Stone, wood and bread
At the heart of the Verzasca Valley, two abandoned buildings stand at the entrance of the village: a stone stable and the village bread oven. Rooted in the mountain landscape, their rehabilitation combines heritage preservation with community revitalisation.
The project restores the bread oven and requalifies the space between the two buildings, creating a new physical and functional connection through a new opening in the stable. The oven regains its vault and chimney, allowing the Corippo Foundation to revive traditional baking practices and organise activities around the transmission of local knowledge.
The outside intervention remains deliberately restrained. The stable’s existing envelope is carefully preserved, while its original doors are reused as shutters. A dry-stone retaining wall, rebuilt with stones found on site, accompanies a reoriented staircase and reinforces the continuity with the village’s traditional terraces.
Inside, the original spatial character is maintained. The ground floor accommodates the main bedroom and bathroom, while the intermediate level houses the kitchen and dining area. The attic becomes a flexible sleeping space.
New interventions are clearly expressed through a restrained palette of raw materials, establishing a dialogue with the existing structure: cellular glass blocks and cork-based insulating plaster, spruce for windows and partitions, larch for stairs and floors, and concrete for the bathroom.
Throughout the building, traces of its past remain punctually visible. Existing stones, timber elements, structural beams and window reveals are preserved or revealed, turning the architecture into a continuous dialogue between memory and contemporary use.
The garden, oven and stable now form a shared place for living, gathering and learning.
