CAMERA OBSCURA BERNINAPASS

The new Bernina maintenance base of the Graubünden Civil Engineering Office on the Bernina Pass not only serves as a base for winter maintenance of the Bernina Pass road. Rather, this building, designed by the Chur-based architectural firm Bearth and Deplazes, houses a special attraction: in collaboration with photographer Guido Baselgia, the architects have housed a camera obscura on the top floor of the striking salt and gravel silo, which allows visitors to perceive the Bernina region in a whole new way and to reflect on how they perceive it.

The "black chamber" on the tower of the silo facility of the maintenance base is a windowless room, light falls through a hole in the wall onto the concave inner wall and thus reflects 'the image' of the landscape - an unexpected way of viewing the landscape. The original form of the camera obscura works without a lens. Alone a hole in the housing of a dark room creates an image of the outside world on the inner wall. In doing so, its angle of view captures towards 180° in all directions, a kind of 'optical blank'. The situation on the Bernina Pass is a phenomenal constellation of optical primal method, arctic landscape and the function of the base in the context of the seasons.

Foto Guido Baselgia