A Wooden Shelter Open to the Landscape: A Project Born From YACademy Courses

It was 2019 when, within the workshop of YACademy’s course in Architecture for Landscape, a group of international students developed the project for a bivouac for the Brédy family. Today, thanks to that experience, a magnificent new intervention of contemporary architecture arises in the mountains of Aosta Valley, signed by Chiara Tessarollo, Skye Sturm and Facundo Arboit, alumni of the prestigious international academy.

Each year, YACademy courses offer their students the opportunity to work on real projects for clients of absolute prestige. In 2019, through the collaboration between YACademy and Cantieri d’Alta Quota – an Italian association oriented towards assembled architecture field study and research – the workshop topic concerned the design of a small bivouac in the Vertosan valley.

The design of this project was the Brédy family’s way of paying homage to the memory of their family member Claudio, fond of mountaineering and hiking, who tragically lost his life in those mountains in August 2017.

Under the tutorship of Roberto Dini, an expert in mountain architecture and tutor for that year’s Architecture for Landscape workshop at YACademy, the two teams of students submitted 8 different bivouac proposals.

The theme was a mixture of a series of interesting design elements: on the one hand the relationship with nature, enchanting yet conveying a series of technical complexities from which mountain projects are never exempt; on the other hand, the creation of an architecture that evokes, despite the compact spaces, the passions, the life, and the personality of Claudio, to whom it was dedicated.

At the end of the course, a small competition among the alumni, also carried out in collaboration with the Aosta Valley Architects order, led to the assignment of the project design to 3 students, organized in a collective. 

Step by step, the collective–thanks to the support of Cantieri d’Alta Quota and Chenevier S.p.a.–came to the realization of the project, culminating with the on-site installation between September 27th and October 9th, 2021.

The result is an architectural product with simple and elegant shapes: an abstract volume, suspended on its slender pillars, and open towards the valley thanks to a large window. Like a telescope, the bivouac looks towards the south, embracing and welcoming a beautiful mountain landscape. The interior, with exposed wood finishes, is warm and welcoming: it can accommodate up to 6 people, whose activities are optimized by a series of retractable elements. A particular space is also given to a small library, which represents a point where the bivouac guests can share reading and experiences, recalling Claudio’s passion for reading. 

“Projects born within YACademy courses that are realized outside the academy are more and more frequent”, comments Alessandro Cecchini,  director of YACademy, “and this is something that fills us with passion and pride. YACademy’s goal is to create a privileged environment, which favors the affirmation of young people, giving them concrete job opportunities and the chance to better express their thoughts and ideas, directly in contact with the greatest designers of the world: stories such as the Brédy bivouac, in a certain way, tell us that we are going towards the right direction”.

YACademy’s new educational offer has just been published, with many opportunities awaiting young designers.