Chiasso and it is surroundings, especially Vacallo and the Italian municipalities Maslianico and Sagnino are spatially and culturally close together. Nevertheless a place of exchange does not exist. Considering Chiasso as a border city with a strategic importance about immigration, the project proposes to reconnect the site with all the municipal schools of the surroundings and create a new communal, borderless space of interaction. Through the proposed Masterplan the Highway E35 will be demolished and replaced with a park and a natural area for recreation along the river. The proposed hill is a part of this ecological corridor, which reuses the earth from the new tunnel project on the other side of Chiasso, within the park Spina Verde.
The customhouse Brogeda, today, is more a limit and a separation between Chiasso and its surroundings, rather than a place of reunion. Being on an important ecological corridor along the river, it‘s topographical importance could only be understand by looking at the old pictures of the area before the built highway in the mid 50s.
The new communal center on the reconstructed hill functions both as a park, a place to meet and as a connection and reunion of the four places and two countries. The park is constructed with three connection methods: an underground building, horizontal paths around the hill and vertical connections to the riverside. Especially the loop around the hill expands the park and connects it profoundly to its surroundings. The vertical connections, the steps, are seeming-less put in the earth which creates a natural method of a way-net and therefore the whole surface of the park becomes an active landscape.
The parks structure is dominated by the sculpture-like, simple geometric building pieces. The underground buildings openings and entrances of white concrete walls become the character of the continuous park. The building is a way to connect the upper part of the hill with stairs and an exhibition ramp.. The building with its flexible function is nothing but a place of exchange. The proposed function as a communal center includes special programs for immigrants, especially young immigrants, giving them a space to create and find reason. The collective space is characterized by the openings which bring the vegetation to the intimate underground world.
Project for
Diploma Nunes & Gomes
Accademia di architettura Mendrisio
2020