Grisons Art Museum Extension, Chur

Estudio Barozzi Veiga

Products

1035
Door handle fitting

In the autumn of 1996, Düssel­dorf-based in­te­rior de­signer Heike Falken­berg asked FSB to recre­ate an old handle design for a ren­o­va­tion job. Using the sketch she sub­mit­ted, FSB’s de­vel­op­ers milled a pro­to­type out of the FSB 1076 handle. It was re­cently rein­ter­preted by giving it a square rose.

1035
Door handle fitting
1031
Door handle fitting

Always in search of specifics

The Swiss canton of Grisons is famous for an ar­chi­tec­tural land­scape with the world’s highest density of show­piece build­ings per in­hab­i­tant. Re­spon­si­ble for this de­vel­op­ment is Peter Zumthor, who moved to Chur in 1968 and paved the way for many col­leagues to do like­wise. The cre­ative verve di­min­ished with time, however, before Estudio Barozzi Veiga from Barcelona in­tro­duced a breath of fresh air with its ex­ten­sion of the Grisons Art Museum. The Italo-His­panic team of Fab­rizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga have a way all their own of ad­dress­ing any build­ing venture: “We always ap­proach a lo­ca­tion in the same manner: first we want to un­der­stand it, then develop a feeling for it and finally trans­late all that into our way of working. We always look for specifics”.

The specifics in the case of the Grisons Art Museum pri­mar­ily con­cerned the bond with the “head­quar­ters” of the Grisons art col­lec­tion, the listed Villa Planta (built 1874-1876). Barozzi/Veiga de­signed an elegant cube 58 feet high that “ab­stractly re-in­ter­prets the Pal­la­dian Villa Planta”. The façade, made up of spe­cially de­vel­oped square cas­settes in re­in­forced con­crete with sides 1 foot 8 inches long, con­nects the ex­ten­sion with the orig­i­nal build­ing, the garden and the en­vi­rons. The new build­ing, though an in­te­gral part, is nev­er­the­less highly dis­tinc­tive. This is also why the ar­chi­tects heavily min­imised the ex­te­rior and placed the ex­hi­bi­tion spaces below ground.

Access to the broad, sun-soaked, six­teen-foot-high foyer is via a low glass door en­sconced in a slender lofty frame. A floor-to-ceil­ing window to the west es­tab­lishes the cor­re­la­tion with the Villa Planta, setting it off like a framed work of art. The ar­chi­tects sought to bond the two build­ings to­gether as nat­u­rally as pos­si­ble. And where there are doors to be over­come, the ar­chi­tects quite de­lib­er­ately opted for handles from the House of FSB.

Building details

Photos: Simon Menges

Location

Bündner Kunstmuseum

Bahn­hof­s­trasse 35
7000 Chur
Switzer­land

Di­rec­tions