A sensitive architectural body absorbs, shuffles and reinterprets some of the characters more intimately tied to the collective image of the city of Bressanone: its beautiful secret courts, arcades and mysterious crossing loggias, the preciousness and the refinement of urban details, the syncopated profiles of architectural scenes, the warmth evoked by the gilded surfaces that cover all the most important symbols of the community.

The new music school in Bressanone is a landscape within the landscape, a kind of environmental extension halfway between city and mountains. Not an insurmountable margin, not a definitive limit or an object in itself concluded or self-referential, but a penetrable body, diaphanous and transparent, inhabiting the urban space and, at the same time, the extraordinary natural context.

The new architectural presence is a continuous but porous body: balconies, porches, patios, terraces, overhangs and suspended volumes capture natural light and spectacular panoramic views, creating spaces for which air quality is called to be a decisive added value.

A thin crystal basement, covered with glass panels at different percentages of translucency, gets in touch with the urban ground. This glossy “pillow”, that multiplies the space of the square in an attractive and evanescent double reflection, embraces a half-open court where the piazza itself seems to expand as a fluid substance. Here, an unexpected and surprising open-air room the visitor realizes on two levels once reached, gives access to the school being however a place for representation, meeting, waiting, contemplation, rest.

Chronology: 2017 Competition Project

Category: Public Buildings, schools

Project Team: Tomas Ghisellini, Alice Marzola, Lucrezia Alemanno, Daniele Francesco Petralia, Andrea Andreotti