Haus der Berge
Südtirol, IT
2023

* Title: Haus der Berge

* Address: Dolomitenstraße, 45a, 39030 Sesto Autonome Provinz Bozen - Südtirol, Italien

* Year of construction: 2023

* Thematic focus: solid timber construction, immediate local source, plastic, glue and mostly metal free assembly for disassembly

* Project text: In 2009, the alpine mountain massif of the Dolomites becomes "Unesco World Natural Heritage Site". After various considerations regarding a visitor centre, the local Tourist Association and the municipality of Sesto launched a planning competition for the „Haus der Berge“ (House of Mountains) in 2016. The site chosen was the area around the congress centre, fairground and music pavilion, on the edge of the village.

Our proposal for the competition was decidedly not to create touristic event architecture. The five-storey tower-like building intends to raise awareness for the already existing: the distinctive landscape, its ecosystem and inhabitants. Immediately local available wood (larch
and spruce, 220m³), from the community's own forests, forms the untreated plastic, glue and metal-free solid-timber structure of the building. By vertically stacking the uses, the five-storey tower-like structure (around 1700m³) intends to minimize the consumption of ground and point out into the landscape. From the ground floor upwards the building is entirely constructed in glue-free, vertical, solid-wood-block construction. The untreated timber blocks of the walls and ceilings are assembled with wooden joints, enabling the structure and its materials to be completely dismantled and reused at any point in the future. This ensures a maximum storage time for the approximately 178 tonnes of CO² (approx. 70 logs main structure, without interior constructions), stored in the buildings material. The spatial program required in the competition included offices, an arrival and information room and relatively freely configurable areas for exhibition spaces and entertainment. The centre-piece of the project, a small, two-storey multi-purpose venue, was added to the competition's spatial program. Its versatile usage intends to provide the greatest possible intersection between touristic and everyday, local use.

The pathway through the building winds up around its introverted uses, opening up on the top floor towards the villages landmark, the „Sesto sundial“ mountains. A vast terrace space „cut out“ of the solid form aims to create a space of intimate encounter between the observer and the surrounding ecosystem beyond the turbulence of the valleys touristic infrastructure.

01 Why is the project particularly relevant for PIONIRA?

Pionira endeavours the curation of projects with an artisanal, architectural and ecological approach. Our practice seeks to operate at precisely this intersection. With the submitted project, we tried to address several key topics: Firstly the primary building material of the house, the locally available spruce and larch wood from the communal forests. Assembled by local craftsmen to form a tower, that puts focus on the surrounding landscape and thus increase its appreciation.

02 What have you learned from the project? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you solve them?

The re-establishment of a local chain: from ecologically compatible harvesting over processing, to appropriate assembly of the local timber is probably the biggest task we were facing. In this particular project the public contracting criteria in connection with the desire to work with direct local sources (material, know-how, companies,…) posed major difficulties. Gaining the trust of the public client towards pure, local materials also proved to be a major challenge. In the end, patience and perseverance towards realizing the initial ideas paid off.

03 What advice could you provide, based on the project?

As mentioned above, the project required a great deal of persuasion in the planning and conceptualisation phase. As a young planner, it is particularly difficult to stand up to long-established conservative opinions. For us, it was very helpful that our team consisted of different age and experience levels, but all pulled together on realizing the bigger idea.

04 How would you like to build in the future?

For us, future building solutions should be firstly subjected to the idea of sufficiency, strictly of local source, free of pollutants, craft-based, simple, degradable, reusable or, in the best case, of already used source. In short, have as positive an impact on the environment and society as possible.

Name: Haus der Berge
Location: Bozen - Südtirol, IT
Text and images by: Delueg Architekten, Sebastian Schels
Type: Places
 
Posted: January 2024
Categories: architect, crafts, localism, raw materials, rural future, italy

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