Italian architects modostudio have won an invited competition to design a new headquarters for a private arts and sciences foundation on top of a mountain at Laives, close to Bozen in Italy.

Work on their design for the Elisabeth and Helmuth Uhl Foundation will start next year.

More Dezeen stories about modostudio:

Ex Fonderie Reunite in Modena
Ciudad del Medio Ambiente in Murcia, Spain

Here's some info from the architects:

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Elisabeth and Helmuth Uhl foundation

Location: Laives – Italy

Client: Elisabeth and Helmuth Uhl foundation

Phase: architectural restricted competition | winning project

Area: 1.150 sqm

Construction budget: confidential

Year: 2009

Design team: Modostudio (Fabio Cibinel, Roberto Laurenti, Giorgio Martocchia)

Consultants: structural engineer: KHing Knippers Helbig Beratende Ingenieure Consulting Engineers

The project is the winning design of a competition by invitation which have seen the participation of five teams from Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

The goal of the competition was to design a building able to host the activities of the foundation. It will be located on the top of a mountain facing the valley towards Bozen. The site has a spectacular panoramic view and an amazing surrounding.

The project wants to preserve the environment using the same footprint of the existing buildings which will be demolished once the construction will start.

It will host a glasshouse for experimental plants colture, researcher’s room, a refectory and other spaces to support the foundation activities.

The design wants to express the tension generated from the particular site and from the specific functions of the foundation building.

A tension generated from the relation between the indoor spaces and the outdoor environment, between the traditions of the site and the innovation of the foundation research, between the space for working and for living.

The project wants to protect its guests from the particular climatic conditions but at the same time to take advantages from the spectacular surroundings and environment.

The design will take care about sustainability. Most of the used material will be recovered from the demolishing buildings, an innovative photovoltaic + solar system will be experimented for the first time. The building will be Klimahouse certified.

“Elisabeth and Helmut Uhl Foundation“

Founded in 2008 and named after the parents of the founder, Rainer Uhl, the „Elisabeth und Helmut Uhl Stiftung“ is a non-profit organization (öffentliche Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts) based in Gräfelfing near Munich.

Aim of the foundation is to advance sciences and arts by

• advancing networking between disciplines and cultures in order to create innovations for the society,

• fostering individual (highly gifted) frontier runners and lateral thinkers, who exemplify such networking,

• Organizing interdisciplinary and intercultural meetings,

• Promoting an architecture, which combines sustained ecological aims with a novel, gentle esthetics.