The cultural center “Lou Pourtoun”, opened at the end of 2015, is the latest act of this strategy that combines architectural quality, cultural policies and social and economic revival.

A project developed by a team of architectes and teachers of the Institute of Mountain Architecture of the Politecnico di Torino – Massimo Crotti, Antonio De Rossi, Marie-Pierre Forsans – which for some years is accompanying the local community on issues of architecture, with the realization of several renovations and constructions of new public buildings.

Located at 1,400 meters above sea level, in the heart of an ancient late medieval village, “Lou Pourtoun” will host events such as the international “Ostana-Escrituras en Lenga Maire”, the film school L’Aura and formative activities of the Politecnico di Torino.

The name “Lou Pourtoun” comes from an original typology of the village, which has become the settlement principle behind the project: a kind of covered street – the pourtoun – laid out along the contour line, and along which are built, upstream and downstream, the small volumes.

The building is organized on three levels connected with each other and which can be accessed directly from different points of the slope, as in the ancient alpine buildings. The first level has a large space for exhibitions, film screenings, conferences, etc.; the second and third level, arranged around the central area of the pourtoun, contein the rooms of the different associations and activities.

Large and hight windows open the pourtoun to the close village and to the landscape of the Monviso mountains. In the internal distribution space facing different local volumes of stone, creating a kind of small village housed under one roof. The pourtoun is therefore both an interior space and an external pathway, on which the village houses are aligned.