Architetture per la cultura. Ridefinire la montagna contemporanea

Abstract

Alpine architecture for culture seems to best represent the evolution over time of the very concept of alpine architecture. By their actual nature, these buildings are configured not only as meeting spaces for the inhabitants but also – and above all – as means of attraction for visitors from the cities, towards which these objects seem to assume the role of real business cards. Thanks to the diffusion of virtuous reference models of contemporary architecture from all over the Alps, operated starting from 1992 by the Neues Bauen in den Alpen / Alpine Contemporary Architecture award, in recent decades Alpine architecture has begun to become an increasingly debated topic. Alpine architecture for culture, therefore, seems to play a particularly significant role in the construction of a new image on the contemporary Alps, and the buildings dedicated to its diffusion seem to succeed especially when they abandon the tourist imaginaries on the traditional and the typical Alpine, often distorted and stereotyped, to embrace a vision that undertakes a reinterpretation of local historical elements in the current context. Proposing cultural alpine buildings which look towards contemporaneity can therefore represent a great contribution in the diffusion of the mountain as a container of current events, as well as heritage and tradition. For these reasons, cultural architectures located in the mountains should also look to the present in their forms. Within this issue, are presented three architectures located in France, and three Italian projects, which are located in Priero, in Piedmont, and Estoul and Bard in the Aosta Valley.