Journal

Versione Italiana

Stone and architecture in Alpine areas – the Swiss identity
43rd Marmomacc – Verona 2/5 October 2008

CAVADINI RAFFAELE – Iragna

Oscillating between wood and stone, contemporary Alpine buildings currently – and indeed for some decades – have focused on typical traditions, tenaciously opposing critical comparisons with the conceptual settings and languages of “modernity”, thereby generating a generic and approximate neo-vernacular eclectics bordering on kitsch or, in the best examples, resorting to repetitive, regional “mannerisms”. Only in rare cases have authentic works of architecture, in the wake of the Modern Movement, taken alternative approaches.
Some signs of a change in direction seem to emerge in the quality architecture of more recent years, where one can glimpse new terrain for research involving committed architects working in various Alpine regions. Various works bear witness to the development of such research and appear with their own identity and independent theories, finally setting aside the pretext of imposing an “Alpine style”. One of the schools that has most coherently followed up this approach is in Switzerland, where – despite different identities – it has been possible to blend nature, technique, modernity and tradition in a creative manner, thereby ensuring special co-existence between traditional materials such as stone and wood and modern materials such as steel, glass and concrete. This line of research was already active in the early 1990s throughout Switzerland and has also influenced neighbouring regions, thereby giving an impulse to the distribution of a contemporary language embracing different type of harmony with the landscape and architectural context of mountain areas.
The distribution of a new vision for Alpine architecture, moreover, was especially stimulated by shows, publications and awards such as the event organised by Sesto City Council in the Italian Tyrol. Renewed attention on architecture “without architects” has also promoted a new awareness of the essential values of traditional Alpine architecture by highlighting its contents in terms of rationality, essentiality and substantial rejection of every fashion or stylistic concept. This is equally the context for the “Vernacular Architecture” Award assigned by Marmomacc – during the tenth edition of the International Stone Architecture Awards in 2007 – to Stone Architecture in Lessinia, one of the most extraordinary examples of popular European architecture and the result of the constructive intelligence of the country people living in the mountain areas north of Verona.
The intense and menacing development of building in the “high lands” seen in recent decades, essentially in the wake of mass tourism, makes comparison between an architectural concept linked with the stereotypes of country tradition and contemporary interpretation in all its many forms even more vital.
This debate sees Marmomacc emphasise the potential offered by stone materials in the development of new potential wherein traditional materials are the precise landmark focusing on coherent research into building language rather than formal models.
These themes thus see Marmomacc organise a convention, coordinated by Vincenzo Pavan, titled “Building in Highlands”, which will focus on comparisons between several important and effective experiences in Alpine areas with the use of local and traditional stones and marbles, as well as materials of other origins.
In particular, the convention will investigate architectural production in Switzerland which has seen over the last decade the growth of “schools” hallmarked by different conceptual visions but all distinguished by committed research and extraordinary quality.
The convention has invited well-known international historians of architecture and committed architects closely involved in the themes of contemporary Alpine architecture.

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