ABSTRACT
Such peripheral areas, and an architecture which responds to them and challenges them, may be seen in microcosm in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland and in work there of Luigi Snozzi (1932-) and Aurelio Galfetti (1936-). In the Ticino valley, there are three distinct settlement patterns, which helps to isolate the periphery as a distinct topographical entity (Fig. 1). Urban settlement originally took place on the edge of the valley floor, away from the flood plain, in compact and distinct centres. The flood plain, made safe for building after the construction of St. Gotthard autostrada in the 1960s, generally consists of large plain fields for the mechanised type of agriculture which replaced the earlier intensive farming on the hillsides, the lower stretches of which are now dominated by suburban development. The flood plain now contains the expansion areas of the adjacent towns and forms their peripheries.
