High Marks Below Grade: Limited by a dense site and preservation concerns, an Italian firm creates an underground academy in the heart of a South Tyrol city’s historic center.
Underground is for corpses, they told me,” recalls Claudio Lucchin of the community’s reaction when he proposed submerging a school addition three stories below grade. “They couldn’t imagine having young kids spend an entire day down there.” But the improbable scheme soon began to gain traction. Lucchin is the kind of regional architect who has produced an impressive body of large-scale work in and around his native Bolzano, in northern Italy, but is little known outside its Teutonic province, bordering Austria and Switzerland. Not surprisingly, he’s also the kind of architect who can convince local authorities to do something completely unheard of for the area.
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