Brixen

Brixen city centre represents a jump back in time and in local culture for the visitor, consolidated in each and every brick and building of the city. The historical heritage of this town arises through the language of the urban spaces, architecture, materials and shapes that create this city. The thick walls of these buildings hold inside the value and the feeling of time passing by, of human constructive effort, and of the need to live in a place through the definition of clearly constructed borders, thick walls, and deep arches; signs that challenge the disaggregating action of time. Living in this city has a meaning that is inevitably influenced by the protective and welcoming sense conceived by internal spaces, if compared to external life. The great mass constructed and limited number of apertures in the buildings of Brixen historical city centre, talk about an intense and intimate sense of life, almost protected, but at the same time in connection with the external context. The project foresees the construction of a new public library open to citizens of the duomo neighborhood, through redeveloping the former revenue guard corps building and parts of the law court building including a new volume of completion. This project materializes the following sensations: a new volume that can withstand the dialogue with the existing buildings, with the strong walls of the close-by bishops palace or the dom, with the sloped roofs of the urban skyline, with the entrances arches, the loggias and the windows of the many of buildings that plot the dense and fascinating layout of this town.

project team: Alessandro Tessari, Matteo Bandiera, Samuele Evolvi, Nicola Di Pietro, German Pro Lozano, Kay Strasser
project: Public library. Bressanone, Italy
status: International competition. Honourable Mention
date: 08.2010
client: City council of Bressanone