SANT’AGNESE HOME OF THE SISTERS OF CHARITY OF THE HOLY CROSS OF INGENBOHL

STUDIO CRISTIANA GUERRA, 2016-20

At the foot of magnificent vineyards sloping down to Lake Maggiore once lay the Sant’Agnese clinic, built in the nineteen-forties by the architect Bruno Brunoni. There, illustrious figures such as Paul Klee and Erich Maria Remarque once stayed. A few years ago, the clinic closed its doors and the Italian mother-tongue sisters needed to find a new home that could accommodate them after a life of service in schools and hospitals in Ticino.

According to these wishes the new Casa Sant’Agnese of the Ingenbohl Convent was founded. The new building is situated higher than the vineyard-covered slope above the recently demolished historic clinic. It was designed as a real convent set amid the nineteenth century lemon house and terraced kitchen gardens, bringing together the different elements of the location in a single whole of external and internal spaces in harmony with the beauty of the landscape.