Magic carpet
Curzio Pentimalli (IT)
Michel Carlana (IT)
Luca Mezzalira (IT)
Riccardo Sanquerin (IT)
architects
Europan 10 Montreux
runner-up
The most spontaneous way to define a domestic space is through the construction of a boundary; depending on its degree of physicality, the distinction between what is meant by public and private is more or less clear-cut. The buildings are of the courtyard type, yet the fact that they are positioned above articulated ground preserves the privacy and the intimacy which characterise this model and, at the same time, radically changes its spatial features. The aim is to present neither a project nor a plan, but a series of processes generated by the fundamentals of collective urban life. A house, a park, a town. From the boundary to the threshold, therefore, in order to distinguish different kinds of environments and, above all, to keep them simple and continuous with each other. Inside/outside becomes here/there.
This project is connected to the following themes
Shared spaces - Intensification by superposition
Using the potential of the site and in particular the slope, the team proposes an innovative building typology: a courtyard house on the first floor and a continuum of public spaces on the ground floor.
Housing - Morphology
The project proposes a very special morphology for inhabiting the Swiss landscape: a series of floating frames, designed and dedicated entirely to becoming a place for living.
Nature - Proximity / Horizon
The insertion of the blocks into the slope divides the building into two layers: an upper layer that forms a space above the ground in contact with the wider landscape; a lower layer, at ground and basement level, recreating a more domestic scale specific to the neighbourhood.