Livio Vacchini

• Snider house. Ver­scio, 1965
• Fa­bri­zia of­fice buil­ding. Bel­lin­zona, 1965
• Vac­chini house. As­cona, 1969
• First In­ter­na­tio­nal Film Fes­ti­val. Lo­carno, 1971
• Maria Hos­tel. Diet­li­kon, 1983
• Al­fredo apart­ment buil­ding. Diet­li­kon, 1986
• Apart­ment rue Al­bert. Paris, 1993
• Post of­fice. Lo­carno, 1995
• Ser­vice centre. Lo­carno, 1998
• Mo­ret­tina power plant. Lo­carno, 1996
• Mul­ty­func­tio­nal gym­na­sium. Lo­sone, 1997
• Piazza del Sole. Bel­lin­zona, 1998
• House of the Three Women. Bein­wil am See, 1998

Livio Vac­chini is an ar­chi­tect whose de­signs fea­ture an ex­treme co­he­rence of theme and prac­tice. Each project is con­cei­ved ide­ally as the con­ti­nua­tion of the lines of re­se­arch ex­plo­red by mo­dern ar­chi­tects of the »classical« tra­di­tion, like Per­ret, Mies van der Rohe and Kahn. The ex­treme re­duc­tion of struc­tu­ral ele­ments is present in all his de­signs of the 1990's: a multi-pupose hall at Lo­sone, the Au­rora apart­ment block at Lu­gano, a ser­vice fa­ci­lity at Lo­carno and the School of Ar­chi­tec­ture in Nancy.

After ta­king a de­gree in ar­chi­tec­ture at the Fe­deral Po­ly­tech­nic of Zu­rich in 1958, and a pe­riod of fur­ther trai­ning ab­road an in Swit­z­er­land, Vac­chini worked for five years (be­gin­ning in 1968) with Luigi Snozzi, the ar­chi­tect who more than any other has cont­ri­bu­ted to the crea­tion of the par­ti­cu­lar cul­tu­ral cli­mate that, since the se­cond half of the 1960's, has fa­vou­red the de­ve­lop­ment in the Ti­cino Can­ton of a group of ta­len­ted ar­chi­tects whose works had a great in­flu­ence on the ar­chi­tec­ture of the fol­lo­wing two de­ca­des. When the pe­riod with Snozzi ended (a pe­riod mar­ked by many de­signs for com­pe­ti­ti­ons and se­veral con­struc­ted works, such as the UBS buil­ding in As­cona and the re­si­den­tial com­plex in Ca­rasso), Vac­chini worked oc­ca­sio­nally with Aurelio Galfetti. With Gal­fetti he de­si­gned the middle school in Lo­sone (1973-1975), pre­cisely in the pe­riod in which an ex­hi­bi­tion or­ga­nised at the Zu­rich Po­ly­tech­nic and its ca­ta­lo­gue, Ten­den­zen. Neuere Ar­chi­tek­tur im Tes­sin (1975) cont­ri­bu­ted to sprea­ding and awa­ren­ess of the work of the Ti­ce­nese ar­chi­tects, lay­ing the ground­work for the in­ter­na­tio­nal re­co­gni­tion that was soon to come.