Edoardo Bonaspetti (Curator) Talks with Beatrice Grenier (Curator Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain), Filippo Pagliani (Architect Park Associati) and Giuseppe Galbiati (Engineer)

Sunday, April 19th at 3pm.

The Metabolist emblem of the Nagakin Capsule Tower designed by Kishio Kurukawa (built 1972, torn down 2022), Toronto’s iconic Ontario Place designed by Eberhard Zeidler (built, 1971, presently being torn down), The Chicago Prentice Women’s Hospital designed by Bertrand Goldberg (built 1975, demolished, 2015), the Robin Hood Gardens social housing project by Alison and Peter Smithson in London (completed in 1972, demolished in 2017) are but a few examples of architectures encapsulating the utopian visions of the recent past and which demolition point to the unease with which we are cohabitating with modernist icons today. But precisely, why should we cohabit with them, and why should we preserve them as part of the urban fabric of our cities? Designed between 1956 and 1959 by architects Eugenio and Ermenegildo Soncini, with engineering by Pier Luigi Nervi, Palazzo Galbani, a modernist gem overlooked for decades, is point of departure in this conversation to look at the urgency of preserving modernist architecture today.

Speakers:
Béatrice Grenier – Director of Strategic and International Programs, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Béatrice Grenier is a Paris-based curator, author, and editor working at the intersection of art, architecture, and cultural policy. From 2020–2025 she served as lead curator for the expansion project of Fondation Cartier in Paris. In 2025, she curated a monographic exhibition of Jean Nouvel, as part of the collateral program of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. She is the co-curator of Exposition Générale, the inaugural exhibition dedicated to the Collection of the Fondation Cartier in its new spaces. Béatrice Grenier is the author of books an essays at the intersection of global contemporary architecture in art such as Architecture for Culture : Rethinking Museums (New York: Rizzoli, 2025), Tashkent: A Modernist Capital (New York: Rizzoli, 2024), and Infinite Memory (ed). Her forthcoming book, New Natures: Planetary Museums, co-authored with Jeanne Gang and Emanuele Coccia, is published by Park Books (2026). She is the Paris desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific and a regular contributor to contemporary art and architecture publications such as Domus, Pin-Up, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

Filippo Pagliani – Architect (Park Associati)
Filippo Pagliani, an architect and graduate of the Politecnico di Milano, is the co-founder and partner of Park, an interdisciplinary collective that since 2000 has developed projects in architecture, urban design, landscape, interior, and product design, promoting a cross-disciplinary approach. The studio immerses itself in the rich stimuli of every reality, reinterpreting its deep identity and proposing an original vision that is unique and coherent in all its elements. Park has received numerous accolades, including the 2024 Italian Architect Award presented by the National Council of Architects, Planners, Landscapers, and Conservationists. In 2025, on the occasion of the studio’s twenty-fifth anniversary, it published the new volume Reinventing Heritage – A Design Compass on Adaptive Reuse.

Giuseppe Galbiati – Engineer
Biography. Giuseppe Galbiati is an architect-engineer. After graduating in Building Engineering-Architecture from Politecnico di Milano, he earned his PhD from EPFL (Lausanne) and UCLouvain with the thesis: “Preserving Suspended Structures with Light Façades (1960–1980). Architectural Study and Retrofitting Proposals”. He is a postdoctoral fellow at UCLouvain and at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. His research focuses on construction history and architectural conservation, developing interdisciplinary methods for the redevelopment of modern heritage.

WHERE:
Level 3