Houses of Alpine modernity. Inaugural spaces of openness, experimentation, sedimentation

DOI:10.30682/aa1903a

Antonio De Rossi

Full professor of architectural and urban design at Politecnico di Torino and director of the research centre «Istituto di Architettura Montana» (IAM).

Keywords: Alps, modernity, modern architecture, contemporary architecture, design culture.

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Why the need, in some way the urgency, of a historically retrospective number of «ArchAlp» magazine dedicated to the houses of Alpine modernity? The intent of this issue is to investigate the relationship between twentieth century modernity and contemporaneity in terms of breaks and novelties, of continuity and discontinuity, of shooting, variations and implementations, not just under the formal and linguistic aspect. In other words, are there points of interaction, long lasting redthreads between the architectural vision of Lois Welzenbacher, Charlotte Perriand, Carlo Mollino, and that of Peter Zumthor, Gion A. Caminada, Bernardo Bader? It is basically a way to understand the existence of more or less long trajectories in the way architecture has set the critical and cultural field of mountain construction, recognizing differences and specificities. Although these are generally well-known projects, the works published in this issue of «ArchAlp» are not uniformly known in the territories that refer to the Alpine space. Hence the importance of gathering together a series of architectures that have had the potential for prototypes in order to submit them to a general and comparative view. Even in the absence of perhaps direct subsidiaries, the architectures presented in these pages represent an extraordinary patrimony of design moves and strategies which, through the internalization of experiences, deeply influenced the formation and determination of the contemporary architectural research field in the Alpine environment.