The story of Petrarca mountain hut embodies in an exemplary way the specific character of alpine architecture and tells us about his role as the last outpost in the mountain. It represents a sort of territorial threshold that identifies the limit between the anthropic habitat and the wilderness and exemplifies the chance for architecture to become a resistant element against the uncontrolled forces of nature while preserving its intrinsic transience.
The project investigates this limit, offering an ambivalent interpretation that is generated by the contrast between formal resistance and constantly changing materials. A rough volume, indirectly sculpted by the avalanches, covered with metal panels: the geometry of the building is shaped by nature itself as a solid that can't be deformed but it reacts to the variations of light and temperature.
The proposed volume becomes a deliberately unclear landmark because displays different profiles to the hiker depending on the side which he/she is coming from. Moulded as an archaic architecture, independent from the permanent architectural typologies but designed in continuity with the scale of the landscape, the mountain hut is grafted on the existent foundation and it is characterized by an empty space between the new building and the existing block of the cableway.
This space represents the ideal connection element between the existing context and the new graft, between past and future and becomes also an extraordinary place to observe the exceptional surrounding landscape. This space tells us about the complementarity of resistance and transience of the alpine architecture, the flow of the becoming and the constant renewal of the link among humans, architecture and mountain.
