Architettura nel farsi delle cose

When compared with the central-eastern ones, the Western Alps have experienced a growing marginality in the new century. After all, getting out of the heavy legacy left by twentieth-century modernisation – abandonment of territories and tourism – is not easy. Today, however, there seems to be some evidence of a radical change in sensitivity, characterised by an awareness of the potential and limits of the contemporary architecture in relation to local dimension. This is how environment, landscape, history, traditions, heritage are no longer just a “fetish” to be exhibited for the mountain users, but become the threads with which contemporaneity tries to mend the ties interrupted with the territories. Quality architecture no longer seems to be just a self-referential exercise of composition, but a conscious opportunity to translate the demands, imaginaries, expectations, identities of the territories, in physical projects. Projects that are within the processes and that necessarily respond to compromises, in which sometimes the aesthetic-formal aspect is only one among all that control the project, that become the result of extremely diversified and contrasting questions. This working condition, always at the edge of the processes, inevitably also affects the forms of architecture, in which the difficulties and precariousness of the operational context become a prerequisite for the characterisation of the figurative and architectural aspects.

Architetture per la cultura. Ridefinire la montagna contemporanea

Alpine architecture for culture seems to best represent the evolution over time of the very concept of alpine architecture. By their actual nature, these buildings are configured not only as meeting spaces for the inhabitants but also – and above all – as means of attraction for visitors from the cities, towards which these objects seem to assume the role of real business cards. Thanks to the diffusion of virtuous reference models of contemporary architecture from all over the Alps, operated starting from 1992 by the Neues Bauen in den Alpen / Alpine Contemporary Architecture award, in recent decades Alpine architecture has begun to become an increasingly debated topic. Alpine architecture for culture, therefore, seems to play a particularly significant role in the construction of a new image on the contemporary Alps, and the buildings dedicated to its diffusion seem to succeed especially when they abandon the tourist imaginaries on the traditional and the typical Alpine, often distorted and stereotyped, to embrace a vision that undertakes a reinterpretation of local historical elements in the current context. Proposing cultural alpine buildings which look towards contemporaneity can therefore represent a great contribution in the diffusion of the mountain as a container of current events, as well as heritage and tradition. For these reasons, cultural architectures located in the mountains should also look to the present in their forms. Within this issue, are presented three architectures located in France, and three Italian projects, which are located in Priero, in Piedmont, and Estoul and Bard in the Aosta Valley.

Lentius, profundius, suavius, tre coordinate dell'abitare contemporaneo

The aphorism lentius, profundius, suavius of Alexander Langer overturns the most famous citius, altius, fortius. It is both a program and a vision to face the most urgent challenges of our time. Outdoor is the priority action context to design possible ways of reconciliation with the environment, the only way to rediscover the balanced integration with nature that Adriano Olivetti indicated as an antidote to the harmfulness of the urban environment. Nature plays a decisive role in our society. According to the German philosopher Gernot Böhme, this general reference to nature on the one hand is indicative of a desire to compensate for a lifestyle that is increasingly distant from its rhythms and its essence, on the other it represents a profound and radical removal. The pandemic has definitively undermined some of the dominant paradigms, leading to the establishment of a new phenomenology of nature based on perception. The health issue has quickly, and perhaps irreversibly, changed our lifestyles and our relationships with nature. In high-altitude contexts, the archetypes of architecture become the concepts through which architecture redefines its dialogue with the landscape by innovating its grammar and semantic relationships. A complex dialogue that triggers new genealogies and belonging in which design solutions become an opportunity for experimenting and innovating processes, forms and technologies. The following projects address these issues with respect to two founding themes of architecture: the refuge and the threshold.

L’invenzione come forma di resistenza. Le attrezzature, i servizi e la produzione nelle Alpi

As Werner Bätzing (2003) points out in his book on Alpine geography, producers who do not emigrate and stay in the Alps do not act from an economic perspective but for social and cultural reasons. To resist the climatic, morphological and settlement difficulties, Alpine producers have always been driven to innovate, experimenting with new models, combining various forms of activity and independently creating the services necessary for their activity and social life. Today, after decades characterised by the abandonment of productive activities in the mountains, inventions as a form of resistance is once again one of the main themes of contemporary Alpine spaces. This chapter explores the issue of innovations in equipment, services and production in the Alps from two points of view. The first is that of a new generation of producers, entrepreneurs and project developers who are changing the way of producing in the mountains, by creating networks, sectors and services in the territory. The second is that of architects who experiment with new typological variations and constructive processes on the theme of production buildings in line with recent developments in ways of producing and working.

Qualcosa di nuovo sul fronte occidentale

Until a few years ago, the panorama of recent architectural production in the southern Alps seemed merciless. Now the balances have partially balanced themselves out, defining new geographies. If we look at the phenomenon with a certain detachment, we can see that the accumulated delay has not only harmed. In fact, considering the scene of today’s global architecture, the exasperated tension for the morphology, the search for the sensationalism of the image as an essential element of marketing, the authorship and self-referentiality of the gesture seem to finally disappear. In other words, the new, the novelty – not to be confused with innovation – as ontological values, has, fortunately, lost part of its appeal, in favour of other themes linked to the context, the appropriateness of uses, compatibility, environmental, to the rewriting and reuse of the existing. If we link this to the current socio-economic situation, which sees the reconsideration of inland areas, the crisis of certain models of consumption – including tourism – of the territory and the redistribution of flows, unprecedented opportunities arise for previously marginal geographical realities, if not completely excluded from the circuits and narratives of the glamorous mountain. This gives rise to design opportunities cultivated in understatement, perhaps “suffered” but far from the “performance anxieties” that often connote glossy and designer interventions that we usually see elsewhere.

Abitare, abitazione

The verb “to dwell” has seen its meaning gradually expanded beyond the field of housing to cover wider ranges. In its various extensions, the debate on housing today has been mainly developed within the urban environment, while in the mountain (and alpine) context there seems to be a greater interest in matters of expressive language. The echoes of the close coherence between building, living and housing that characterised the Alps of the past are now far away. This contribution investigates how, in light of a point of view on dwelling between housing and territory, architecture can help to develop a project for the home that represents the new vitality that is affecting the Alps and its society. Ethics of the job, meaning of building, response to social questions, relational value of the architectural form and of the “in-between” space are some themes that are introduced as possible tools for a practice on the subject.

Dedans et contre le patrimoine

There are the Alps, the Alpine space, and there is heritage or heritages, depending on the meaning of the term and on the position adopted with regard to the questions raised by this notion. Heritage is not only something that exists and to which we are attached, but it should also be possible to produce it. It is this production that is addressed in these brief reflections on architectural works that attempt to combine heritage and “montagnité”. As soon as the mountain is built upon, the problem of form and, therefore, of its shaping arises. It is the latter that requires production, i.e. a way of thinking that is capable of thematising both the mountain and the heritage. But what are we talking about when we apply the heritage label to Alpine architecture? Is this what is commonly defined as edilizia rurale (rural housing)? Or is it the architectural work that interprets the edilizia rurale and, in a way, absorbs it? Assuming that the heritage regime in the mountains is part of the variation and not the fixity of a notion such as that of the monument, and that the notion of heritage informs and conforms every architectural project in the mountains, it is possible to put forward a second hypothesis and to affirm that both the edilizia rurale and the architectural projects that transform it, operating within and against it, are heritage. For the latter, however, the rules that Adolf Loos wrote for those who build in the mountains remain valid.

Zeitlose Architekturen

"The architecture of Markus Wespi, Jérôme de Meuron and Luca Romeo generally seeks a close connection to its surroundings and the local building culture; the architects look for clues in the existing culture and tradition. They are interested in the combination of traditional and modern elements, which together form a new unity and push the historical development forward. In their projects, they seek to achieve a certain timelessness; the combination of traditional materials with new elements creates a natural self-evidence that integrates the familiar and the new, thus being able to continue to develop and survive in the future. In mountainous and sloping locations, buildings have an enormous impact on the landscape and should therefore be integrated carefully with it in both form and materials, rather than simply benefitting from it thanks to large viewing windows. We like the concept of a new building which seems to have been there for a long time, whose natural materials have developed a patina which makes them even more beautiful. We are particularly fascinated by its atmosphere, light and shadow."