NATURA NATURATA / NATURA NATURANS

A transformative renewal of the Graubünden Nature Museum

The renewal and extension of the Graubünden Nature Museum is conceived as a vertical cut through the ecosystems of the Bündner region, transforming the building into a continuous spatial experience that connects underground geological layers with the sky above. This vertical cut is the project’s central architectural strategy, structuring the visitor journey and revealing the museum not as a stack of isolated floors, but as a single, interconnected system where depth, height, and atmosphere are inseparable.

Within this section, the museum becomes a place where natura naturata and natura naturans meet in equilibrium. Preserved collections and classified knowledge coexist with material, light, and environmental processes, allowing the museum to be understood simultaneously as an archive and as a living spatial construct rooted in the territory.

The intervention engages the existing building by Bruno Giacometti as a robust and adaptable framework. Rather than altering its fundamental character, the project reinforces and completes its original logic through minimal and precise additions. The existing volume is consolidated into a clear, compact form, articulated along the diagonal of the historic skylight. Key corners are intensified and transformed into entrances, light-filled spaces, and moments of pause, sharpening the legibility of the building and its internal order.

A decisive architectural gesture is the downward extension into the ground. This intervention responds both to programmatic requirements and to the conceptual ambition of making the hidden dimensions of the museum perceptible. New underground spaces for exhibitions and protected storage are carved into the terrain and visually connected to the ground floor through large vertical openings. This generates a strong spatial duality between above and below, light and mass, the classified world and the living ground that sustains it. The descent becomes an invitation to experience geological time and material depth as integral parts of the museum narrative.

At the urban scale, the project repositions the museum in relation to its surroundings. The western facade, aligned with the primary pedestrian approach, is redefined as an active and dignified urban front. By relocating parking and extending the museum footprint onto the adjacent plot, a new public forecourt is created, offering a generous arrival space and transforming the museum into a catalyst for civic life. A secondary entrance and lounge increase permeability and reinforce the continuity between interior spaces, the city, and the surrounding landscape.

Architecture and landscape are conceived as a single, continuous system. Excavated material and elements reused from selective demolition are reintegrated into a geometric, abstract garden that frames the building and contributes to local biodiversity. Rather than imitating nature, the landscape interprets it, making human intervention explicit while reinforcing the ecological and educational narrative of the institution.

Light plays a central role in the architectural concept. A productive glass membrane filters and diffuses daylight, enhancing the existing exhibition spaces while maintaining controlled conditions. In parallel, the materiality of the original building is distilled to its essence, allowing structure, mass, and texture to define the spatial experience with clarity and restraint.

Overall, the project frames the Graubünden Nature Museum as an architectural ecosystem: deeply rooted in its existing structure, extended through clear and legible spatial strategies, and newly embedded in its urban and environmental context. It becomes a place where visitors are invited to look both above and beneath the surface, understanding nature not as a static object of observation, but as a continuous process in which architecture, landscape, and life are intrinsically connected.