Passion, Enthusiasm and Hope. A Conversation with Aurelio Galfetti / Passione, entusiasmo e speranza. Una conversazione con Aurelio Galfetti

For this volume devoted to the work of Aurelio Galfetti and published by the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, on 15 July 2019 I met Lio, as everyone simply and affectionately calls him. Born in 1936, architect and teacher, Aurelio Galfetti welcomed us to his studio at Massagno, elegant and smiling. He was rather touched to be doing an interview for a volume to be published by the school where he was dean from 1996 to 2002 and continued to teach down to 2010. After showing us over his office, together with his collaborator Antonio Speroni, he told us about the work he is still busy with, designing new projects while thinking about restoring those of the past, including the Baths of Bellinzona. The strength and passion of his words, together with his vital gaze, clearly expressed what the architect’s profession means (and has always meant) to him. The selection of works illustrated on the previous pages testifies to the numerous themes that Galfetti has dealt with, always ranging with the greatest ease over different scales, from the territorial to the architectural. A distinctive feature of his work is its profound relationship with the landscape and geography, where the fundamental aspect of his way of making architecture lies precisely in the relations between interior and exterior, seeing the “striving for simplicity (...) as the ethical form of the work”