Detail of the project ed. 2024

cafube / Switzerland

Design­er	Alber­to Julio Fresco
Loca­tion	Caras­so, Bellinzona, Ticino
Nation	Switzer­land
Design Team	LOKOMOTIV.archs — LKMV — office Mas­ter of sci­ence in archi­tec­ture USI Alber­to Julio Fres­co architet­to dipl. AAM USI OTIA Via Besso 42a — 6900 Lugano — Switzerland https://www.lokomotiv-archs.ch
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	Simone Bossi (tut­ti i file)

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

In the search for the intrin­sic beau­ty of the archi­tec­tur­al object, con­nu­bial of pure and func­tion­al, the con­tain­ing silence, the ephemer­al that comes to life, the pain and calm that embrace this build­ing in one, high­light the con­trast with an archi­tec­ture mon­u­men­tal whose mas­sive char­ac­ter, heav­i­ness, aus­ter­i­ty, bal­ance and func­tion­al coher­ence are the mas­ters. The joint and cer­tain­ty that guides the whirl­wind of ideas that enveloped this project was its func­tion­al coher­ence, which is accom­pa­nied by the com­plic­it and cre­ative light of a new balance.

The object rests on the ground, aspir­ing to the sky, in a com­bi­na­tion of heavy load-bear­ing inter­nal skele­ton wrapped exter­nal­ly by a can­did origa­mi of slabs with a light and sus­pend­ed appear­ance. This diaphanous and clean skin, chis­eled in a lin­ear and rhyth­mic way by tri­an­gu­la­tions and pure geo­met­ric shapes, comes to life and inter­ro­gates the observ­er through the light, which creeps into the slits and cre­ates shad­ows that change over time.

The build­ing thus becomes a sun­di­al of a time that is not real and tan­gi­ble, but that refers to the times of man and life, of the expe­ri­ences that fol­low one anoth­er in a day and that are reborn at sunrise.

The mon­u­men­tal­i­ty and aus­ter­i­ty of this archi­tec­tur­al typol­o­gy is also reflect­ed in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the inter­nal envi­ron­ments, ver­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion through a stair­well and lift, and in the artic­u­la­tion of these envi­ron­ments that respect the nat­ur­al turn of the deceased’s body’s prepa­ra­tion practice.
The atten­tion of the design­er shifts and focus­es on the dis­cre­tion and com­plete dis­sim­u­la­tion of the inter­ven­tions and mech­a­nisms that exist hid­den from the vis­i­tor’s sight.
Thus, two dis­tinct design lines are con­fig­ured that par­al­lel pub­lic atmos­pheres, of rec­ol­lec­tion and cer­e­mo­ny, with tech­ni­cal spaces linked to the profession.

The vis­i­tor’s wel­come con­sists of a recep­tion whose can­did col­or is a direct reflec­tion of the enve­lope, and whose choice of mate­ri­als is dic­tat­ed by the desire to cre­ate a ten­­sion-free pas­sage from out­side to inside. The main rooms that inter­est the vis­i­tor and on which the design­ers’ gaze has lin­gered for a long time are made up of three small rooms on the sec­ond floor which over­look the main hall on the ground floor. The three rooms are suit­able to wel­come the deceased in an imme­di­ate, inti­mate and col­lect­ed way. The light that per­me­ates the enve­lope out­side per­me­ates the glass sur­face of the sky­lights and del­i­cate­ly blends with the inter­nal atmos­phere. This same zenithal light is found in the main farewell room, whose pecu­liar­i­ty lies in the wide breath allowed by the open­ing on a dou­ble height.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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