Urban design is a discipline with a great tradition that has to be refounded: in order to oppose the sprawl and shape new cities that are dense, sustainable, communicative and cheerful. Although still a work in progress, the Campus designed and (partially) built for a pharmaceutical company in Basel is more than just a collection of buildings by internationally renown architects; it is an example of the application of a controversial theoretical approach to urban design to a complex case study.
Vittorio Lampugnani was born in Rome in 1951 and studied architecture in Rome and in Stuttgart, receiving a doctorate in 1977. Prof. Lampugnani has been a Professor of architecture at Harvard, Frankfurt am Main and Pamplona, and has been Professor for the History of Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich since 1994. Among the most important projects of his Studio di architettura in Milan: office building in Block 109, Berlin (1991-1996); housing group in Maria Lankowitz near Graz (1995-1999); entrance square of the Audi factory in Ingolstadt (1999-2000); urban design planning of Novartis Campus in St.Johann, Basel, (2001 ff.); underground station Mergellina, Naples (2004ff); reshaping of the Donau banks, Regensburg (2004ff); master plan Richti areal, Wallisellen (2007 ff). Prof. Lampugnani’s work has been included in numerous scholarly architectural publications and exhibitions.
