Transversal Territory
Transversal Territory

Transversal Territory is a laboratory at the Academy of Architecture USI in Mendrisio dedicated to urban, ecological, artistic, body and health issues. In a transdisciplinary and participatory approach, it explores how to deepen, expand and transcend conventional paradigms of the perception and understanding of urban space. Its particularity lies in triggering experiences of, and reflections on, the relationship between us, our bodies, our health, the built landscape and natural environment through in situ artistic performances and installations.

 

One of the major challenges of our time is to rethink what we mean by environment. For a long time this term has designated an «around», an «elsewhere», an «outside», an «other», a fuzzy reality that meant everything that was not invested in or urbanized by humans, and therefore would not concern us, or only indirectly. It is now essential to readjust our view of it, to rethink the notion of the environment as a space that is part of us, with which we are inextricably linked - a spatiality that exists among, with, between, through and within us. The environment, it’s right here!

 

The aim of Transversal Territory is to nourish our imagination and to broaden the scope of our environmental sensitivity, through another possible experience of our own living space. In form of workshops, students in collaboration with the local community of the investigated city carry out artistic-landscape-architectural and performative interventions carried out in situ. The intention is to investigate urban areas that we live in, that we walk through every day, surroundings so familiar to us that we often show a lack of interest or even contempt for them. The aim is to give them (for a moment) a sensitive, tangible and playful experience, to charge them with an unexpected, enigmatic and transgressing energy that will affect the usual perception of them.

 

Conceived as a laboratory of experimentation, the approach, while being precise in the proposed theme, is deliberately playful and leaving freedom for experimentation and research. The aim is to discover, experiment and develop a visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory sensitivity, allowing us to take a new look at our living space, to understand, feel, see and live the notion of environment with «enlarged senses». These workshops are first of all addressed to our imagination. After each workshop, the public is invited to live and share these interventions in a public event.

Transversal Territory is created and directed by Antoine de Perrot aka Onzgi and Dr. med. Mansoureh Aalaii. It is realized in collaboration with the City of Mendrisio.

Transversal Territory is a laboratory at the Academy of Architecture USI in Mendrisio dedicated to urban, ecological, artistic, body and health issues. In a transdisciplinary and participatory approach, it explores how to deepen, expand and transcend conventional paradigms of the perception and understanding of urban space. Its particularity lies in triggering experiences of, and reflections on, the relationship between us, our bodies, our health, the built landscape and natural environment through in situ artistic performances and installations.

 

One of the major challenges of our time is to rethink what we mean by environment. For a long time this term has designated an «around», an «elsewhere», an «outside», an «other», a fuzzy reality that meant everything that was not invested in or urbanized by humans, and therefore would not concern us, or only indirectly. It is now essential to readjust our view of it, to rethink the notion of the environment as a space that is part of us, with which we are inextricably linked - a spatiality that exists among, with, between, through and within us. The environment, it’s right here!

 

The aim of Transversal Territory is to nourish our imagination and to broaden the scope of our environmental sensitivity, through another possible experience of our own living space. In form of workshops, students in collaboration with the local community of the investigated city carry out artistic-landscape-architectural and performative interventions carried out in situ. The intention is to investigate urban areas that we live in, that we walk through every day, surroundings so familiar to us that we often show a lack of interest or even contempt for them. The aim is to give them (for a moment) a sensitive, tangible and playful experience, to charge them with an unexpected, enigmatic and transgressing energy that will affect the usual perception of them.

 

Conceived as a laboratory of experimentation, the approach, while being precise in the proposed theme, is deliberately playful and leaving freedom for experimentation and research. The aim is to discover, experiment and develop a visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory sensitivity, allowing us to take a new look at our living space, to understand, feel, see and live the notion of environment with «enlarged senses». These workshops are first of all addressed to our imagination. After each workshop, the public is invited to live and share these interventions in a public event.

Transversal Territory is created and directed by Antoine de Perrot aka Onzgi and Dr. med. Mansoureh Aalaii. It is realized in collaboration with the City of Mendrisio.