6° place on the competition for the new nursing home in the municipality of Val Mara, Melano district

The Municipality of Val Mara has issued a call for tenders with the objective of constructing a new medicalised home for the elderly with 60 beds, divided into two care housing units, as well as a daytime social welfare centre that will accommodate approximately 15 users.

The competition programme calls for both indoor and outdoor collective spaces and community facilities that are also accessible to the public. The project includes a parking garage with 130 parking spaces available in part to residents and employees of the new facility, and a civil defense shelter.

The competition area is located at the foot of the wooded slopes of Monte Generoso, on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano. The site is located at the transition line between the hilly morphology and that of the lake shore, characterised by a contained slope, and is also located at the transition point between the core and the extensive residential expansion.

The new building is inserted following the structure parallel to the hill, along Via Capeleta. This clear stance allows the street space to be defined, generating a contrast with the open space of the Filanda courtyard, in the logic of the spatial sequence of the entire axis running through the municipality. This arrangement is grafted into the transition point of the morphology of the territory, defining at the junction point an empty, public space that welcomes the hill and emphasises this spatial relationship.

Longitudinally, the space finds a point of connection with the spinning mill courtyard, relating an open space upstream with an open one downstream, in a sequence that reinforces both the morphological characteristic of the land and the urban characteristic of development along the road axis.

The new park gathered between the building and the hill, can thus bring back memories of the space defined by walls originally present at the spinning mill.

Model: Modelli Marchesoni