© Simon Menges
- Architects: Barozzi Veiga
- Location: Chur, Switzerland
- Architect In Charge: Fabrizio Barozzi , Alberto Veiga
- Project Leader: Katrin Baumgarten
- Area: 4000.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Simon Menges
- Project Team: Paola Calcavecchia, Shin Hye Kwang, Maria Eleonora Maccari, Anna Mallen, Verena Recla, Laura Rodriguez, Ivanna Sanjuan, Arnau Sastre, Cecilia Vielba
- Local Architect: Schwander & Sutter Architekten
- Project Manager: Walter Dietsche Baumanagement AG
- Landscape Architect: Paolo Bürgi Landschaftsarchitekt
- Structural Engineer: Ingenieurbüro Flütsch
- Services Engineers: Waldhauser Haustechnik AG Brüniger + Co. AG Niedermann Planung GmbH
- Façade Consultant: x-made SLP
- Lighting Consultant: MichaelJosefHeusi GmbH
- Museum Expert: BOGNER.CC – die museumsplaner
- Building Physics: Kuster + Partner AG
- Security Consultant: Mullis+Cavegn AG
- Fire Protection Consultant: Balzer Ingenieure AG, AFC – Air Flow Consulting AG
- Door Consultant: Brütsch Elektronik AG
- Signage: Weiersmüller Bosshard Grüninger WBG | AG
© Simon Menges
The extension of the Villa Planta, which will accommodate the Bündner Kunstmuseum, is an exercise of integration within an urban ensemble. Despite the stringent limitations of the plot, the design strives to minimize its exterior volume by inverting the program’s logical order. Hence, a new public space is generated that incorporates the garden that surrounds the Villa and is integrated with the gardens of the nearby buildings.
© Simon Menges
This programmatic reversal consists of situating the exhibition spaces below ground level, in such a way that the emerging volume, above street level, contains only the public access spaces. The volume’s reduced footprint makes it possible to extend the existing garden and improves the cohesion of the ensemble.
Plan 0
Plan -1
The extension is understood as an autonomous building, independent from the historical building, even though the design’s main e orts are aimed at reinterpreting those concepts that allow an architectural dialogue to be established between the two buildings in a clear and coherent relationship that is a continuum between the Villa Planta and its extension.
© Simon Menges
This dialogue between the new and the old buildings is based upon the equilibrium that exists between their classical structures, a clear reference to the Palladian in uence in Villa Planta, and to its ornamentation. As for their spatial organization, both buildings present a central symmetrical plan and both use geometry as a tool for cohesion. In the extension, this classical con guration also makes it possible to simplify the structural system and to organize the exhi- bition halls on the lower levels.
Elevation
Section
As for the ornamentation system, the Villa Planta’s ornaments speak of the Oriental in uences of its origins, while in the extension, the compositional system of the facades reinforces its expressivity and autonomy with respect to the Villa. Each building displays its own identity, based on common principles (structure and ornament), to reinforce the idea of a whole.
© Simon Menges
The process of the purging of super uous elements which began with the designs for Piloña and Lausanne reaches a point of maturity in the Bündner Museum. Here, the design strips away everything that is not structure, construction and programmatic division, all united in a single whole.
© Simon Menges
Sig Nordal 