The competition’s theme was the reconstruction of a mountain shelter at approximately 2000 meters above sea level, destroyed by a fire nearly ten years ago. The design brief suggested to keep the original footprint and take inspiration from the local rural architecture. The functional program included a restaurant with kitchen, cloakrooms and storage on the ground floor, and accommodations for twenty-four guests and staff on the upper floor, as well as storage spaces in the basement.
Our project takes the above located Malga Spruggio, a traditional animal shelter, as a proportional, technological, and material reference, proposing a sort of stylised replica distorted in height.
The lower level of the building is a laconic masonry box made of prefabricated concrete panels clad in porphyry, which explodes at the north end to create the broad windows of the dining room and the outdoor furnishings.
The upper level, entirely made of wood and clad in fir shingles, is built around a framework of evenly spaced trusses with the bunk beds of the dormitories integrated.
The load-bearing structure and the dormitory layout thus merge into a single, evocative gesture replicated along the entire length and accentuated by the perspective view of the corridor and the single-flight staircase.
The two steeply sloping roofs are staggered at the apex to create a ribbon skylight. This, along with the two oblong lower windows facing the valley and the mountain, ensure each bed has its own dedicated opening to the outside.
