The proposal for the Château of Chillon Restaurant & Boutique by Mauro Turin Architectes takes into account the cultural significance of the historical national monument and uses century-old construction along with various updated methodologies. Their aspiration is to add, in a notion of continuity, a new layer of history about the site and the Castle. Therefore, the building is designed in the image of its ambitions, in the expectation in what can be called the expansion of the Castle. More images and architects' description after the break.
The castle of Chillon (1150), become mythical thanks to Lord Byron poem 'The prisoner of Chillon'. The project is an enlarged design in the sense of its own mind. In the understanding of the notion of fortress and protected area; but even from the understanding of its conception from closed areas around open patios.
The closed spaces found their place under the historic road and are developed in the way to be, in the meantime, places of activity and passageways, some connectors between the garden downstairs and the historic road upstairs. At the bottom, they open straight to the historical garden and to the lake. A first space of restaurant activity suggested in direct relationship to them, allows that garden find out a new meaning of life and a dynamic, non-existent actually.
At the top, they are seeking for the extension with the historic road. The proposed relation with this access, with its staircase and its sloping lawn followed by closed spaces characterized from the shop and the second space of catering sector, is an invitation to the discovery to the strollers. The second space of the restaurant activity tries to crowning the willing to produce, with our proposal, a phenomenological experience connected to the space and the time.
Stripping the retaining wall of the historic road, the spatial-temporal experience of the Restaurant & Boutiquethat we offer – magnified by this ancient wall revealed and pierced, that opens to the gap and closed to the walls of the Castle – is indispensable to the time-space experience of the Castle itself. Bolstered by this, we aspire to link inseparably our building to the Castle and therefore to the historic site.
Architects: Mauro Turin Architectes
Location: Château de Chillon, Lake Geneva, Veytaux, Switzerland
Competition Result: Mention/5th place
Year: 2013
