Carlana Mezzalira Pentimalli architectural office competed a music school in Bressanone, Italy.
The completed building is made of monolithic concrete volumes. The exterior walls are decorated with a subtle hand-hammered pattern, thereby adding a textured effect.
The Music School of Bressanone was founded in 1961 and is one of the South Tyrol region's most important cultural institutions. The Trevino-based architectural group honored the institution's historical value with its scaled-back yet subtly decorated design. Boasting straight edges in a modernist style, the building's concrete walls are slightly tinted in a light pink color. The project comprises a compact volume arranged across three stories. The top floor is set back from the external facades to mitigate the school's impact on the city skyline to create a dissolving illusion.
Bressanone’s music school is not only an architectural project, but also an urban one. Designed as a small prototype, the project aims to reopen the debate on what it means to design a truly public building. Located in the northern part of the city, the building represents a new gateway, recovering the morphological settlement principles of the ancient urban fabric and reinterpreting the archetype of the city walls. The intervention is characterised by its compact, bold volume, within which a public urban void has been created.
