Ivigna Cableway - Departure

The departure station is defined by its relationship to both the built context and the surrounding landscape. This is a contextual approach in terms of how the building engages with its setting, rather than through direct formal references. It is neither imitation nor camouflage.

At its core, the architecture can be read as a folded concrete sheet, shaped by a rigorous geometric logic. This single gesture becomes, in sequence, a framing wall for a highly technological system, a mechanical containment volume, and finally a roof, a continuous envelope that shifts role while maintaining a clear structural and spatial coherence.

The station’s shell suggests, at the same time, a real depth and an apparent depth: the physical depth of the building and the perceived depth of the journey beginning here, the ascent route. The project therefore brings together two dimensions: it tests the observer’s perceptual awareness while also inviting imagination. In this sense, the building is not only something to look at, but something that prompts a reading.

Because architecture is never reducible to what appears through form and material alone, any purely descriptive account risks becoming an incomplete transcription, technical or literary, of what is, in reality, a lived relationship. The valley building is underpinned by the idea of relation: unpredictable by nature, attentive to contemporary needs, and capable of crystallising traces of human movement. Sight and site are inseparable here, and so are motion and emotion.

This intention is reinforced by the design of the dynamic elements, especially the adjustable filters that transform into protective canopies for the public. These “screens,” through controlled variation in their movement, animate the entire station. The building is literally conceived to be looked through, and understood in relation to the voyage, encouraging an authentic emotional geography tied to arrival, waiting, departure, and ascent.

Along the road frontage, a transparent volume draws attention. At the same time, an intentionally ambiguous wall conceals parts of the building, delaying its full revelation. The station gradually discloses itself: first through a proscenium-like opening, then through an arch marking the threshold where the cable cars finally appear.

Even in its mechanised aspects, the new cableway system expresses a high level of technological advancement, reflecting the operator’s ambition to elevate the station as a gateway, a passage and a new point of access to the route leading to the Monte Ivigna ski area. The moving components that enable this ascent are offered to view through different degrees of permeability, allowing visitors to sense the machine without reducing the building to pure display.

The administrative volume interprets permeability in a different way: it uses mechanically operable screens and horizontal openings that heighten transparency, framing views of the surrounding nature. Interior and exterior continuously interpenetrate through a network of paths, absorbing and distinguishing them at once. Even the external relationship—never truly “other”, is echoed in the geometric screen pattern, where stylised tree trunks form the project’s graphic motif.

In response to the competition brief, the design develops distinct yet complementary circulation routes, ensuring maximum operational flexibility, including for functions not directly accessible to the public. Administration, ticketing, and the multipurpose room can operate together or independently, each with dedicated, exclusive routes when required.

The management functions are organised to balance connectivity and autonomy: maintaining direct contact with the landscape while enabling clear supervision of the entire system.

Arrival is marked by the canopy at the end of the conveyor belt, positioned at the edge of the woodland and facing the ticketing area. This canopy acts as a projection of the ticketing hall into the landscape, towards the forest, made legible on the ground through a porphyry stone paving.

Finally, the station is designed for full accessibility on all sides, accommodating vehicles of any size: because this is where the journey begins.

client. Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano

year. 2009