04. Faking the rock
In the Swiss Alpine landscape there is a family of objects that are hard to classify. They do not belong entirely to architecture. They do not belong entirely to the landscape.
At first sight they look like rocks.
Outcrops.
Small mountain spurs.
Erratic blocks.
Looked at more closely they reveal openings, slits, camouflaged doors, construction details.
They are bunkers.
Along the road that climbs to the Albula Pass, an artificial wall merges with the Alpine background. The road passes right by it almost without anyone noticing. It is not a faithful copy: it is a plausible construction, accepted by the landscape. From afar stone, up close architecture.
Here the boulder takes its final step.
It is no longer painted or sculpted. It is built, and built to be believed. The likeness does not serve contemplation: it serves survival. The work must deceive a hostile gaze.
It should be noted that this mimesis is not realistic.
None of these structures reproduces an existing rock. They reproduce the idea of rock — the same convention that Wagner had fixed on the façade in Schwyz and that Pessina had carved in Giornico. The bunker works because it exploits what we already know about how a stone is made.
It does not imitate nature.
It imitates our image of nature.
This is the principle that drives Souvenir di montagna, with the sign reversed. Not choosing between rock and design, but inhabiting the distance that joins them.
But where the bunker disguises itself so as not to be seen, the work declares itself: it shows the welds, the thickness of the steel plate, the cavity.
The bunker imitates the rock in order to disappear. The constructed erratic imitates the rock to show that it is constructed.
Translation: Archivio Umberto Cavenago
Close-up detail
Camouflaged defence works along the Albula Pass road. None of these forms has an aesthetic intention: every plane, every edge, every choice of colour serves only to avoid being seen. A passing glance is not enough to tell them from the rock: you have to stop.
The wall seen from the road, getting closer
Among the camouflage, an entrance to the bunker can be glimpsed
The wall seen from the road
Detail of a camouflaged entrance
Artificial wall along the Albula Pass road