Marcel Meili

On the slope of a gentle hill on the northern boundary of the Po basin in Northern Italy stands a remarkable house. A modernist villa in the middle of a park, with its metallic facade shining above an enormous circular base of reddish stone. The extraordinary structure of the Casa Girasole (The Sunflower) follows the way of the sun across the sky - and the inhabitants' vista over the surrounding landscape - during the day, driven by an electric motor that can turn the entire house by 360 . It was built in the early 1930s by the Italian architects Angelo Invernizzi and Ettore Fagiuoli and is an important example of Italian Futurismo in architecture. Preserved entirely in its original state, including the original furniture and curtains, it makes traceable the fascination for modern technology, but also the already slightly broken optimism, of that period. The documentary film 'I Girasole: A House Near Verona' by Christoph Schaub and Marcel Meili enables the viewer to take part in a day at the house that turns around its vertical axis once. The movie introduces both the architecture and atmosphere of the building, its various rooms, furnishings and decoration. It gives a memoir of the house's history and of the time and feeling of life in which it was conceived. The film was awarded the 1st prize at the 1995 biennale Film and Architecture in Graz (Austria). The DVD is complemented by a booklet with introductory essays and illustrations.

Designing a new national map of urban topography for Switzerland. The classic volume Switzerland. An Urban Portrait was published in three languages by Birkhäuser Verlag in 2005 and has lost none of its relevance to this day. The result of several years of research by ETH Studio Basel, this three-volume work contains explorations of the multiple layers and facets of Swiss towns and cities by renowned architects Roger Diener, Jacques Herzog, Marcel Meili, Pierre de Meuron, and Christian Schmid, as well as possible and/or desirable scenarios for the future development of country’s main cities and its Alpine region. It also includes maps of urban topography. Leading Swiss architects examine Switzerland’s built environment An important contribution to the discussion of how Switzerland might look in the future Visionary urban topographies in a globalized world