Design Educates Awards 2022

Althoug a trail has always been running only a couple of metres beside it, the Plima Gorge was never set a focus on. No hiker, no tourist, hardly any local would know about it, in spite of it’s striking beauty. When the vision of making the gorge „accessible“ was born, tara opposed to all ideas of constructions – stairs, bridges, pathes, ladders etc – being inserted in the gorge. The fascination of this gorge and its setting in the surrounding landscape is best experienced from the edge along it, tara claimed. Leading the hiker off his existing path on four little detours of only a couple of minutes, the viewpoints make him experience the edge of the Plima Gorge in four different manners: The „ladle“ takes the visitor down beyond the edge, bringing him close to the Plima’s spray. The „sickle“ lets the visitor slide horizontally along the edge. The „pulpit“ lifts the visitor up above the edge line. And finally the suspension bridge takes the visitor from one edge to the other, creating a new connection between existing trails on the two sides of the gorge. The challenge for us as designers was to develop viewpoints that provide enough securing elements (stairs, railings etc.) to guarantee the safety of the visitor, and at the same time preserve the breathtaking experience that makes you go weak at the knees when you slowly walk forward to the edge of the gorge. The four pieces of construction might be sculptures themselves, but the experience they allow is always the gorge itself: the deepness of it, the harshness of the faces, the force of the water, the light, the scent, the atmospheric conditions. They are mediators between the visitor and the landscape, between the human being and nature itself. Along the trail additional information about animals, plants, history and natural phenoma is given by trilingual signposts, to make the circular walk an entertaining and at the same time educational experience. To respect and preserve the existing landscape that is part of the „Stelvio National Park“, the detailed planning of the viewpoinsts and the suspension bridge aimed at a high degree of prefabrication. Up to whole viewpoints where asssembled in the valley and then flown to the site by high load helicopters. This reduced the intervention on site to an absolut minimum. Apart from the preparatory works of anchors and punctual concrete foundations, no remaining construction site traces where left. This is crucial in a high alpine setting, where every wounding of the ground covering vegetation takes years to be restored. The „Plima Gorge Panoramic Trail“ has in the years since its completion proved to really serve its purpose of inviting people to come to Val Martello Valley to experience the beauty of it’s landscape along and around the Plima Gorge. And if more and more people learn to see, feel, experience, appreciate and cherish the vulnerable beauty of this high alpine ecosystem, the project has reached ist educational aim.