Hugging Method

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

Ancient Brixen, in the Italian style of Bressanone, is a city in the very north of Italy, in South Tyrol. Founded in 901 and flourished in the Middle Ages as the center of a large bishopric, an independent state within the Holy Roman Empire, controlling an important route from Germany to Italy. Now Brixen has a little more than 20,000 inhabitants, but it is successful as a tourist center: skiing in winter, trekking in summer - hiking. So the staff of the City Tourism Office grew, new premises were required, as well as a modern tourist information center.

The competition, held in 2016, was won by the local Brixen-based bureau MoDusArchitects, which has since become famous for its participation in the Italian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, dedicated to the work of architects for the country's small towns.

It was not necessary to choose a place for the pavilion, it is traditional and reasonable: here the road from the station and the motorway at an acute angle merges with the one that runs along the city wall, behind which rises the Hofburg episcopal palace, one of the main local attractions. From here begins the pedestrian zone of the old city, so the authors define their building as the "new gate" of Brixen.

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1/4 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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2/4 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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3/4 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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4/4 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects

From the end of the 19th century on this place, replacing each other, there were buildings with the same purpose - to welcome visitors. The previous pavilion, 1968, was built by Otmar Barth, a key South Tyrolean contemporary architect. By 2016, it was dilapidated and urgently demanded reconstruction, but a very familiar story happened: the local committee for the protection of monuments insisted on careful restoration, and there could be no question of any expansion. Well, no way, no - and the modernist pavilion was simply demolished, like several of its predecessors.

The authors of the current project call this process of replacing one building with another "deliberate architectural murder" and, paying tribute to the memory of previous buildings, use the same typology and characteristic elements - a loggia, a console, the contrast of transparent glass at the bottom and massive concrete at the top.

Only the volume became larger: one of the objectives of the project was to expand: new spaces, both public and working. Therefore, the building occupied almost the entire spot of the triangular promontory at the intersection and became two-story: the glass lower floor was given to visitors and treated as a public space, the concrete upper one is intended for the offices of management employees. The height of the building is 9 meters. Concrete walls were cast using a special technology that avoided horizontal seams and ensured the perception of the volume as solid and sculptural; in addition, the architects emphasize that the walls are load-bearing and form a single structure with floor beams and retaining walls, whose presence on the ground floor is minimized to the extent that engineering necessity allowed it somewhat. For the sake of brutal roughness, the outer surface of the concrete is processed with a catfish hammer.

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1/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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2/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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3/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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4/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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5/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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6/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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7/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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8/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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9/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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10/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz
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11/11 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center Photo © Oskar Da Riz

The contours of the plan are formed by street lines and several arcs: one of them outlines the new city square at the headland of the intersection - on this side, under a deeply extended console, there is an entrance for visitors. Another, in this case the main, arc is drawn around the majestic hundred-year-old plane tree preserved by the architects - a kind of large niche or, more precisely, a courtyard open to one of the streets is formed around it. The pavilion seems to be hugging a tree with concrete wings, hence the name - TreeHugger, “hugging a tree”. However, let's not forget that this phrase also means environmentalist and can be understood as the self-name of the authors: MoDus architects are known for their respect for vegetation.

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1/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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2/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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3/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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4/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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8/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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9/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects
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10/10 TreeHugger Tourist Information Center © MoDusArchitects

On the whole, the pavilion reacts to the environment like a friendly alien from the cartoon "Contact": it stretches with the roof outlets, as if trying to gently touch, delicately retreats with arcuate cutouts. The beveled contours of the windows make the facade look like a face with a curious, but at the same time sadly amazed, gentle expression: two eyes-windows look at the plane tree, three - at the curly frames of the episcopal palace.

Туристический информационный центр TreeHugger Фотография © Oskar Da Riz

It also “notices” the corner turrets of the palace park fence, designed in the early 19th century in the form of exotic pavilions. According to the architects, the curved lines of their project "interpret the exotic forms of the dome of the Japanese pavilion and, especially, of the Chinese pagoda."

In an effort to explore an unusual world for himself, the "newcomer" perceives and, to the best of his ability, imitates its forms: the building, as it were, pulls together important vantage points, focuses the tourist's attention on the monuments even before entering the city, and outlines the route of inspection. Plus a flat roof

will probably be used as an observation deck, from where familiar objects will appear in a new perspective.

Window-eyes and an abundance of curved surfaces push us to compare with the plastic experiments of the early 20th century, for example, with Einstein's tower by Erich Mendelssohn, but the surfaces are not convex, but concave, sharp angles are formed between them, and in general the form seems to be formed not so much by organic vitality expressionism, how much with the opposite effect - circular removal of the mass. An array of buildings appears in the space of the city and at the same time retreats from it, trying to take up as little space as possible.

The construction cost 1.8 million euros.