Screening on location: Matteo Thun
- tbergstra
- Oct 2, 2024
- 3 min read
We are pleased to announce a film and discussion event of the Dutch Mountain Film Festival (DMFF), which will take place in the new space of the second phase of the GTB Lab. An afternoon where, in addition to the screening of the ARD documentary about the Tyrolean architect Matteo Thun, we will - as he does - consider the question of how to build ecologically and sustainably in the mountains.
For some time, architect Matteo Thun, born in the Italian city of Bolzano, has been occupying himself with the question as to how buildings can stay in harmony with the landscape and the ecology of the Alps. The globetrotter, who loves coming home, spends a lot of time in the mountains.
His Vigilius Mountain Resort, a hotel high on the Vigiljoch in Soth Tyrol, built entirely from timber and consciously blends into its surroundings, has drawn international critique. It provides an answer to some of the most pressing questions regarding tourist architecture in the Alps: how can ecologically sustainable buildings be constructed using local materials? How can a contemporary design language be found that respects traditional building cultures and at the same time provide an innovative impulse? How do you make tourist infrastructure more aesthetically pleasing for an audience which has a penchant for design?
“I have learned more about architecture from hill-farmers in South Tyrol than I did at university,” he explains. “Those who live in the mountains have always had one abiding problem, that of poverty. Having so little forces you to make do with what you have: anything that has no use is worthless. And that’s what good design is all about.” Thun has produced other examples of high-quality Alpine architecture. In Katschberg in Austria, for instance, with two residential tower blocks, where he has proven that high-rise construction can be sensible in a landscape that is three-dimensional by definition and he has been active for some time in the outlying areas of the Bavarian Alps. In Bad Aibling, he was involved in the”City of Wood” project, an environmentally friendly neighbourhood of timber houses, and in Bad Wiessee, where he planned the area surrounding the new iodine-sulphur bathhouse.
