House in Sobrio
Renovation of a mountain house for musicians, Leventina Valley
The village of Sobrio is located on the left side of the Leventina Valley on a large grassy terrace located above Giornico. Together with the villages of Cavagnago, Calonico and Anzonico, it forms the so-called Traversa, a series of villages that lie at an elevation of about 1000 meters along the hiking itinerary of the Strada Alta.This former agricultural village, which now has about 80 inhabitants, is composed by a compact core of fifty traditional houses. The architecture of these buildings has been strongly characterized by the local materials, and by the traditional activities of the past, such as potato and rye cultivation and cow and goat farming.
Located within the core of the village, this house features a ground floor in plastered stone, two upper wooden levels, and an attic open to the valley, in which crops from the fields were dried under the stones of the roof. Maintaining the characteristics of rural architecture and using traditional materials, the goal of this project was the renovation and general maintenance of the house to make it habitable again.
Today Sobrio is in fact also the Music Village. An international meeting center where young musicians and already established artists spend periods of study and activity in contact with the nature. From July to October each year the village comes alive with study weeks, competitions, and concerts, and many houses in the village, each of which is dedicated to a great composer, are used for housing students and musicians.
The intents of the project concerning interior materials were both to deviate from the classic search for homogeneous perfection and also to maintain a strong connection with the place. We searched for inspiration nearby, and not far away we spotted a small stone quarry. There, with the help of skilled stonecutters, we searched in the depths of the mountain, carefully observing the veins and movements of the rocks. This fascinating material offered us a huge variety of compositional elements, and by assembling this diversity, almost with surprise, we found music again.
Design and executive direction: M. Colombo, M. Leidi, 2023.
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