Villa Baro­nessa: Archi­tecture. Colour. Atmo­sphere.

Two Baro­nesses and a lottery win

The Villa Baro­nessa, built by Walter Pinzer in the 1950s, was the garden and tea house of the neigh­bouring palace of the Baro­nesses Weih­rauch di Pauli and marked the sou­thern end of the extensive private park of the splendid estate.

From here the view wanders far into the land­scape and here Claudia and Reinhart Volgger, tog­ether with their son Florian, have ful­filled their dream of a very special place where to welcome friends and guests: “When the garden house in the park of the Palais Weih­rauch Baron Di Pauli was sur­pri­singly up for sale in 2012, I felt that this was a unique oppor­tunity, almost a lottery win. I was fully con­vinced of the location and potential and seized the oppor­tunity. We then com­mis­sioned the architect Walter Angonese with the planning because he had already rea­lised several buil­dings — many of them tog­ether with the artist Manfred Alois Mayr — which we were enthu­si­astic about. In addition, Pro­fessor Angonese had won the planning com­pe­tition for the con­s­truction of a library on the neigh­bouring pro­perty and we were con­vinced that he would create a har­mo­nious ensemble,” says Reinhart Volgger.

Walter Angonese extended Pinzers building to the east by a modern annex and “led” the Baro­nessa har­mo­niously into the 21st century. Adjacent to it, a pavilion-like structure was built, once again taking up the idea of the tea house, while at the same time giving a con­tem­porary slant on typical local ele­ments: the Villa Baro­nessina with its striking hipped roof.

Both houses are con­nected under­ground, but at the same time enjoy their absolute inde­pen­dence and privacy.

Mood and vibration

Both houses spring sur­prises at every step, with unex­pected per­sepc­tives and evo­cative sensory effects. The sym­biotic interplay of archi­tecture, colour and visual and tactile surface tex­tures creates a subtle yet clearly defined tension between con­tem­plative atmo­sphere and com­mu­ni­cative reso­nance. The clear colour concept creates an almost medi­tative atmo­sphere and the light and spa­ciousness of the rooms is in con­stant dia­logue with the sky and the land­scape, the archi­tecture framing a multi-faceted show staged by nature.

The patio acts as chro­matic and archi­tec­tural link between the Villa Baro­nessa and its “little sister” and becomes a com­mu­ni­cative space, very much in Medi­ter­ranean style. The basement of both houses has an impressive energy: the wine cellar, the sauna, the under­ground parking and even the staircase become con­tem­plative “holy” rooms and awaken a world of sensory per­ception.

The con­s­truction of the idea

The Kaltern based architect Walter Angonese made his mark in par­ti­cular with his wine archi­tecture, which he rea­lised for the Josef Hof­stätter winery in Tramin and for the Manincor winery in Kaltern. His pro­jects also include archi­tec­tural adapt­a­tions of important his­to­rical buil­dings, such as Castle Tyrol and the Kuf­stein fortress. The leit­motifs are always the site- and culture-related planning process and the con­ti­nuation of the existing building. “His” library in Kaltern, which directly borders the Villa Baro­nessa pro­perty, was opened in 2018. Angonese is a regular pro­fessor at the Acca­demia di Archi­tettura of the Uni­versità della Svi­zzera ita­liana in Mend­risio.

Mr. Angonese, your approach is strongly influenced by the concept of “building on”, in the sense of building on what already “is”. In today’s Villa Baronessa/Baronessina ensemble, the boun­daries between Walter Pin­zer’s old structure and Walter Ango­nese’s new archi­tecture are fluid. Is “building on” what “is” a greater challenge than creating some­thing new? 

What I mean by “building on” is not just a matter of building on the pro­perty itself, but on the context, on the place. Ele­ments and themes are taken up, inter­preted and mani­pu­lated. Asso­cia­tions emerge from this process, such as those of a Japanese teahouse in the case of the out­building – the Villa Baro­nessina.

The roof was important to us as an element of con­ti­nuity, but with a con­crete building that was meta­pho­ri­cally “inserted” under the Pinzer building, you couldn’t “create” a monk’s or nun’s roof; we re-inter­preted it and from this idea the cor­ru­gated con­crete roof of the annex emerged. The rest is a reaction to topo­graphy, coping with spatial planning cons­traints, etc.

Creation has become a bit of a dialec­tical legi­ti­mi­sation vis-à-vis “building on”. That’s not enough for me. I don’t like the con­tem­porary “Kli­mahaus” (climate house) style boxes. What’s more, we had won a com­pe­tition to build a new library to the left of the Baro­nessa, and we had planned to build it before we had even started work on the Baro­nessa, but then that project seemed to have been shot down – at least for a while – and we com­pleted the Baro­nessa beforehand. Nevert­heless, the Baro­nessa is also in a dia­logue with our library: the “sou­thern front” of the Kaltern mar­ket­place, where typo­lo­gical and formal rela­ti­onships emerge and are inter­woven.

What con­di­tioned us in the sense of “building on” the existing? Scale, appro­pria­teness, the com­pletion of the local structure, the paths within the house. The land­scape. When it came to the teahouse also the framing of the land­scape. 

How do you approach the his­to­rical sub­s­tance of a building? And how does archi­tecture remain authentic when his­toric buil­dings are rede­ve­loped in the present?

We always approach his­toric buil­dings with respect. I myself have deve­loped a method that might be best described as “monument con­ser­vation without monument con­ser­va­tio­nists”. The existing building always has a value that needs to be understood and inter­preted. But not neu­ro­ti­cally so – with respect and reverence, rather than unhelpful mental blocks. I have a similar strategy with all existing buil­dings; from time to time the monument pro­tection ser­vices get in the way, from which I expect an equal dispute and no power battles. I’m happy to respond to such dis­putes, but not when they come “from on high”.

We feel that we suc­ceeded in pre­serving Walter Pin­zer’s authentic style, and that we even took it a little bit further by app­lying the colours of Manfred Alois Mayr. The ori­ginal yellow was not quite phi­lo­lo­gi­cally accurate: Pinzer employed a yel­lowish colouring at the Weih­rauch di Pauli resi­dence, which the inves­ti­ga­tions in the course of the res­to­ration of the resi­dence revealed to be quite arbi­trary. Today the building has regained its ori­ginal cha­racter. Yellow would have been a mistake, and beige in the context of the new library would have been inco­herent, since the new library replaced a run-down barn building in yellow tones. And yes, we also extended the building. In this case, the most appro­priate strategy was to simply extend the hipped roof and add the extension under­neath; it would have been wrong, in this case, to connect a com­pletely new structure. 

The Baro­nessa Ensemble was a joint project with artist Manfred Alois Mayr. Colour became an archi­tec­tural task; archi­tecture an unfolding space for strongly reso­nating colours. How does this inter­di­sci­plinary creative process succeed, in which archi­tecture and art merge sym­bio­ti­cally without losing their inde­pen­dence?

We have a great deal of mutual trust and have been working tog­ether for a long time. Often we start out on a common path and then our two disci­plines divide, but some­times Manfred only needs to make very sel­ective con­tri­bu­tions. The pergola was one of those – we had planned a pergola so that the outside area of the kitchen could be used too. For the rest the house, Manfred was simply given a colour outline. And the result is what you see today. Ulti­m­ately, I believe it is our mutual trust.

Manfred Alois Mayr first “senses” a place. What comes first with Walter Angonese: the head or the gut?

My gut feeling. My project metho­dology is “the con­s­truction of the idea”, which I also teach in the context of my uni­versity courses. From intuition to cul­tural and tec­tonic reflection, from declining archi­tec­tural tools and approaches to the idea. Which you should never abandon. At the beginning, however, I always operate more intui­tively than ratio­nally. But, where are the boun­daries for someone who doesn’t like boun­daries?

You dubbed the Villa Baro­nessina the “teahouse”.

The Japanese teahouse is a per­sonal asso­ciation. Whether the Baro­nessina is per­ceived as such by others is not important to me. A teahouse is both intro­verted and extro­verted, plays with gardens and spatial per­cep­tions (for example Katsura, Roynai etc.). But a teahouse is not a resi­dential building. In this respect it remains a per­sonal asso­ciation and object of my intuition. 

What role does the land­scape play for the Baro­nessa Ensemble?

The interior living land­scape and the land­scape in the sense of the views and the spatial per­ception of the imme­diate land­scape are always important themes for us. This is one of the reasons why we have created a Medi­ter­ranean garden for our friend and land­scape designer Roland Del­la­gi­acoma. He knew how to create a land­scape as well as a cli­matic buffer between the sealed surface of the parking level and the expanse of the land­scape. With a lot of variety, but inspired by the South. We are just at the cusp of the South, as Goethe reco­g­nised.

Alchemist of colour

The artist Manfred Alois Mayr enters into reso­nance with the essence of a place. Like an alchemist, he trans­forms the identity of a place into colour. His chro­matic con­cepts — in the Manincor winery, at the Uni­versity of Bolzano, in the Museum Vor­arlberg, to name but a few — have a powerful effect on the viewer. The history, stories and the cul­tural context of the place of his inter­ven­tions guide M.A. Mayr in his choice of pig­ments and tech­niques, and the emphasis is not on the artistic act itself but on the identity of a place that can be expe­ri­enced through colour.

Mr. Mayr, colour is any­thing but a design or deco­rative element for you. Colour is instead an expe­ri­ential medium in the tension between art and everyday life in your pro­jects. How do you use colour?

Colour has become a central theme for me in general. In archi­tecture, colour is not deco­rative for me, but rather a phy­sical pre­sence – an effect on the occupant of a room. I don’t want to place the observer in front of but “within” colour. In that I include ever­y­thing con­cerning the history of a colour and its “mate­riality”: the extra­ction of various pig­ments and their origin, their rela­ti­onship to a par­ti­cular place or tra­dition. The attraction of a place lies not only in its indi­vidual smells and noises, but also in its dif­ferent colours. 

I quite like to compare it to music, where, despite playing the iden­tical note, dif­ferent instru­ments can be distin­gu­ished from each other. A “C” on the trombone sounds dif­ferent to a “C” on the flute or violin. So the timbre of a piano is dif­ferent from that of a string or wind instrument. Then there is also the colour rhythm and the speed of a colour – here too the com­pa­rison to the tempo and pauses in music is pretty clear. “Adagio” (slow and calm) or “vivace ma non troppo” (lively but not too much) or “moderato” (moderate). 

The “volume” of a colour is also important. Matt ultra­marine blue behaves dif­fer­ently both spa­tially and in terms of its aura than high-gloss ultra­marine. Light and shadow, as well as a reflecting or light-absorbent sur­faces, are essential factors for the effi­ciency of a colour. 

You describe yourself as a “senser” of places. How did you “sense” and per­ceive the pro­perty of Villa Baro­nessa at the beginning of the project? What fasci­nated you?

The first thing that impressed me was the location and the com­bi­nation of the two struc­tures – i.e. the interplay of the old and new struc­tures. They interlink the past with the present. 

As always, when entering a building site, my first impres­sions arise in the form of ques­tions: What is the archi­tec­tural lan­guage? How do I respond to it? What is the function of the building? Where does it require emphasis or refi­nement? Where is the whole “orchestra” required, where is it a solo piece? Where are there pauses? 

I walk through the building site several times like a water-diviner and wait to see where the archi­tecture creates the impulse in me to make a colour inter­vention.

Finding the balance between the place, the space, the wall (including the phy­sical pro­perties of the wall) and the com­plete structure always requires a very spe­cific colour tone. The great challenge for Villa Baro­nessa was to pin­point and refine that colour tone until it really started to resonate.

How does the “message” of a place manifest itself to you?

Every place or non-place has a soul for me and every con­s­tructive enga­gement with it requires its own unique approach or tre­atment. Engaging with and absorbing the foreign envi­ronment is a way to find myself in that place – in the opposite way friction, inspi­ration and ideas take me out of myself. The task I set myself each time is to create a “place within a place”.

What are the colours/pigments you have used in Villa Baro­nessa and Villa Baro­nessina?

The two main colours that give Villa Baro­nessa its per­sonal cha­racter are lime white, ultra­marine blue and oxide red. They par­tially extend from the outside to the inside and thus – to compare them to natural colours – enhance the pale lilac blue and dull lemon yellow of the inte­riors. In Villa Baro­nessina, on the other hand, gold domi­nates the sleeping area on the upper floor. The light falling from above lends the tent-shaped and unusual room a special warmth and atmo­sphere. 

The primary challenge at Villa Baro­nessa was to accen­tuate the archi­tecture to the utmost degree through colour – I was able to achieve this by com­bining the above-men­tioned colours with “non-colours”, i.e. the inherent colours of the mate­rials used, such that the colour is sensed but not “seen”. In the villa’s interior, for example, it appears as natural as a window to let in the light.

The essence of Villa Baro­nessa and Villa Baro­nessina is revealed through mood, colour oscil­lation and sensory expe­rience. How do the two houses affect you today? Can you put the essence of Villa Baro­nessa and Villa Baro­nessina into words?

I don’t want to express the essence of Villa Baro­nessa and Baro­nessina. Because colour and archi­tecture can do what lan­guage cannot do, and lan­guage can do what colour or archi­tecture cannot do. For me it is a matter of really “living and breathing” a space: immersing yourself in the rooms in order to feel their essence and mood, to expe­rience them and let them have an effect on you. Archi­tecture and colour are a way of life – the mood between the occupant and the space is the culture …