Clouds | Mino Caggiula Architects

CLOUDS

Location: Biasca, Svizzera
Built-up area: 1045 mq
Date: 2017 – 2019

“When Pizzo Magno puts on its hat, let go of your sickle and grab your umbrella” 

The project Clouds is located in Biasca, a town in Upper Ticino, a deep, wide valley nestled among the mountains at the foot of Pizzo Magno. The landscape features and the people that live there are founding elements of the project, which has its roots in the life experiences, in the tradition, in the culture of the people that live in this place and on the specific plot of land on which the project originates. Vine cultivation is a predominant peculiarity of this part of Ticino, and of the project site too. The daily rhythm of the farmers is marked by work, the sun and the rain. Besides the passion for working the land handed down from generation to generation, the owner family has also passed down the local saying “Quando il Pizzo Magno ha indossato il cappello, getta la falce e prendi l’ombrello”, which means “When Pizzo Magno puts on its hat, let go of your sickle and grab your umbrella”. The hat represents the clouds that start covering Pizzo Magno and suggest that it’s about to pour. The empirical weather forecasting techniques used in the past are a herald of some typical aspects of today’s daily life there. Hence the metaphorical dialogues between the designer and the client, and the image of The infinite recognition, the famous surrealistic painting with the two men suspended in the clouds, painted by René Magritte in 1963. The conversation “in the clouds” is the metadesign image of this architecture. The actualization of the project includes the human dimension, the orientation of the building and the light play between the spacious terraces, which become part of the volume together with the dualism between man and nature.