Stable conversion | Bergün

Stable conversion | Bergün

1994 - 1996
in collaboration with Bruno Zurkirchen


Project manager: Daniel Birrer, Dipl. Arch. HTL

Photographer: Ignacio Martinez, A-Lustenau


Bergün is an Alpine village in Grisons. The morphology of the location is characterised by the bipartite nature of the village houses: a stone residential volume towards the village centre and a directly adjoining, agriculturally used half-timber volume facing the landscape. The starting point of the project was its conversion. The project symbolically approaches the task of inserting a new use into an old structure. The new volume embeds itself in between the existing construction and projects somewhat out of the old house front on the side facing the square. This highlights the design’s process of alienation, although, together with the other houses on the square, it also creates a clearly defined exterior space. The measure’s spatial layering is revealed in the interaction between the different façade systems: the large-scale, irregularly opened old buildings made of solid brickwork are set against a regular wooden façade that expresses its prefabrication and includes repetitive window elements.