Calamity Atelier

Mount Olympus, Mount Ararat, Mount Sinai. In any culture and religion, mountains have been the place of encounter with the divine.

There, where the earth extends to the sky, human beings have always glimpsed a further meaning. The mountain is a mystical place where to be in contact with the invisible, with transcendence. It is the place where human adventures culminate. It is the place where to find answers to the most anguished enigmas.  In a world where sacred spaces daily erode, mountains are still pure places. They are spaces that are difficult to reach. There, human structures hardly affect ancestral balances that can still generate valuable experiences.

Without any doubt, one of those experiences is Arte Sella. Arte Sella is situated in between two stone peaks. For more than 30 years, it has been attracting to the mountains of the homonymous valley the most astonishing contemporary artists and architects. Here, creative geniuses have left their mark generating the most important art-nature route in the world. However, it is known that mountains can be fickle and nature can be both a mother and a cruel stepmother. During the night of the 29th October 2018 an unprecedented storm hit Arte Sella. It damaged hectares of secular woods and left a trail of devastation of mud, uprooted stumps and felled trees.

Today Arte Sella is wounded and severely damaged. Now more than ever, it needs creativity and planning. For this reason, YAC is pleased to present Calamity Atelier. This competition aims at regenerating the largest art park of the contemporary scenario. It will do so by creating a system of ateliers and architectural works in order to make artists and visitors go back to those mountains.

What dwellings to build for the greatest artists of the world? How to encourage people to go back to places that have been severely hit by a natural disaster through architecture?

Architects will have the opportunity to design a system of works to be placed on the mountains, which have been damaged by the storm. Such system will aim at taking back the fascination and beauty of one the most outstanding artistic experimentation scenarios of the world. Like modern sanctuaries, the interventions that the competition aims to generate will have to transform this place into a pilgrimage destination for visitors and artists. Season after season, they will have the chance to witness and contribute to the rebirth of the park. Everything will occur in the endless cycle of nature. Here, nature is represented by one of its most unpredictable and magniloquent expressions: mountains.

Yac thanks all the designers who will take part in this challenge.