CORBELLINI
I was recently invited to
speak about architecture
in the mountains, a subject
that as a critic I touched
only as the curator of an
exhibition about “Gino Valle
in Carnia” (1). Feeling uneasy
to recycle that episode again,
I had to dip, with some
embarrassment, into my
rather limited experience as
a designer and, above all, as
a vacationer. Indeed, given
the circumstances, the size
and quality of my first (and
only) built work, it is not far
from the truth to say that
I approached the task with
the unprofessional gaze of a
tourist: of the mountains and
architecture...
My family has frequented
Sappada (Plodn, in the local
dialect) or four generations.
My grandfather Regolo,
apassionate rock climber
and CAI academic, started
to spend his summers here
to explore the Clap group
and other nearby peaks.
This rugged valley, close to
Austria between Veneto and
Friuli and far from major
roads, is a peculiar German
linguistic island whose
Carinthian-Bavarian idiom
seems very close to how they
spoke in the Middle Ages
(2). The isolation which has
preserved this language has
also allowed the development
of a specific and particularly
interesting architecture, so
8 paesaggio urbano 3.2013
much so that since 1956 the
entire municipality has been
protected by the heritage and
landscape authorities.
Of the end of the fifties is also
our little villa: an illiterate
but not too rude version
of the “Cortina Olympics
style,” which at the time
was the most popular. With
the arrival of wives, in-laws
and children we decided to
make a modest expansion.
I started enthusiastically to
produce numerous proposals
which, after dealing with the
strict regulatory constraints
(gable roof, “mountain”
materials, etc.), the not easy
conditions of the site and
the commitment to seek a
methodological continuity
with the most acclaimed
mountains architects
(from Loos to Zumthor),
came to a solution, for
me, quite convincing. But
the “Integrated” Building
Commission (only one
architect present when
my project was discussed
...) refused to grant the
construction permit. The
brief explanatory statement
attached to the Commission
response highlighted the
differences of the project,
and of the pre-existing house,
from the “local typology”,
suggesting to adapt the entire
building on the occasion of
the enlargement. It was 1997
and the year before I got my
first visiting professorship
at IUAV: by accident it was
precisely for the Typological
and Morphological Characters
of Architecture course. Armed
with this temporary authority,
I submitted the project again
with a small essay attached,
in which I traced the main
theoretical positions on the
subject, from Quatremère de
Quincy to Argan, from Pevsner
to Muratori up to Gregotti
and Rossi, showing how the
notion of “local typology” was
hard to find in literature and
not sustainable in scientific
terms, particularly when
compared to the real situation
of Sappada. In the immediate
surrounding of my project
there were in fact: some
“blockhaus” (wooden logs
buildings) from the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries;
a series of examples of the
so-called “rebuilding” after
the fire of 1908 (plastered
masonry constructions,
three to four storeys, about
ten by ten meters in plan);
several little villas similar in
age and “style” to the one
I was working on; a former
hotel, more or less fifty years
old, and a big condo of the
seventies, both dimensionally
incomparable to the other
buildings; and various hybrids
or transitional outcomes
between a typological series
and the other, including some
particularly esoteric recent
renovations and additions.
Readmitted my project to the
Commission examination, I
went to support my reasons
and, after a quite surreal
discussion (the engineer
wasn’t able to accept the
asymmetry, ski instructors and
retailers recognized they didn’t
understand and much less
approve, the administration
surveyor feared the risk,
once passed something
alike, to get other ominous
outcomes ...), the project was
approved: I think thanks to
my condition of owner rather
than to the effectiveness of
my disciplinary arguments,
hard to be shared, however, by
most of my interlocutors.
Finally, a decade ago, the
extension was ready. In its
simplicity it still manages
to attract the curiosity of
those who pass by it, I do
not know whether for its
intrinsic qualities or because
it remains an anomaly among
current buildings. The vast
majority of what has been
built or restructured in
Sappada in recent years fits
design behaviors otherwise
dictated by the combined
action of tourist pressure
and identity tension, directed
by the administrative
bodies, embraced by
various professionals and
evidently approved by the
preservation authorities.
This determines a specific
Sappadian phenomenology,
representative at the same
time of some common
modes of environmental
transformation which invested
the Alps over the last thirty
years. It is in fact especially
in the mountains, where the
condition of otherness and
isolation is a key factor of
attraction, that the dialectic
between tourism and identity
experiences harsh conflicts
and unexpected convergences.
These are the places where the
“folklore”, the “characteristic”,
the “genuineness” of food
and culture nourish the
tourism marketing, which
simultaneously consumes
them, requiring their
continuous and everaccelerating renewal. The
rediscovery of traditions
weakened by time seems
being able neither to respond
to the threat of cultural
erosion brought by this shift
in economy nor to fulfill the
demand for the “typical”
urged by the latter, so that the
phenomena of “invention of
tradition” (3) are going on at
a fast pace, from temporary
events to more permanent
spatial transformations. For a
couple of years Sappada has
become the “Village of Nativity
Scenes” and, in summer, there
are hay puppets variously
attired to remember the
mountain trades. Some
time before appeared wood