FROZEN IN 1963

Frozen in 1963

Author: Cecile Christmann , ALFIE MUNKENBECK

Casa Corinna and the Porsche 901.

Almost a perfect match for one another, just a few months separate Casa Corinna and the Porsche 901 that we were fortunate enough to photograph it with.

The house, completed in 1963, was the work of Peppo Brivio, an architect who’s name has seen something of a resurgence in architectural circles lately. He was among a group collectively referred to as the “Ticino School”, who’s practitioners primarily lived and worked in the Swiss border region of the same name. Though firmly rooted in Swiss customs, the way Italian culture permeates the Canton of Ticino is immediately evident when you study the region’s art and design output. Remnants of the Ticino School still pepper the architectural landscape, combining typical Swiss precision with an aestheticism more reminiscent of Italy’s Gio Ponti or Carlo Scarpa.

For six decades, the house has stood perfectly preserved as the jewel in Peppo Brivio’s crown. Sitting among a quiet cluster of houses in the hills of Morbio Superiore, it overlooks a breathtaking panorama of southern Ticino and large expanses of undulating Italian landscape, with the mountains surrounding Lake Como visible at a distance.

Inside, Brivio’s skill as a furniture designer remain on full display, all custom built and fitted to the house. In the living room, the floor dips into a central conversation pit, mirroring the similarly staggered shape of the clerestory roof above it. So much of the character of the house is reflected in that one feature, where everything appears to be a series of intersecting perpendicular volumes that mesh into one coherent whole.

Inside, Brivio’s skill as a furniture designer remain on full display, all custom built and fitted to the house.

Though we wish the Porsche was of the same year as the house, you’d have to source the launch car from the Frankfurt Motor Show if you wanted an authentic 1963 911.

Though we wish the Porsche was of the same year as the house, you’d have to source the launch car from the Frankfurt Motor Show if you wanted an authentic 1963 911. This one was built in early 1964 and strictly speaking, it isn’t a 911 at all. It’s one of the first few to leave the factory, when the model was still marketed as the Porsche 901. A swift complaint from Peugeot at the time necessitated a name change to “911”, but not before just 82 of these 901-badged cars slipped through the net.