Description of project by Jose María Sánchez García
Concorso di architettura, Villa Cristina, Cantina e Spazi Esterni, IAC Mezzana
The Mezzana estate covers most of the jurisdictional territory of Coldrerio and another important part of that of Balerna and Castel San Pietro, which occupies more than 400,000 square meters.
The Cantonal Agricultural Institute (IAC) of Mezzana, created in 1913 thanks to a donation from Pietro Chiesa, has been used since then by the agricultural company and school of the region.
Our proposal aims to become an optimistic intervention capable of qualifying the institution, endowing the complex of buildings (Villa Cristina, ex Torchio, Dormitory, Scuola, Cantina) of an overall order through the correct articulation with the landscape of Mezzana.
According to the requests of the contest, three are the main objectives of the intervention: the landscape design of the exterior spaces, the restoration and rehabilitation of the Villa Cristina building, the renovation and extension of the canteen (cellar).
Landscape and territory
"The Ticino is a landscape of vineyards, terraces and light"
The terraces of the Ticinese villas. It is impossible to dissociate the image of the Ticinese villas from the green and landscaped platforms that precede them. In the case of the Istituto Agrario Cantonale di Mezzana, the main defining element of the landscape of the complex are the large terraced green surfaces in front of Villa Cristina.
The project proposes the extension of this topographical configuration to the north landscape of the Ex Torchio and south of the canteen, which produces an artificialization of the landscape and a naturalization of the architecture, evidencing the man-nature binomial. This achieves landscape integration and functional efficiency, since the platforms allow direct access to the interior of the old building and the extension of the canteen.
A landscape of vineyards. Enter through the vineyards: The continuation of the vineyards on the façade towards the road recovers the spirit of the traditional farmers of Mezzana, accustomed to walking among vineyards, and brings it closer to the visitors of the complex, who are inserted in it through of the vines.
The existing stone fence is respected and, in parallel to it, there are two lines of vines on the front of the canteen and three lines on the front of Villa Cristina. The vine, the grape, its image and its color thus become the true facade of the Istituto Agrario Cantonale di Mezzana towards Via San Gottardo.
Villa Cristina
"The plant distributes the function, the ceilings distribute the story"
Few buildings better reflect the history of Coldrerio and the Cantonale di Mezzana Agra Farm than Villa Cristina. The first news of the existence of the building dates from 1543, when it was owned by the Torriani family. Successive transformations over the centuries made the building a palimpsest of the history of Coldrerio and Ticino: the Raimondi, Cazzola, Conti Mugiasca families ... succeed each other over the centuries until in 1836 the engineer Gaetano's project Bagutti di Rovio prevents a large northern wing.
The configuration of Villa Cristina is volumetrically simple and internally complex. The project proposes the recovery of the original volumes of the vaulted rooms, avoiding unnecessary compartments and eliminating all the current false ceilings. Our proposal is based on the recognition of the singularity of the configuration of the building in plan and section, by means of a double strategy that responds to the need for functional adaptation of the building and its historical reading. The essential architectural criterion:
The plant distributes the function. The partitions in the rooms that must accommodate two different programs are solved with fixed furniture of 2.20 m in height that does not touch the ceiling: they give visual continuity to the space and solve the programmatic compartmentalization, without interfering with the geometry of the vaults. These furniture are functional drawers that structure the floor and house facilities, closets and spaces servers of the adjacent rooms.
The roofs distribute the story. The project recovers the splendor of the original building, showing its successive layers of history through the elimination of false ceilings and added layers, exhibiting the beautiful geometry of successive vaulted rooms, as detailed in point "2.3 Restauro". We understand Villa Cristina as an efficient icon that shows both the history of the building and the entrepreneurial spirit of the current neighbors and farmers.
Cellar
"An architecture that highlights the landscape of Mezzana"
The cantina of the Azienda Agraria Cantonale di Mezzana (AACM) presents an architecture that combines the beauty of exterior facades with a clear Ticinese style and interior spaces characterized by diaphanous rooms in which the configuration of the structure defines the configuration of the space.
For us, the canteen is a building that must maintain and preserve its inner beauty, while it must function as a perfect machine for the proper production of wine inside. The building absorbs in its own architecture the unevenness of the topography, so that the section of the building itself represents the process of wine production, going from being a Ticinese villa in the height + 342.30ma to become an architecture of rectangular chambered efficient way in the field.
The extension is directly linked to the reorganization of the topography and landscape of the front of the canteen.
We understand that, once the adjacent pavilion has been demolished, this extension must be an invisible body that values the surrounding landscape of the vineyards and the architecture of the original building. Therefore, this extension is conceived as an efficient container that forms part of the frontal platform but can not be seen from it, leaving the landscape of vineyards free for the eyes and enjoyment of the visitors and employees of the own canteen.
The extension is a rectangular diaphanous room of constant temperature and humidity surrounded by a chamber in its perimeter, open to the landscape in its frontal part and communicated with the existing building in its later part.
