Community Centre in Corpataux-Magnedens
In the Swiss canton Fribourg, when two villages were recently consolidated, a need arose for a new community centre. The design is based on contextuality: It seeks to sustain the town’s traditions with respect to form and materiality. The architects sited the new building in keeping with the other important buildings (church, school, dining establishments, etc.): the gable is perpendicular to the street. In front of the entrance is a new village square, its centre occupied by a tree. The pitched roof picks up on the existing formal vocabulary of Freiburg’s farmsteads, which have no overhang whatsoever. The entire building’s outer skin of calcareous tufa emphasizes its sharp-edged appearance. The facade incorporates stones of three different widths, and the transition is smooth to the roof’s shingled slabs. As time passes, this surface will host a variety of mosses, and the building will thus take on a natural patina. Calcareous tufa has large pores and can thereby prevent ground moisture from rising up into it, an ideal building material that has been used in this area from time immemorial for buildings’ bases and foundations. The stone had previously been provided by a nearby quarry, but the efforts to revive the disused quarry were not successful, and Italian stone was ultimately used.
