Lou Pourtoun

Ostana, Valades occitanes of Piedmont, upper Po Valley; a few kilometres from the sources of the great river and in front of the stunning pyramid of Mount Monviso.

A village that in 1921 counted more than 1200 inhabitants, and that towards the end of last century has reached the figure of six permanent residents all year; Ostana since the mid ‘80s has decided to bet on the quality of architecture and landscape as a lever to reactivate the site and community. The village today has forty permanent inhabitants and especially new children, the fact that recently has brought it to the forefront of the international chronicle.

The cultural center “Lou Pourtoun”, opened at the end of 2015, is the latest act of this strategy that combines architectural quality, cultural policies and social and economic revival. A project developed by a team of architectes and teachers of the Institute of Mountain Architecture of the Politecnico di Torino – Massimo Crotti, Antonio De Rossi, Marie-Pierre Forsans – which for some years is accompanying the local community on issues of architecture, with the realization of several renovations and constructions of new public buildings.

Located at 1,400 meters above sea level, in the heart of an ancient late medieval village, “Lou Pourtoun” will host events such as the international “Ostana-Escrituras en Lenga Maire”, the film school L’Aura and formative activities of the Politecnico di Torino. The name “Lou Pourtoun” comes from an original typology of the village, which has become the settlement principle behind the project: a kind of covered street – the pourtoun – laid out along the contour line, and along which are built, upstream and downstream, the small volumes.

The building is organized on three levels connected with each other and which can be accessed directly from different points of the slope, as in the ancient alpine buildings. The first level has a large space for exhibitions, film screenings, conferences, etc.; the second and third level, arranged around the central area of the pourtoun, contein the rooms of the different associations and activities. Large and hight windows open the pourtoun to the close village and to the landscape of the Monviso mountains. In the internal distribution space facing different local volumes of stone, creating a kind of small village housed under one roof. The pourtoun is therefore both an interior space and an external pathway, on which the village houses are aligned.

The cultural center, that is completely built in stone and has a massive external image, even if it is completely empty to the inside, has in the floor-to-ceiling windows and in the corten steel frames of openings the unstable equilibrium point between tradition and modernity.

Centro Lou Pourtoun, Ostana, Valle Po, Cuneo
Program: cultural centre
Architect: Massimo Crotti, Antonio De Rossi, Marie-Pierre Forsans
Client: Comune di Ostana
Structures and plants: Studio Associato GSP (Roberto Trabacca, Giovanni Depaoli)
Contractor: Martino Costruzioni
Public funding: Regione Piemonte, PSR 2007-13 Misura 3.2.2, Comune di Ostana
Cost: € 950.000
Area: s.l.p. 745 sqm
Year: 2015