Ties between Switzerland and José María Sánchez García, born in Badajoz, Spain, include his winning of the BSI Swiss Architectural Award in the year 2014, the invitation for him to teach at the prestigious Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, and now his first projects there. He has won the competition to restore the 16th-century Villa Cristina, and he will be enlarging and doing landscaping for the Agrarian Institute of Mezzana. Chosen unanimously, Sánchez’s restrained and poetic design partly buries the building, resulting in a more open and direct engagement with the splendid surrounding landscape of vineyards.