16.7.2014 – Issue 15 - Fire – Steinemann Ramias, von Mackensen Till, Hotz Anna, Mateo Josep Lluís, Schmidlin Chasper – Studio

A Guesthouse on Stromboli

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Anna Hotz, Till von Mackensen, Chasper Schmidlin, Ramias Steinemann

DANGER & DEBILITY

Fire certainly can be dangerous and out of control, destructive and aggressive.
In these conditions, architecture can insist on the protective hardness of the
bunker as the fi rst condition of the project. However, this is not, of course, the
only option.
The project can, conversely, highlight fragility, temporality and lightness as a
conceptual, plastic argument. It will exist without resisting.
It is the same contrast with which Rossellini operates in the fi lm Stromboli: a
white, ethereal Ingrid Bergman in the dark, rugged, petrous world of the volcano.
(1) produces a provisional project, without tectonics: cables, scaff olding, canvas.
A kind of nomad’s tent.
(2) hovers, fl oating, above the lava.


SUBLIME & PICTURESQUE

Faced with nature, the project could be seen from the viewpoint not of detail,
material or picturesque composition, but of what, in the eighteenth century, was
defi ned as the aspiration to the sublime: abstraction, geometry, pure, oblivious,
brilliant form.
A diff icult project, chancy but exciting. Using the same geometry, the circle, (1)
is purely metaphysical, sacred; (2) is more mundane, but not more convincing for
all that.


INFRASTRUCTURE

In nature, almost always, the inhuman logic of infrastructure (bridges, dams,
dikes, motorways…), with its engineering reason and its diff erence, relates aff ectionately
by opposition to it.
Here, (1) and (2) are bridges and the horizontal structural logic of traff ic is the
main attraction.
(3) is vertical, a great inhabited pillar.
All of them, with their rustic construction, their tectonic massiveness and their
geometric rigidness, confi gure an aff ectionate yet distant relation with the harsh,
turbid, petrous world of the volcano


LAVA

The ground is a hard crust, particles of fire solidified to form lava. The project can be conceived as a new layer of elementary points, cubic cells juxtaposed at random.
Light (one of the characteristics of fire) is the basic criterion that structures them.


STROMBOLICCHIO

Nature sometimes offers us bizarre constructions that are rather like buildings. In this case, the project can address this base with the same dialoguing logic that new architecture brings to the old. In this case, like a bird that settles lightly on a fixed point, over the sea, before continuing its journey.