Between digital fabrication and historical memory
In Mulegns, a village of 16 inhabitants and a tower: Tor Alva intertwines baroque memory and 3D printing. A symbol of the Zuckerbäcker and ETH research, it combines art, technology and territory in a visionary work 30 metres high. An algorithmic dream in the heart of Grisons.
Testo in italiano al seguente link
Tor Alva, Mulegns GR
In Mulegns, a village of just sixteen inhabitants in the Albula Valley, Tor Alva is an experimental structure that is nearing completion. It is a symbol of the pastry-making for which the inhabitants of the Grisons valley were famous in the past, as well as a testimony to the technical expertise that characterizes the research carried out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Over the centuries, the entire area has been deeply affected by the depopulation caused by the emigration of master builders, plasterers and confectioners – the Zuckerbäcker –, famous throughout Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries. This is the context in which the Tor Alva project was born, on the initiative of the Nova Fundaziun Origen, which has been working for years to regenerate and revitalise these areas. Tor Alva, whose inauguration is scheduled for 20th of May 2025, aims to tell the cultural history of the region.
The tower is 30 m high and has six tapered floors, ranging in diameter from 6-8 m, with an oval dome topping it off. The bold shapes of the 32 twisted columns that make up the building allude to the craftsmanship of the masters of the Grisons Baroque; the unique Y-shaped design, the brainchild of Jürg Conzett, ensures that the structure responds to both horizontal and vertical forces. A spiral staircase provides access to the public. The entrance is through a listed building whose foundations consist of a rigid concrete structure anchored to the ground beneath the building. The fourth of the external floors, designed as a multifunctional space for theatrical performances, concerts or exhibitions, will have a stage and seating for 45 visitors, who will be able to enjoy the landscape as an artistic stage, animated by natural light and the atmosphere of the different seasons; in fact, the tower will also be usable during the winter months, thanks to a removable external protective membrane. The multifaceted identity of the project is thus open to different interpretations: lighthouse or lantern - as the designers point out - symbol of historical memory and tourist attraction, observation point and testimony of technical-scientific research.
Developed at ETH’s Digital Building Technologies (DBT) department, Tor Alva demonstrates the possibilities of research in computational design, digital fabrication, structural engineering and materials science. Thanks to a robotic 3D printing process, concrete was applied through a nozzle only where structurally necessary, minimising material consumption and eliminating the need for formwork. The parts were printed in Zurich, assembled in Savognin and then installed on site, so that they can be reused if the structure performs as expected during its five-year life in Mulegns.
The tower, the result of a bold and innovative technology, is a kind of manifesto for the possibilities of 3D printing in architecture, showing how it is possible to build while reducing the use of materials and CO2 emissions. From an expressive point of view, the use of the so-called «Zuckerbäcker» style underlines the formal freedom that the use of these techniques allows, opening up to a formal and decorative research that is certainly not dictated by technical or constructional constraints. The client’s explicit request that the tower should symbolise the local pastry-making tradition found fertile ground in the architects’ previous experiments with opera sets or museum installations in the field of the Digital Grotesque. In Mulegns, we see a kind of change of scale: from the closed environment of museums and theatres, the creation of architectural spaces with the help of machine learning algorithms is applied to a real building, raising a question that is perhaps uncomfortable, but certainly relevant today: «Can a computer not only generate, but also evaluate the forms it produces? What kind of a world will the computer dream up?».
Place Mulegns
Client Nova Fundaziun Origen, Chur
Development Dr. Giovanni Netzer, Director of the Nova Fundaziun Origen
Architecture Prof. Dr. Benjamin Dillenburger, Digital Building Technologies ETHZ, Michael Hansmeyer
work team Dr. A. Anton (Research Lead), E. Skevaki, Che Wei Lin, Ming-Yang Wang, L. Kitani, Su Huang, Dr. K. Graser (Project Coordination)
Civil engineering Conzett Bronzini Partner, Chur
Construction management Anja Diener, Nova Fundaziun Origen - Invias, Maienfeld
Structure Prof. Dr. W. Kaufmann, Institute for Structural Engineering ETHZ
work team Dr. A. Giraldo Soto, Dr. L. Gebhardr
Materials Prof. Dr. Robert Flatt, Institute for Building Materials ETHZ
work team Dr. T. Wangler, Dr. L. Reiter
Building Physics and acustic Martin Kant, Chur
Lighting technology Serge Schmucki, Tokyoblue, Zürich
Geodesy Prof. Dr. Andreas Wieser, Geosensors and Engineering Geodesy ETHZ
ETH Robotic Fabrication Lab M.Lyrenmann, P. Fleischmann, T. Hartmann, L. Petrus, J. Leu
Industry Partners Mesh AG and Zindel United (Research on reinforced concrete printing)
Timeline realizzazione|realisation 2024; smontaggio previsto|dismantling expected 2029