Bergamo. The city and landscape

The opening of the exhibition of the 2018 graduation projects by the students of the Academy of Architecture dedicated to the so-called “City of the Thousands” was held on Friday in Bergamo. “Bergamo. Città e paesaggio” (Bergamo. City and landscape) showcases 130 projects by the young architects concerning 15 areas of the city selected according to City Hall requests. The exhibition reinterprets the urban fabric in different ways and with a different approach, providing a set of ideas and solutions, some realistic and feasible, others more academic, and others provocative and utopian.

According to Academy Director Riccardo Blumer: “After Venice, London, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Salzburg, our students supervised by Mario Botta, were confronted in Bergamo with issues of space modification starting from existing conditions, by using the tools provided by architecture. The complex structure of the territory, defined by a widespread urbanisation between the mountain and the plains, requires continuous and much needed upgrades of the infrastructures related to mobility and to the production of goods and services. This peculiarity offered our students and professors interesting situations in terms of spatial, landscape, and cultural complexity”.

The mayor of Bergamo Giorgio Gori underlined how: “The work carried out by the many qualified teachers of the Academy and by their talented students will allow us to grasp the number and the level of the opportunities for the re-qualification of the existing urban fabric. The extraordinary heritage that Bergamo already has could be enriched and integrated with the most recent areas through small and large contemporary transformations”.

The exhibition, curated by architect Gianluca Gelimini, will be open from October 27 to November 25 at the Sala delle Capriate of Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo. The students carried out their projects in the context of 13 ateliers directed by 13 architects of the Academy: Aires Mateus, Angonese, Arnaboldi, Bearth, Boesch, Bonnet, Botta, Kéré, Miller, Nunes - Gomes da Silva Limite, Olgiati, Sergison and Tropeano.