Born as a reconstruction project of a rural hamlet and later expanded, the village of Grangesises, designed by Pompeo Trisciuoglio and built between 1972 and 1986 in the Alta Valle of Susa, represents a singular case in the history of Alpine tourism in the second half of the twentieth century. Situated within the broader cultural framework that, between the 1960s and 1970s, called into question the paradigm of ski-total as the sole development model for the Alps, the Grangesises project stands out for its intention to create a settlement that cannot be reduced to the logic of winter tourism. Drawing on previously unpublished archival material, the paper tries to reconstruct the intentions of the preliminary project, highlighting how the intervention went beyond the dominant dynamics of the time by explicitly adopting tourism as a vehicle for neo-population. The study of local architectural characteristics, developed during the reconstruction phase and reworked in the subsequent, only partially realised, expansion phase, gave rise to a project that, although heavily criticised, demonstrates a strong integration with its territory. Reconsidered today, in the context of the structural crisis of mountain tourism, Grangesises does not present itself as a replicable model but instead emerges as a significant episode, capable of opening a critical reflection on the role of architectural design as a mediating device between the environment and forms of mountain inhabitation beyond tourism.
Often described as “a Swedish Davos” Åre represents one of the most emblematic cases of winter tourism development in Scandinavia and offers a significant point of comparison with the Alpine context. Although located at modest absolute elevations, the combination of latitude and altitude places Åre in a subarctic environmental condition comparable to high Alpine settings, where timberline, snow persistence and climatic constraints shape both landscape and settlement patterns. Central in the analysis is the long-term transformation of Åre: from a medieval pilgrimage stop and rural village into a climatic resort, a national centre for winter sports and, eventually, an internationally recognised ski destination. Attention is given to the role of infrastructures – railway, funiculars, cableways – and to the spatial organisation of tourism facilities, which closely parallels developments in Alpine spa towns and ski resorts. The notion of Åre as “ett svenskt Davos” formulated in the mid-twentieth century, is read not merely as a slogan but as a territorial strategy linking health, sport and modernity. Reframed through an “Alpine perspective”, Åre reveals shared dynamics of infrastructural expansion, architectural standardisation, heritage conflict and climatic vulnerability, positioning the “Scandinavian Alps” as a Nordic variant of the Alpine condition and a laboratory for rethinking mountain development under climate change.
Over recent decades, tourism has been a major driver of transformation in Alpine territories, shaping urbanisation processes and settlement models. Today, climate change, socio-economic shifts, overtourism and abandonment are redefining its role in mountain areas. In this context, hospitality emerges as a key device mediating between tourism, temporary dwelling and territorial regeneration. The paper explores an ecological approach to hospitality, interpreting hospitality spaces as regenerative socio-spatial infrastructures capable of generating environmental, social and economic value in Alpine contexts. Through the analysis of regenerative tourism case studies and metadesign experimentations developed in degree theses, it investigates the role of design – particularly space-product-service systems – in shaping hybrid hospitality practices based on bottom-up processes, co-design and flexibility of use, identifying community-based hotels as a possible outcome. The paper contributes to the debate on contemporary mountain hospitality by proposing a theoretical and operational framework for regenerative tourism grounded in care, reciprocity and territorial regeneration.
The Alpine region is currently undergoing profound environmental, socio-economic, and demographic transformations, exhibiting a dichotomy between, on the one hand, unsustainable tourist pressure, and on the other, processes of fragility and depopulation. The dominant winter mass-tourism model, now vulnerable to climate change (e.g., snow scarcity), necessitates urgent redefinition. A holistic and participatory approach to tourism is proposed, focusing on slow and immersive practices that reposition the mountain from a periphery to a laboratory of sustainability. In this context, small architectures assume a fundamental strategic role, acting as a tool for territorial regeneration. Their value extends beyond mere economic dimensions, yielding multidimensional and lasting benefits. Architectural interventions are tasked with valorising vernacular heritage, reactivating local chains, and creating hybrid community spaces, as exemplified by projects such as the Viamala Visitor Centre (CH), the Gorges du Sierroz system (FR), the Kulturtenn in Obermutten (CH), and the covered space in Faverges-Seythenex (FR). These projects, through simple design and the use of local materials, aim to strengthen resilience, social cohesion, and cultural identity, acting as strategic infrastructures for Alpine “habitability” and for conscious tourism that contributes to collective territorial reactivation.
Throughout the twentieth century, tourism has been a key driver of transformation in Alpine regions, fostering urbanisation and reshaping landscapes and cultural practices. In recent years, however, climate change, socio-economic shifts, and evolving patterns of mobility have redefined its role, producing increasing territorial polarisation between overcrowded destinations and fragile, marginal areas. At the same time, mountain regions are emerging as laboratories for new models of inhabitation, where tourism intersects with broader practices of living and territorial regeneration. This editorial reflects on these dynamics by examining current strategies such as deseasonalisation and diversification, alongside changing social profiles of Alpine users. Through selected projects and case studies, it highlights the potential of architecture and territorial design to mediate between environmental constraints, community needs, and sustainable development, outlining new perspectives for the future of Alpine tourism.
The essay “Intermediate Tourism” develops, starting from the title itself, a reflection on hybrid mountain places, contemporary in their impact on the communities inhabiting them. The “Costiera dei Cech” in Valtellina is an exemplary case of an “in-between” territory, both spatially and in terms of socioeconomic dynamics. Here, overtourism and abandonment are not opposing phenomena but rather overlap to define a scenario of a mountain landscape in transformation, as explored by Varotto, Magris and Dematteis, among others. The aim is to interpret the places by proposing a regenerative horizon which can arise from a new concept of living in fragile conditions that, because of the status, are capable of triggering trans-scale transformations. To investigate this dimension, the essay examines the project “CECH IN: integration, inclusion, innovation,” a research-by-design carried out as part of the Recovery EU Tourism and Culture Mission (Attractiveness of historic villages). The experience is presented through a sequence of 3 different “acts”. First, the territory is seen with a double “Corbozian” gaze to construct the scenario. Then, a map of “intermediate living” is defined with sequences of emblematic landscapes. Finally, some “construction sites” are launched, incremental projects based on an integrated structure of connections, intervals and thresholds. The regeneration of these places links to the initial challenge, as they serve as active markers for a new “intermediate tourism”.
Carnia, an alpine region in Friuli Venezia Giulia, represents an emblematic territory for exploring new ways of inhabiting the mountains beyond the dichotomies of overtourism and abandonment. Characterised by a strong historical and cultural identity, a fragmented settlement pattern, and a widespread architectural heritage, Carnia experienced processes of development, industrialisation, and subsequent decline throughout the twentieth century, culminating in significant depopulation and the loss of services. Starting with the establishment of the albergo diffuso in Comeglians – the first Italian example – the region has experimented with innovative models of revitalisation based on the reuse of existing structures, cultural and slow tourism, and new forms of temporary habitation. Through the analysis of historical settlement patterns, the role of cramârs, vernacular (spontaneous) architectures, and some notable experiences – from Sauris to the albergo diffuso in Paluzza, up to the Isola di Stavoli project – this contribution explores material and immaterial practices capable of building resilient territorial ecosystems. The essay presents Carnia as an alpine laboratory in which architectural and landscape design can operate in a precise and respectful manner, offering replicable insights for other mountain contexts affected by similar vulnerabilities
The inclusion of the Dolomites in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009 highlighted, on the one hand, the exceptional characteristics of this territory, while on the other hand emphasised – or even triggered – complex dynamics between conservation needs and increasing pressures from human activities. This article examines the theoretical and practical consequences of overtourism in UNESCO natural sites, using the Dolomites as a lens through which to critically interrogate the role of natural heritage in the twenty-first century, between conservation and transformation, in the context of climate change and unsustainable tourism models. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates spatial practice, landscape ecology, and tourism studies, the analysis delves into the effects of overexposure, which are likely to reduce the natural landscape to a consumable – and exhaustible – global product. It raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the UNESCO designation and whether a radical rethinking is required to prevent natural sites from becoming purely extractive locations. Conversely, it also explores the opportunities offered by the World Heritage status, such as the potential to develop innovative governance models and integrated territorial management policies.
This paper examines the role of minimal architecture in fostering sustainable tourism in Alpine regions, through the project The Kingfisher’s Nest, designed by Marco Ghilotti in 2020 on Isola della Pescaia (Valtellina, Italy). Historically, Alpine areas shifted from productive landscapes to tourism-oriented economies, often privileging consumption over ecological and social balance. In response, recent design approaches aim to reframe mountains as spaces to reinhabit, especially through learning and community engagement. In particular, the project by Marco Ghilotti transforms a small historic barn into an educational centre connected with the cycle-pedestrian path of Sentiero Valtellina. Through precise architectural, functional, and grafting choices, the Kingfisher’s Nest exemplifies a replicable model for Alpine regeneration: small-scale, low-impact architecture that enhances local identity, promotes environmental education, and supports a slow tourism culture rooted in place-based knowledge
This paper examines rural revitalisation along the Ancient Tea-Horse Trail (ATHT) in Yunnan, China, viewing this historic trail network as a contemporary laboratory for rethinking tourism-driven regeneration in mountainous regions. Once a major corridor of exchange between Yunnan and the Tibetan Plateau, the ATHT declined with the advent of modern transport, leaving many settlements disconnected from their historical livelihood networks. Yet the trail’s territorial continuity, cultural depth, and dispersed settlement structure offer fertile ground for heritage-sensitive, smallscale, and socially embedded forms of rural activation. Through four architectural best practices in Xizhou, Yuhu, Wuli, and Baisha, the paper investigates how design can negotiate between historic fabrics and contemporary tourism needs. The selected cases demonstrate varied but complementary strategies – precise architectural interventions, programmatic diversification, and community-led or socially attuned operating models – that collectively frame tourism not as an extractive industry but as a vehicle for cultural continuity and local economic resilience. The paper argues that trail-based revitalisation can redistribute visitor flows, reinforce local identity, and support sustainable development, offering a context-driven alternative to mass-tourism paradigms in rural China.
The article reads the Cinque Terre as a landscape-architecture laboratory for rethinking tourism in fragile mountain and coastal territories. Focusing on the Via dell’Amore, a former construction path turned iconic cliffside promenade, it reconstructs the trail’s transformation through infrastructural works, safety regulations, and controlled-access devices. The path is interpreted as a “showcase” infrastructure within a wider system of terraces, villages, and minor trails, where design choices and management tools operate as spatial filters that can either amplify overtourism or redistribute flows in space and time. Shifting from the cliff path to the “sea of dry-stone walls”, the article addresses issues of material authenticity, maintenance economies, and emerging forms of participatory and regenerative tourism. By comparing Cinque Terre with selected Alpine landscapes, it argues for an architecture of care in which landscape projects, agricultural practices, and tourism policies are conceived together to sustain the everyday work that keeps mountain territories inhabited.
The contribution analyses the Turin-Ceres railway line as a historic infrastructure and cultural device capable of introducing recreational functionality and enhancement of contemporary alpine landscapes. Within the context of renewed tourism paradigms, oriented towards slow, immersive, and local experiences, the railway is interpreted not only as a means of mobility but as a complex territorial system, carrying identity, historical, and landscape values. Through the analysis of the main phases of the line’s construction, the study highlights the unique and iconic character of the railway architecture, the role of the technical structures involved, and the high level of constructive and engineering experimentation, with particular attention to the stations and the crossing works of the Lanzo-Ceres section. The coherent architectural language and the dialogue with the landscape context contribute to defining a heritage deeply rooted in the collective imagination. The recent restructuring management of the line, its connection to the Passante ferroviario, and the launch of the regional “Museo ferroviario diffuso” program open new possibilities for the reuse of stations and the creation of an integrated tourist attraction. In this scenario, the Turin-Ceres line emerges as an innovative intervention for territorial development strategies based on sustainable mobility, the enhancement of historic railway architecture, and conscious tourism.
The paper investigates the role of tourism in the Alpine valley-floor territories, reframing it not as a driver of deterritorialisation, but as a potential regenerative device. The case of the Piana Rotaliana Königsberg (Trentino Province, Italy), historically defined by a dominant viticultural vocation and traversed by major infrastructural corridors, offers a critical lens through which to examine the vulnerabilities produced by agricultural monofunctionality, ongoing land consumption, and the structural polarisation between valley floors and highland areas. Within this context, the strategic project “Wine Garden”, launched in 2021 by the PRK Tourist Consortium in collaboration with academic and cultural institutions, advances an “antifragile” model of tourism grounded in community participation, stewardship of the cultural landscape, and multi-level governance. Through a structured process encompassing territorial analysis, co-design practices, and the development of an articulated masterplan, the project reconceptualises the agricultural landscape as an ecological, cultural, and aesthetic infrastructure, and as a catalyst for long-term territorial regeneration. The study argues that a calibrated balance between preservation and innovation can reconfigure the cultural landscape as a dynamic relational system, capable of generating both tangible and intangible value through shared, multidisciplinary governance frameworks.
Mountain territories in Italy are often identified with the Alpine arc, leaving the Southern Apennines largely overlooked. Basilicata, largely classified as an ultra-peripheral internal area, represents a paradigmatic context in which environmental resources, communities, and forms of inhabitation intersect under conditions of marginality and transformation. Commonly framed as “in crisis”, these territories can instead be understood as laboratories for alternative relationships among time, nature, and human and nonhuman actors. The paper presents a design-based research developed within the ARÌNT Master programme (2023-2024), focusing on Castelsaraceno in the Val d’Agri, a context largely based on tourism and shaped by the coexistence of extractive economies and tourist infrastructures. Through a multilayered methodology that combines cartographic analysis, situated observation, and deep mapping, the research explores latent territorial potentials. The project proposes a strategy that moves beyond tourism-driven development, reinterpreting energy, forest resources and slow infrastructures as tools for collective inhabitation, with architecture acting as a mediating practice between communities, landscapes and long-term ecological processes.
The essay presents the results of an interdisciplinary research project curated by Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità that investigates the potential of the contemporary arts to affect common sense. Hegemonic societal common sense has enabled a plethora of harmful policies over the last forty years and now fuels the ongoing anti-democratic and authoritarian dynamics present throughout the world. Challenging this prevailing common sense is therefore an indispensable condition for any strategy of change towards an egalitarian future. For this purpose, information, communication, public debate, and mobilisation are necessary but nonetheless insufficient. Something greater is needed to shake ingrained beliefs and prejudices, to offer a glimpse of an alternative. Art, as history shows us, can help stimulate this rupture, unsettling, opening up to other points of view, and foreshadowing worlds of greater justice. A significant portion of today's contemporary art challenges dominant veins of thought, uncovers and explores injustices, and often accompanies processes of territorial development, but rarely offers utopian prophecies, struggling to affect the prevailing common sense. Many social and civic organisations, and sometimes even public policies, turn to the arts, but rarely with the intention of stimulating a change in common sense. Nevertheless, the territorial vocation of contemporary arts, under certain conditions outlined in this essay, can prove to be an opportunity to reach and change the prevailing common sense.
In this essay, the mountain is presented as a place where the relationship between body and world can be recomposed. Slope and gravity restore physicality; the body regains weight, measures effort, and reveals the link between action and limit. Everyday gestures – walking, gathering wood, building shelter – become ways of rediscovering interdependence between humans, resources, and the environment. Mountains are not inert matter but reservoirs of energy, accumulated over millions of years and released through rivers, glaciers, landslides, and sediments that nourish the plains. Each urban structure corresponds to a void elsewhere – quarries, mines, cut forests – reminding us of the continuity between mountain and city. They also embody deep time, preserving memories of vanished landscapes and processes beyond human scale. They confront us with transience, stripping away illusions of centrality. Here, time can also contract into sudden accelerations: extreme hydrogeological events reshape landscapes in an instant. Mountains are not only sensitive archives but privileged witnesses of climate change – glaciers retreat, slopes shift, floods erase geographies – and what happens at altitude inevitably flows downstream. Conceived as subjects, mountains and their elements carry ancient knowledge and distributed intelligences. They communicate through flows, forms, invisible tensions. Practices of walking, observing, touching, and listening become mediations with these forces. Within this framework, art translates and interprets, opening dialogue with other bodies and times. It becomes an exercise in attention, rethinking our place in the world and exploring new forms of coexistence.
The interaction between artistic research and the mountain environment has been central to the construction of Alpine imaginaries since the eighteenth century. Often intertwined with scientific exploration, artistic practice has shaped the ways in which mountains are represented, understood, and inhabited. Mountains have served as both subject and catalyst of cultural and aesthetic transformation, from the early acts of knowledge and depiction that revealed the morphology of the Alpine peaks to the modern notion of a technological sublime. In the contemporary era, as climate change continues and a redefinition of human dwellings emerges, the Alps have once again become a laboratory for experimentation where art interrogates form, material, and temporality. Through processes of representation and metamorphosis, artistic research opens new perspectives on the Alpine landscape, challenging clichés and proposing renewed ways of perceiving and inhabiting high-altitude worlds.
Contemporary contextual art, which cares for life in specific places by reinterpreting local values and transforming them into cultural visions, acts as a hinge between the environment, communities, and future perspectives. By critically re-reading contexts and stereotypes, the artist, operating as a kind of social intellectual, works as a catalyst between human and material energies, planting seeds of creativity that may sprout again over time. The most powerful (and useful) contemporary art is that which stirs doubt and experiments with proposals charged with active thought, following a path of transformation. As in the 'in-between' described by Tim Ingold in The Life of Lines, artistic practices engage with the flow of life in the form of 'correspondence': A fertile connection between questions and outcomes. The experience of aperto_art on the border (Valle Camonica 2010-2022) shows how the migration of artistic projects, methods, and experiences can be traced back to the tendency toward cross-contamination typical of much contemporary art. Guided by the principles of relational connection, the growth of contemporary art follows rhizomatic patterns (Deleuze and Guattari), re-emerging in new contexts. Case studies of this attitude can be found in the work of Franco Ariaudo, Hannes Egger, Patrizio Raso, and Cosimo Veneziano, whose projects, first developed within small Alpine communities, later resurfaced and evolved in distant places and contexts. Contemporary art suggests that the mountains, with their environmental and anthropological richness, are a fertile ground for artistic experimentation, especially within informal, collective, and participatory settings.
