L'Albergo al Villaggio Eni di Borca di Cadore
(text by Anna De Salvador, translation by Anna Dal Pont)
It was 1954 when the architect Edoardo Gellner found in the southern side of Mount Antelao the perfect scenario for the construction of the holiday Village of the Eni group, whose head was, at the time, Enrico Mattei.
The Village’s conception is an operation that, in the eyes of the visionary entrepreneur has, above all, a social value. The establishment was to become a medium, a link, between the hydrocarbons-producing company and the rest of the world: a representative place which was going to express the ideas of progress and modernity that were Eni’s signature in the 50s. Mattei identifies in Gellner the most suitably personality to give voice to these planning requirements.
Edoardo Gellner, born in Abbazia in 1909, carried out his studies in Vienna and Venice, where he graduated in architecture in 1945. Among his mentors Josef Hoffmann, leading figure of the Vienna Secession, and Carlo Scarpa, Venetian architect and designer. The opportunities of the post WWII period took Gellner to Cortina, and there he became an expert in architecture on mountain sites, a role that was going to give him the chance to experience as an active participant the buzz linked with the 1956 Winter Olympics.
The trust that Mattei placed in Gellner allowed the architect to plan his project using an architectural register which didn’t formally evoke the rustic architecture of a mountain area: he expressed innovation instead, morphing the construction site into a downright technological lab. The result is an urban workshop, architectural and structural, which offers numerous solutions to different planning scopes.
THE HOTEL
The initial project by Gellner considered the realization of important service facilities for the inhabitants of the Village, which included shops, cinemas and restaurants. Of this part of the planning, only the two hotels were built: the Corte apartment complex and the Cadore Hotel. The first was intended to house the staff, while the second constituted of an hospitality compound built on 6 levels, and containing 78 rooms.
On the main façade cement plinths and small wooden pillars merge like in the wooden part of a “tabià”. The materials used are cement, wood, stone and copper for the covering. Each detail is well thought out: the rooms are essential and elegant, each containing a supporting teak bench, which becomes the access step to the external terrace which is on a different level compared to the room. This way, every room is constantly well-lighted from above.
In the entry hall Gellner’s engineering genius finds expression in the utilization of the large wooden beam. The ceiling is realised with recycled material gathered from the gauge boxes used to reinforce the concrete.
Between 1974 and 1990 the project of the social centre, conceived as the cornerstone of the entire intervention, was submitted to continuous modifications from Gellner’s part, but none of his 6 solutions was ever actualized. The following privatization of Eni entailed the selling of the entire estate.
(scheda a cura di Anna De Salvador)
E' il 1954 quando l'architetto Edoardo Gellner individua nel versante sud del Monte Antelao lo scenario per la costruzione del Villaggio vacanze del Gruppo Eni, presieduto allora da Enrico Mattei.
L'ideazione del Villaggio è un'operazione che, agli occhi del lungimirante imprenditore, ha soprattutto una valenza sociale. L'insediamento dovrà essere un medium fra la società di idrocarburi e il resto del mondo: un luogo di rappresentanza che esprima le idee di progresso e di modernità proprie di Eni negli anni cinquanta. Mattei individua in Gellner la figura adatta per dare voce a queste esigenze progettuali.
Edoardo Gellner, nato ad Abbazia nel 1909, studia a Vienna e Venezia, dove si laurea in architettura nel 1945. Fra i suoi maestri Josef Hoffmann, esponente di spicco della Secessione viennese e Carlo Scarpa, architetto e designer veneziano. Le opportunità del primo dopoguerra portano Gellner a Cortina, qui diventa uno specialista dell'architettura di montagna, ruolo che gli permetterà di vivere da protagonista il fermento legato alle olimpiadi invernali del 1956.
La fiducia che Mattei ripone in Gellner permette all'architetto di progettare utilizzando un linguaggio
architettonico che non rievoca formalmente l'architettura rustica di montagna: esprime l'innovazione trasformando il cantiere in un vero e proprio laboratorio tecnologico. Il risultato è un'officina urbanistica, architettonica e strutturale che offre svariate soluzioni a differenti scale progettuali.
L'ALBERGO
Il progetto iniziale di Gellner prevedeva la realizzazione di importanti strutture di servizio per gli abitanti del Villaggio che comprendevano anche negozi, cinema e ristoranti. Di questa parte di progetto vennero realizzati solamente i due alberghi: il Residence Corte e l'Albergo Cadore. Il primo era destinato ad accogliere il personale di servizio mentre il secondo costituiva un complesso alberghiero a 6 livelli con 78 camere. Sulla facciata principale plinti in cemento e colonnine in legno si fondono come nella parte lignea di un “tabià”.
I materiali utilizzati sono il cemento, il legno, la pietra e il rame per la copertura. Ogni dettaglio è studiato con cura: le camere sono essenziali ed eleganti, ciascuna ha una panca di appoggio in teak che diventa gradino di accesso al terrazzo esterno che si trova su un piano differente rispetto alla camera. In questo modo ogni stanza è costantemente illuminata dall'alto.
Nella hall di ingresso trova spazio il genio ingegneristico di Gellner con l'uso della grande trave lignea. Il soffitto è realizzato con il materiale di recupero dei casseri utilizzati per armare il cemento.
Fra il 1974 e il 1990 il progetto del centro sociale, concepito come fulcro dell'intero intervento, viene sottoposto a continue modifiche da parte di Gellner, ma nessuna delle 6 soluzioni viene attuata. La successiva privatizzazione dell'Eni comporta la vendita dell'intero patrimonio immobiliare.
ABOUT PROGETTOBORCA
Progettoborca is a project of cultural enhancement and functional rethinking of the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, launched in July 2014 by Dolomiti Contemporanee.
Dolomiti Contemporanee (DC) is a project born in 2011 in the Dolomiti-UNESCO area.
DC, visual arts lab on location, is a contemporary art and cultural innovation “construction site” project.
DC works for the re-activation of abandoned sites, industrial archaeology compounds, factories that have been shut down, in the Dolomiti-UNESCO region. These underutilized resources, which politics, governments, and economy have been unable to rehabilitate in conventional ways for years, decades, become the construction sites of a regenerative, re-functionalizing project based on culture and art, strategies and networks.
The sites in which DC operates are selected on the basis of their quality, that is to say on the formal values of architecture, on their logistical, functional capabilities, and on the relationship with the environmental context: they’re all sites with exceptional qualities, charged with atmosphere and attraction: the one we intend to bring back to light.
Re-imagining them, however, isn’t enough to turn them back on; to obtain that result, DC continuously works on the enlargement of the strategic platforms of support to the project.
There are more than one hundred partners to date. They belong to various and different categories: institutional partners, public ones, private, productive, not to mention the cultural and artistic ones, several of them national and international in their reach.
Progettoborca stands to give new cultural value and offer a functional re-thinking of a site with an exceptional cultural and historical value: the Former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, built in the tail end of the 50s by Enrico Mattei, as a vacation centre for Eni employees. A pioneering and unique business welfare experiment, in Italy, and absolutely innovative cultural workshop at the time.
It’s an exceptional and unique site, both from an architectural standpoint, in its relationship with the landscape, and in the vastness of the platform (big businesses, like Pirelli, Fantorni, Lanerossi, Krupp, Richard Ginori, work together to build it, realising parts for the site).
Since July 2014, DC has, indeed, started up an international artist residency inside the Village, with studios and ateliers, and the great, magnificent spaces by Gellner, drowned in the Dolomitic woods, have been transformed in a creative and artistic lab.
Together with the current owner of the site (Minoter-Cualbu Group), and a network of territorial subjects that gets bigger and bigger each day, a decisive action of enhancement and possible redefinition of this site and its connected parts (Colonia) today, was undertaken.
Progettoborca doesn’t intend to stand as the umpteenth evaluation (representation) of this site: we don’t want to go back to watch it but, finally, to begin an active process on it, working from the inside, culturally and strategically, imagining concrete and innovative reactivation models for it, a series of functions, a destiny that is, once more, active.
The regenerative construction site will continue throughout the next three years.
It integrates, as is the way in DC, the creative functions (art and culture) with the strategic ones, and with the ones linked to the handling and re-evaluation policy of the asset.
Periodically DC opens up the site with guided tours and open studios which enable visitors to get to know the Village and Progettoborca from the inside. These are the artists who, to this day, have worked in Progettoborca: Marco Andrighetto, Marta Allegri, Chiara Bergamo, Elisa Bertaglia, Gino Blanc, Stefano Cagol, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Gianni De Val, Sandra Hauser, Jérémy Laffon, Stefano Moras, Luka Sirok.
Info on all the activities of Progettoborca can be found on the website www.progettoborca.net .