Alpine resilience through grounded design

At Courmayeur Climate Hub, resilience means consistent local action

Courmayeur Climate Hub: where the landscape thinks and architecture listens

At the far edge of the Aosta Valley, where the Alps stretch into silences that resist digital translation, a new space is redefining how we inhabit the mountains. The Courmayeur Climate Hub is a working place: open to ideas, built for experimentation, focused on sustainability. Housed in the former Hotel Ange,a 17th-century building once used by pilgrims and later a stop in the rise of Alpine tourism, the Hub preserves what matters: frescoes, stone, and spatial rhythm. After decades of neglect, the building was restored by Paolo Massa Bovat and Cristina Bardelli of WAU Architetti. The intervention upgraded systems, recovered original decorations, and reopened the volumes with a new vaulted ceiling. The project, carried out with the support of the regional heritage office, brings together efficiency and continuity

Immersive art and augmented reality in the Alps

The Hub’s opening was marked by MUTaZIONI – L’arte del cambiamento, a sensory exhibition curated by Silent Media Lab and Galleria Inarttendu. Works by Andrea Carlotto and augmented-reality pieces by Sara Cimarosti created immersive environments that rethink body, space, and time.

The works broke continuity, shifted focus, and left space open. They asked the viewer to stay inside the disruption, to feel what change actually does ,slowly, structurally, without shortcuts.

Art becomes a tool for reading the present. It holds uncertainty, amplifies tension, and keeps the questions alive.

Climate Hub workshops: new ways to live the Alps

The Climate Hub operates as a site for collective research and experimentation. Workshops, public talks, international residencies, and educational paths unfold throughout the year. Each initiative functions as a lab where local expertise intersects with outside perspectives to explore new ways of coexisting with the mountain environment.

Several active programs are already opening up these directions. Climathon Courmayeur gathers people around urgent issues rethinking water systems, sustainable mobility, and high-altitude waste. Future Mountain Jobs investigates emerging professions across technology, landscape stewardship, and care work. STEM camps for young people between 8 and 17 introduce skills in robotics, coding, and environmental intelligence.

Here, the landscape becomes a partner in the process. Not a backdrop, but a living substance to engage with care and attention.

Digital Mountain Library: alpine knowledge goes online

the Digital Mountain Library provides over 3,000 titles focused on alpine culture, environmental science, and landscape change. The collection includes maps, archival documents, field reports, and contemporary research. Everything is accessible online and regularly updated.

The goal is clear: open up quality knowledge on mountain territories to a wide audience. Researchers, educators, local administrators, and residents can consult and use the material without barriers. The Alps are presented as living systems shaped by climate, people, and time.

This library is built for action. It turns stored information into a working tool.

Sustainable tourism in Courmayeur: a rooted model

The Climate Hub works on territorial planning alongside cultural programming. With institutions and local communities, it developed the Integrated Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism a framework that values continuity over speed. Trails are restored, historic fountains catalogued, land art placed along paths. The goal is to make the landscape accessible without erasing its rhythm.

As the Alps heat up, urgency grows. Glaciers shrink, permafrost destabilizes, ecosystems shift. Sustainability here means designing how people move, consume, and relate to place. Tourism is shaped with intention built to last, grounded in care, aligned with the mountain’s pace.

A model for sustainable living in the Alps

The project was recognized in 2023 with the Areté Award for Public Communication, a nod to both its symbolic reach and its operational clarity. But the impact isn’t defined by awards. What matters is the capacity to generate new forms of engagement and imagination.

In this framework, Courmayeur becomes more than a mountain town. It’s a working model a place where sustainability is woven into daily gestures, community processes, and design choices. A landscape no longer treated as scenery, but approached as an active presence.

There’s no nostalgia. No slogans. Just the beginnings of a different kind of future built slowly, through listening, through place, through practice.

Benedicta Addoteye