Casa C in Switzerland by Camponovo Baumgartner Architekten.

Project Name: Casa C.
Location: Reckingen-Gluringen, Switzerland.
Architects: Marianne Julia Baumgartner & Luca Camponovo of Camponovo Baumgartner Architekten.
Photography:  José Hevia

Young Zürich-based architects Marianne Julia Baumgartner and Luca Camponovo have recently converted a hundred year old hay barn into a modern family house in a high valley village in Reckingen-Gluringen. like most buildings in the area, the barn is a protected heritage monument. The challenge was to renovate the structure without destroying it’s outer facade. Structurally, each barn was divided into two units. The architects have kept this structural division, conceiving the house as a new volume trapped inside the existing one. The inner facade is detached from the outer shell in two, creating niches that reveal the height and structure of the original wood.

The holiday unit consists of a undulating living space and small private rooms. A spiral path rises through the rooms with different size, hight and orientation, connecting the two floors. In keeping with the traditional allocation of barns, internal separation between hayloft and stables were maintained. The new building was implemented as integrally made ​​of timber. As a contrast to the dark larch spieces, the walls and ceilings were uniformly covered with birch plywood and the roof is covered with hand-split shingles. All the surfaces are untreated and exposed to natural deterioration.

[Images courtesy of Camponovo Baumgartner Architekten. Photography by José Hevia.]