The award ceremony of the CasaClima Awards 2016 was held on 9 September in the evocative setting of Castel Mareccio in Bolzano; among others, it was attended by Reinhold Messner and Peter Irmscher, lead designer of the London studio of Zaha Hadid.
The assignment of the gold cubes, awarded by a jury, has seen as winners, among about 1,300 certified buildings during 2015, the owners of the Piazzetta Delago condominium in Bolzano, “for the fine new building intervention that gave to the inhabitants of this historic square an original and contemporary place”. Moreover, the jury selected two public buildings: the new gym for sport climbing in Bruneck (Bolzano) and the renovation of the school of domestic science Frankenberg in Tisens (Bolzano). For both projects, the attention to architectural quality was particularly appreciated: it gave to the community public spaces characterized by high levels of comfort that were also low-cost.
The underground construction Casa Riga of Comano (Trento) was also awarded for being “an example of accommodating and living space which combines architecture and nature using an artifact characterized by significant levels of energy efficiency”. The ambitious challenge of Villa Castelli, historic home of 1830 of Lake Como, has been also appreciated for its search for energy solutions in an architectural context through the application of the CasaClima R protocol. The audience award, selected through an online survey, was bestowed instead to the renovation of an apartment located in a historic building in the center of Verona.
Finally, the new Messner Mountain Museum in Plan de Corones by Zaha Hadid Architects won an award out of competition bestowed by the Director of the Agenzia CasaClima, St. Ulrich, to the clients of the project, the Skirama Plan de Corones. The award was presented by Reinhold Messner, who explained the reasons behind the creation of this new museum of traditional mountaineering, “it was wanted right at the point of intersection of the three cultures of Alto Adige: German, Italian and Ladin”. The President of the Agenzia CasaClima, Stefano Fatto, focused on one of the major players in the construction process, the client. “Sometimes a secondary figure - said Fatto - even though it is increasingly clear that the quality of an architectural project can only arise from the collaboration between promoters, designers and builders. In fact, the synergy between the different actors of building in a sustainable way of the recent years has enabled the continuous development of the certification CasaClima”.
