SITE AND PROGRAM

The autumn semester takes place in Lavin, a mountain village in Graubünden, that faces the challenge of retaining committed talents who contribute to the community`s vitality, especially as the housing crisis and high rents drive them away. The need arises for a home that offers security, relaxation, and a supportive environment for living and collaborating. Meanwhile, Crusch Alba, an unused hotel located in Lavin, holds the potential to address this need.

The history of Crusch Alba dates back several generations, initially starting as a restaurant and dining room and later expanding into a small hotel. However, changes in the context and the rise of alternative forms of accommodation, such as Airbnb, have made it challenging to sustain the hotel-restaurant business. Furthermore, the village is experiencing an exodus of workers and a housing crisis.

The idea emerges to repurpose Crusch Alba into a home for the village`s seasonal workers, both local and those from distant lands. This home would cater to their lifestyle, aspirations, and financial capabilities. The plan involves creating small apartments for workers, hotel rooms for visitors, as well as production spaces and communal spaces for inhabitants. The intention is also to offer spaces to engage with the larger village community.

The focus is on the concept of inhabiting, where private, collective, and public functions coexist within the small structure of Crusch Alba. The architecture should allow for flexibility, tolerance, and adaptation to accommodate different inhabitants and the uncertain programmatic future of the place, ultimately enabling residents, as well as the building, to stay a little longer.

ATELIER

The atelier works as an office, that emphasizes shared knowledge and personal development. Beginning with a collaborative work at the scale of the atelier, you will gradually develop your own approach, while benefiting from the collective knowledge continuously collected. Through drawings and models, you will explore the multiple design phases of a transformation project, following the structure below:

I - Existing fabric (black)

The first exercise involves exploring various aspects related to Crusch Alba and its surroundings, including topography, technical systems, materials, and construction methods. A trip to Crusch Alba will be organized to conduct an architectural survey of the house, document the site, and interact with the village`s daily life and concerns. You will translate the knowledge gained from these experiences into a collective drawing and a shared library of materials. These common productions will be continually developed, while ensuring that the accumulated knowledge is always available to everyone.

II - Demolition (yellow)

Once you`ve gained a thorough understanding of the site, you`ll individually or in groups of two (depending on enrollment) start developping a transformative project for Crusch Alba. When working on an existing site, what is removed is an integral part of the project process. Based on the observations of the existing condition and your way of imagining the spatial translation of programmatic needs, you will imagine what should be removed. What specific value of the building should be kept? What is not necessary ? What are the structural implications ? Can the material extracted be reused elsewhere in the building ? While investigating these questions, you will express your ideas through model drawing yellow lines.

III - New (red)

Finally, you will imagine what needs to be added. Intervening in what already exists requires a daring and imaginative attitude, which must nevertheless take into account multiple aspects, just as when extracting. How does the new interact with the old? How does it serve new functions while embodying value beyond programmatic requirements? Does the new reintegrate elements of the old? How is it built, and what does it look like? How does it feel like ? By tackling these questions, you will develop a project from first sketches to construction detail, building a 1:1 model that displays your investigation of construction methods, materiality, and overall attention to details.