" to the aviation world, which defines a type of flight different from the "visual" one, because as for pilots in particular situations, also for us these days some things are definitely "unnatural" or "not intuitive".

In the “instrument flight” mode you have to trust only the instruments, any physical perception, in fact, could produce wrong ideas: for example, making you believe you are in a position instead of its opposite, with the disastrous consequences caused by the gesture of pulling instead of pushing the steering wheel and then lose instead of gaining altitude.

In order to adopt this mode of flight, you have to train, and I believe that all of us, at this time, are doing the same. With great openess and also curiosity; surprised by the unexpected advantages as well as the inevitable difficulties. The Università della Svizzera italiana already had the tools switched on and probably most of us didn't even know it. Now we use them all the time. Thank you.

I first invited the students, and now I extend the request to everyone, including the professors and assistants, to be photographed in their own "cockpits" and with their instruments activated: sharing a few images in the Academy's media is a way for everyone to feel closer, pilots of the same great flight. In these days I've been talking on the phone with one of our design studio professor, "confined" in a house he designed himself. What better, paradoxical occasion to fully live one's own work and let others live it too?

The public lectures by Fulvio Irace (from Milan), Giancarlo Mazzanti (from Colombia) and the launch of the book of Pino Musi (from Paris), in addition to the other public meetings that were planned, are also being reorganized in digital mode. We have received their availability and we are looking for the best tool to activate them.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, in addition to the agenda of future exhibitions and events, which will be gradually being updated on the dedicated pages of the Academy's website (http://www.arc.usi.ch/it/tam) and mentioned in forthcoming newsletters, will soon announce a series of initiatives to attract new proposals to keep it alive. On the Academy's Facebook account, we will intensify the posts dedicated to the exhibitions: starting with the one dedicated to the school's didactic activities, MAD.8, which we had to interrupt in a hurry to set up and on which we are preparing materials for some anticipations. This will then be followed by news and previews of the exhibition Le Corbusier's early drawings. 1902-1916, curated by Danièle Pauly (Paris), with the beautiful original and unpublished drawings of the man who later became one of the greatest architects of the last century; the exhibition is in full preparation and when possible we will announce reasonable opening dates. In the meantime we have confirmed the October 2020 exhibition, dedicated to the new edition of the Swiss Architectural Award, promoted by the Fondazione Teatro dell'architettura, whose organization has never stopped and on which we will keep you updated.

You will all be invited to the digital events in due time.

The school is therefore facing a semester totally in “instrument flight” (some exams and the Diplomas are excluded, we presume, according to what will be the dispositions concerning the possibilities of travel and meeting), but I feel quite sure to say that, thanks to everyone's effort, we are now in a "trimmed condition".

Again, thank you.

This mode of flight therefore allows us to continue, to teach and learn, to communicate,research and design, but above all it allows us at this time not to interfere with the efforts of the healthcare system, by respecting the guidelines imposed by the authorities.

In Daniele del Giudice's book Staccando l'ombra da terra, Einaudi 1994, (Take-Off, The Harvill Press, London 1996. Ed.) I find the words with which André Gide presented Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de nuit to the French readers: "here there is a paradoxical truth, man's fortune is not in freedom, but in accepting a duty".

Well, I wish that every flight, even if it is an “instrument flight” and undertaken with the wonder of "taking the shadow off the ground", can then by sunset, after landing, allow us to take "long and flexible steps to relax from the efforts of the command instrumets (...) again rejoined with our shadow".

Perhaps, I would add to Del Giudice's words, even less "stupid" than before taking-off.

Riccardo Blumer

Dean

Academy of Architecture

Università della Svizzera italiana