Journal

The valley of the Masino torrent, with its enormous granite plates protruding from the mountainside, is acknowledged throughout Europe as being one of the best areas for “extreme” mountaineering.
The idea of building a multifunctional mountain centre and climbers’ refuge represented the perfect occasion for a project focused on a close relationship with the surrounding natural environment. In a landscape composed of alpine meadows, gigantic boulders and abandoned quarries, dominated by the crags of Sasso Remenno and bathed by the waters of the torrent, the Mountain Guides’ Lodge constitutes “a precise symbol, extraneous to any historical-vernacular imitation, capable of delineating (..) two ambits of origin, one “before” and the other “after”, an ideal demarcation line between different natural and Man-made conditions”.¹
The two perpendicular wings of the building give it a squared layout aligned with a Romanesque stone bridge over the Masino. There is a semi-covered grassed courtyard between the Lodge and the slopes of the mountain behind, and this courtyard can be seen as symbolising a “distance of respect” between the manmade construct and its natural surroundings.
The enormous volume of this architectural work is delineated by solid walls of granite remnants from the local quarries; the split stone, laid on generous mortar beds, has been pointed in the traditional, “flush” fashion, with the irregular edges of the stones around the joints partially covered by mortar so as to give a more coplanar finish. This method protects the exterior surfaces of walls from the infiltration of water, and lends a reticular design to the joints, which are of a lighter grey than the rather leaden colour of the stone itself.
The choice of a rustic type of masonry thus expresses a strong material and cultural attachment to the place which, nevertheless, does not prevent the architects from searching for an unusual compositional design in response to modern-day constructive and functional requirements.
The masonry walls are cavity walls (that is, with two facings separated by a layer of insulation): the interior load-bearing wall is in reinforced concrete, 20 cm. thick, while the exterior wall is in stone and is 30 cm. thick. Monolithic blocks of granite, that have had their surfaces sawn to a smooth finish, constitute the traditional architraves of the building’s openings; bare concrete, on the other hand, has been used where the employment of stone would have been considered “forced”, that is, in the construction of the floor slabs situated over large openings and the cylindrical stairwell featured on the façade.
With the solidity of a bulwark between the discontinuous extension of the village of Filorera and the fragmented contours of the abandoned quarry, the Romegialli brothers’ construction is an essential work composed of massive, homogeneous walls with just the occasional “buttress” and the enormous, protruding chimneystack.
In the part that houses the gym, the thickness of the walls decreases as they rise upwards; the continuity of the stone is “graphically” emphasised by a minute dotted pattern of square perforations which in a way evoke the scarped facing and putlog holes of ancient defensive walls.
The introverted character of the façades, marked by small holes or the occasional, elegant window opening, is countered by the perspectives offered by the openings onto the inner courtyard, with its wooden loggias and large glass windows forming an interesting combination with the green of the lawn and the natural stratigraphy of the rough stone of the quarry situated in the background.

Davide Turrini

*The re-edited essay has been taken out from the volume by Alfonso Acocella, Stone architecture. Ancient and modern constructive skills, Milano, Skira-Lucense, 2006
¹Gianmatteo and Roberto Romegialli, Relazione di progetto (unpublished manuscript), p.2.