Swiss House Rossa represents the constant commitment to build with respect for the places we inhabit and to make every effort in helping our understanding of civilization. This is an opera that lies on the cusp between art and architecture, a living sculpture. Alongside its primary role in protecting man from the elements, it is an architecture that needs art to complete it.
Rossa is a place of memory where civilisation comes from simplicity. The task is to continue this art of love for this land through humble but enduring gestures. This village in the Swiss Alps at an altitude of 1100 meters, lies almost at the end of the valley, where the powerful force of nature expresses itself.
Swiss House is placed spatially along a line of volumes of patrician houses that form an agglomeration around the village church. The new volume emphasises this axis both physically and conceptually.
The cross in vertical projection, the rounding of the edges and the simple torsion of the roof make it dynamic and reinterprets the archetype of the house. Just like the typical house as designed by children: two vertical lines, two diagonal line for the roof, holes for letting light. This is the same thing, but completely different.
It is an enclosure that defines a dynamic space. The points of view and the light penetrations work on the perception of time, notably from the absence of the instantaneous speed of the sliding images we have grown used to. It is an unbroken line of emotions. Each aperture is calibrated and oriented towards selected views of the surrounding landscape. Each point is different and every breath of the landscape suggests different things.
The basement is in reinforced concrete, the upper volume entirely in wood, without interpreting the traditional construction type of the Alps, but using it as it is. In the future we will be able to print buildings directly on the site with material that solidifies on contact with air. The architect's work is to deal with the psychology of space, perception, and love for man.
A project by Daniel Buren & Davide Macullo
In collaboration with Galleria Continua
Other in situ artists work: Miki Tallone, Flavio Paolucci, Adoka Niitsu.
Photos by Alexandre Zveiger
