Architektur des Glücks

Campione d’Italia is located on Lake Lugano, surrounded by Swiss Ticino. This exclave, once a poor fishing village, was transformed by Benito Mussolini in 1933 into an Italian model community and subsequently became the richest municipality in Italy. The source of this wealth was a casino, which today is the largest casino in Europe and occupies about half of the entire village center.

For almost a hundred years, Campione lived exclusively from this casino, both economically and in terms of its residents’ self-image. The casino was an employer for everyone and filled the municipality’s coffers with hundreds of millions of Swiss francs from business taxes. And there was glamour, international celebrities, luxury villas, Sophia Loren, Federico Fellini; the fur coats, the luxury cars! Their radiance was golden.

In 2018, however, the casino filed for bankruptcy overnight. Since then, both the municipality and its unemployed residents are broke. Sadness hangs over the streets and promenades; above it all, the casino looms as a meaningless, forbidding monolith.

What happens to a community whose meaning-giving center suddenly no longer exists? How does it reorganize itself and its social structures after this “zero hour”? Does it want everything back, even though it led to catastrophe? Can courage and insight be found for something new, or does everything sink into lethargy?