Mundaneum - The Fate of Earth and Habitation and Other Contemporary Tragedies

Mundaneum - from the name chosen by Le Corbusier and Otlet for a world cultural center located in Geneva - is the title of the seminars promoted by the Monte Verità Foundation and the Eranos Foundation dedicated to the transformations of the global world and the challenges that affect it: a meeting place between different disciplines, a public laboratory of ideas to know and understand the present, with its dynamics and trend lines. Following the first edition in 2018, in which events that have marked our being in the world were dramatically anticipated, the meeting proposes an in-depth look at the complex intertwining of human beings, the natural environment, architecture and the poetry of living, highlighting the connections between them.

The link between humans, land, and architecture will be explored, starting from the need for a new approach that is up to the current challenges, reflecting on the difference between spaces and places, on the urgency of returning to thinking about the meaning of artifice, as part of a renewed balance between nature and building. We will question the sense of place in the context of spaces that have become increasingly inhospitable due to an updated apocalypse in an ecological sense. Architecture has always shaped the environment to adapt it to human needs, but in today's era of urban sprawl new not unproblematic complexities emerge. We must therefore engage in deep reflection on the meaning of artifice and how to establish a new balance between man, land and nature, especially in light of climate change and desirable shifts in the practice of living. Just as art and architecture have evolved over time to thematize space in new ways, so too has the language of poetry. The meeting will seek to traverse these different issues, to initiate a reflection on what lies ahead and what responsibilities we are called to today.

Lecturers

Fabio Merlini, SVUFET, Lugano / Eranos Foundation, Ascona

Gianfranco Tuzzolino, University of Palermo

Amelia Valtolina, University of Bergamo

Matteo Vegetti, USI, Mendrisio / SUPSI, Lugano

Free admission. Aperitif will follow.

Information and registration: info@monteverita.org / +41 91 785 40 40