Carmenna chair lift stations

The Carmenna chair lift has three stations along its lenght: one in the valley, one in the middle and one at the top. The valley station contains voluminous room with space for the cables to turn round, for all the technical equipment and for storing the chairs themselves. It is built as a frame of steel sections covered with profiled metal sheet; on the roof is a thin layer of soil, planted with vegetation. Like a tent canvas supported on poles, the roof surfaces form a folded arrangement that blends seamlessly with the topography. On the valley side is a visier-like, translucent façade of polycarbonate panels, whereas facing the mountain is a hole in the earth, out of which the chairs come shooting out. The space where the chairs turn round and the visitors take their seats, is finished on the inside with a neon-orange coloured skin of wooden panels. The station at the top of the lift is contrapuntal, i.e. it sits sideways to the dam-like mountain ridge. It is shaped like an archetypal tent: posts leaning against one another form a triangular tunnel, with a glass wall at the end. Inside it is clad with neon-green panels, and on the outside it is protected with profiled matal sheet. The same design was used for the middle station, but here the frame is only partially clad. The underside of this construction is finished with neon-yello planking.