Andrea Gritti, PhD in Architecture, is Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban Composition at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Polytechnic University of Milan. His practical and theoretical research focuses on strategies for reusing and recycling architecture and infrastructure in landscapes and cities.
He has produced exhibitions on the Italian A4 and A22 motorways (for the Milan Triennale in 2015, and for the Piedicastello Galleries in Trento, in 2023) as well as volumes on the relationship between theatre and the city (with E. Casti in 2021) and on the architecture of service areas (with M. Crotti in 2024).
He has published “Modulazioni. La concezione scalare in architettura” (2018), “Architecture at work. Towns and Landscapes of Industrial Heritage” (2020, with G.L. Fontana), “Autostrada del Brennero: architecture e paesaggi. Mappe iconografiche” (2023).
Transition Workshop expert since 2023.
A detailed analysis of the architectural theories and projects that contributed to the construction of cities and landscapes in the 20th century reveals two opposing tensions: on the one hand, the choice to support the economic exploitation of natural resources; on the other, the refusal to do so in the name of an early ecological awareness. These two tendencies not only manifested themselves in the form of the contrast between different professional groups and cultural movements, but even as sometimes indistinguishable parts of the biography of the same author. Faced with these ambivalences, digging into the vestiges of modernity is now more necessary than ever to reinvest the capital that architectural theories and projects have accumulated along the complex path of industrial society.