Renovation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Institute into a nursing home for the elderly, Rio di Pusteria (Mühlbach)

There remains, perhaps,
some tree on a slope, to be
looked at day after day, there remains
for us yesterday’s walk,
and the cupboard-love loyalty of a habit
that liked us and stayed and never gave notice.
R. M. Rilke from the “Duino Elegies” Elegia

Conditions that are far from common in Italy have made this work of architecture possible and also guided its character.

And this is also thanks to the clients’ far-sightedness and the ways in which the project was assigned.

Four small municipalities in the Puster Valley (Mühlbach, Vintl, Rodeneck, and Natz-Schabs), faced with the need to build their own retirement and elderly homes, made a significant choice: that of recovering for this purpose the large Institute of the Sacred Heart of Jesus convent complex in Mühlbach, whose original nucleus dates back to the 11th century and is entirely protected by the Superintendency of Monuments. The clients thus demonstrated a double awareness: the first in recognizing the complex’s historical and architectural value, and its being the most important urban artefact of the small town. And as a result, deciding to brave the greater costs of a transformation in order to save it from an uncertain fate and safeguard its public use. The second concerned the methods used to assign the project, aware of both the difficulty and the significance of the task: a Europe-wide competition with a preliminary selection based on curriculum. Adapting the convent complex to a rest and care home for the elderly also necessitated the construction of a residence for the young girls who attend the nearby school, who were previously housed in the convent itself.

In recent years, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol has adopted an important strategy for the construction of homes for the elderly:favouring a location within the fabric of existing villages, thus trying to avoid making them “separate institutions”, with the aim of maximum integration between their specific functions and those that can be housed, while remaining open to the villagers.

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