Atelier Olgiati

Olgiati's ancestors have owned the land in the center of the village of Flims for several centuries. Here stands a 240-year-old stone house that Valerio's father Rudolf Olgiati sensitively reconstructed for a long forty years. Recently, a garage was built on the southern edge of the property, which is part of the stone wall, and the most recent addition is the new headquarters of Valerio Olgiati's architectural office. The studio mimics the size, roof shape, and external dimensions of the wooden barn that originally stood here. Due to local regulations, a wooden structure had to be used. The floating mass of the studio rests on a concrete plinth, supported by a communication core with a spiral staircase and a quartet of columns of differing cross-sections (2x33/33cm and 2x66/66cm). Another structural peculiarity is that the columns do not stand at the corners of the square floor plan, but always in the middle of each side. The corners of the concrete slab carrying the entire studio thus behave like cantilevers. The concrete slab is separated from the surrounding terrain, which gradually rises from the main street, by a thirty-centimeter gap. Anyone coming from the north through the main entrance to the studio must cross this gap.
The design consists of four levels. The basement houses an archive with technical facilities, the open ground floor serves as a parking area, the main space represents the architectural studio, and in the attic above it is a meeting room. The opposite facades with a gentle pitched roof are dominated by extensive glazed areas. Large skylights and trapezoidal cutouts in the wooden ceiling between the studio and the meeting room ensure plenty of light in the deep layout of the studio. The acoustic separation of these two floors is ensured by the glazing of the upper gallery. The two-axis crossed symmetry with a central core is disrupted by the diagonal of the upper gallery and the addition of an open concrete staircase. The black-painted interior and the external wooden walls are meant to express the extroverted nature and openness of the studio, which stands in direct opposition to the neighboring white family house. The chosen black color also eliminates confusing reflections on the large glazed surfaces.
Olgiati's work is always rational. However, his projects can provoke irritation at first glance, as one must first find the key to their understanding.

Source: Lecture by Valerio Olgiati on June 5, 2008, at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana