2021 – 2023
The building has been proposed for inclusion in the local heritage list of Bellinzona in recognition of its contribution to late 19th, early 20th century urban development as part of Vicolo Sottocorte. In fact this used to be an area of villas and townhouses which, with their parks and gardens, formed a small neighbourhood close to the government building and the old town. Over the last few decades many buildings have been demolished and replaced by new constructions of quite different dimensions, changing the nature of the quarter.
The building is characterised by a typical symmetrical structure and an academic architectural and decorative language. It underwent major renovation in the ’70s and ’80s, both internal and external, which transformed it.
The intervention is intended as an architecture of reconnection that reproduces the characteristic elements of the existing building by restoring the original colour-scheme and the rhythm of the full and empty spaces of the façades, but – with its vertical extension – is also seen as a contemporary architecture of dialogue with the present context.
Fotografie: © 2023 Marcelo Villada Ortiz