Dialogues 24 - Irina Davidovici
January 2025
On Monday 20 January, Henley Halebrown will host Dialogues 24 with Irina Davidovici for the launch of her book, The Autonomy of Theory: Ticino Architecture and Its Critical Reception (gta Verlag, 2024).
Following the exhibition 'Tendenzen – Neuere Architektur im Tessin' in Zurich in 1975, contemporaneous architecture in Ticino became the subject of fervent coverage in Swiss and international publications. In the presentation of her book, Irina Davidovici argues that critical attention emancipated the narratives of Ticino architecture from the actual conditions of production, leading to the paradoxical divergence of its historiography from its history. Placing well-known external constructs, such as the notion of ‘School of the Ticino’, against the scepticism of local architects and historians, the lecture chronicles the long-term consequences of the misalignment between autonomous theory and situated knowledge.
Architect and historian Irina Davidovici is the Director of the gta Archiv and Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich. Her research straddles housing history, cooperatives and alternative forms of communal living, and recent architecture in Switzerland.
The talk will also be live streamed on Henley Halebrown's YouTube channel.