Reframing the mountain: situated design and territorial conflicts at Marilleva (Trentino, Italy, 1967–1977). A contextual reading of architecture as cartographic and political translation in Alpine landscapes

This contribution investigates Marilleva (Val di Sole, Trentino, Italy) as a situated experiment in architectural research and high-altitude planning. Conceived between 1967 and 1977 in the wake of the Trentino Provincial Urban Plan coordinated by Giuseppe Samonà, Marilleva represents a paradigmatic case of architecture operating across multiple latitudes—territorial, climatic, socio-political, and epistemological. Designed as a prototype of Alpine tourist urbanization, it emerged from a vision that integrated spatial intelligence, infrastructural design, and environmental care into a unified diagrammatic approach to territory. The study positions Marilleva within the thematic framework of Euroau26 latitudes, specifically in track 2: “Urban and Contextual Practices.” It explores the potential of architecture to operate as a translator across cultural, climatic, and disciplinary boundaries. By re-reading the project through contemporary lenses—climatic fragility, tourist monoculture, social resistance, and ecological responsibility—this research reframes Marilleva not as a fixed object, but as a dynamic field of contested practices. Architecture is understood here not merely as a design solution, but as a form of territorial reasoning capable of integrating form, data, and social imagination. The analysis of original drawings, diagrams, and project documents reveals that architectural representation at Marilleva operated not as a passive mirror of the context, but as an active agent of spatial production. The project’s methodical engagement with topography, soil morphology, and territorial thresholds reveals a design approach where mapping becomes both a political and ecological act . In this framework, design acts as a spatial tool of situated knowledge production, mediating infrastructure, local identity, and the future of fragile geographies. The architectural proposal—based on modular prefabrication, pilotis, and a singular horizontal structure—materializes this epistemology: the building aligns with the slope, rises from the terrain, and draws an infrastructural horizon in concrete, resisting both folkloristic mimicry and generic sprawl. Nonetheless, the process of transformation also exposed critical tensions. Despite its ambitions, Marilleva suffered from a lack of dialogue with local populations, culminating in a public referendum in 1977. The project’s inability to translate its situated knowledge into social consensus highlights the necessity of participatory processes and shared imaginaries in mountain territories. This aligns with one of the central questions of the call: how can architecture, when displaced from dominant centers of production, adapt to and be shaped by local environmental and cultural conditions? The resistance to modernist architectural language in the Trentino valleys—where the memory of vernacular forms remained strong—underscores the symbolic and cultural challenges embedded in spatial innovation. Marilleva is thus interpreted both as a spatial device and as a discursive site—a catalyst for reflecting on the limits of abstraction and the necessity of contextual attunement. As a project operating between Northern and Southern European latitudes, it foregrounds the need for a plural, relational, and trans-scalar understanding of place. It also resonates with current urgencies such as overtourism, climate adaptation, and the transformation of Alpine economies. In this light, Marilleva can be understood not only as a failed utopia, but as an anticipatory device whose methodological legacy still offers valuable insights for contemporary design practices in marginal territories. Reflecting on the epistemic role of drawing and cartography in the making of this “micro-city at altitude,” this contribution calls for renewed attention to the methodological tools of architecture in designing with—rather than against—the ground. Marilleva offers a lens through which to critically reconsider the conditions for ecological and social resilience in marginal contexts, contributing to Euroau26’s broader aim of constructing a trans-latitudinal architectural knowledge rooted in care, conflict, and situated transformation. It reopens a question that is both architectural and political: how can the mountain be inhabited without being consumed?