Living in the Alps

It is designed as a traveling exhibition and will be held in all eight Alpine states, presenting projects that stand for the development of sustainable, innovative housing and residential concepts in the field of tension between landscape and agglomeration—integrated in the specific circumstances of the Alpine region. For the organizers of the exhibition, it was important to capture a wide range of residential forms, from girls’ boarding schools to senior citizens’ residences, and from subsidized houses for asylum seekers to spectacular secondary homes with a view of the mountains. The question was not how one should live in the Alpine region, but which residential buildings have actually been built in the Alps over the last ten years, and how do people live in them?

It took several months of research to select the projects. More than 200 projects throughout the Alpine region were found that meet the prescribed criteria (at least five living units, completed after the year 2000). From them, a body of 16 experts from the fields of architecture and landscape selected the 37 projects presented here. The result is by no means complete, but an open-ended snapshot of the current situation.

Team of curators: Peter Ebner, Eva Herrmann, Markus Kuntscher, Munich

Merano arte architect group: Georg Klotzner, Angelika Margesin, Markus Scherer, Luigi Scolari

Catalogue: The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive publication, including essays by Miha Dešman, Köbi Gantenbein, Hansjörg Hilti, Wojciech Czaja, Loredana Ponticelli, Christian Schittich, and Axel Sowa, as well as a profound introduction to the particularities of South Tyrol, published by Birkhäuser Verlag. ISBN 978-3-0346-0542-7

An extensive catalogue has been published for the exhibition, including essays by Miha Dešman, Köbi Gantenbein, Hansjörg Hilti, Wojciech Czaja, Loredana Ponticelli, Christian Schittich, and Axel Sowa as well as a profound introduction to the particularities of South Tyrol (Wolfgang Piller, Luigi Scolari, Paolo Mazzoleni).

Editor: Merano arte and Stiftung der Kammer der Architekten der Provinz Bozen [Foundation of the Chamber of Architects in the Province of Bolzano]
Specialist text on residential construction: Peter Ebner (Professor at TU München and curator of the exhibition)
Introduction: Eva Herrmann, Markus Kuntscher (curators of the exhibition)
Design: Andrea Muheim, Lioba Wackernell
Photography: Hartmut Nägele
Birkhäuser Verlag (Basel) 
428 pages
€ 59.90 
ISBN 978-3-0346-0542-7

... “The exhibition catalogue is an important contemporary document of urban planning, architecture, culture and sociological development in the Alpine region. Every South Tyrolean who is interested in the change of our times should have read it in order to better understand the architectural processes in our region.”
Andreas Gottlieb Hempel