Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the architecture and design of Alpine huts, most of which are accessible only by foot. What does their materiality tell us about the notion of walking, and what kind of effect do these exert on the physical practice?

Paper long abstract:

Alpine huts, as these were built in the Alps from around 1870 onwards on the initiative of the mountaineering associations in rapid succession and which have been maintained and renovated up to today with considerable effort, have brought forth a unique architectural type. The latter is strongly influenced by the ideas of nature and movement as developed by the urban bourgeoisie, and may well be read as expressive of its Utopias with respect to lifestyle, body and identity.

The contribution seeks to localize this, to date, less recognized historic and semantic architectural form as a cultural programme. The huts, understood as assemblages of materialised and immaterial knowledge, constitute an outstanding example of the processes of place-making referring to being underway. As places in which one, in fact, rests; by way of these, acts of walking are originated in situ and in a nutshell. These structures, which are (or were) for the most part only accessible by foot, are simultaneously stages, guides to a life form defined by walking. Their material structure, including rooms for shoes and drying facilities equipped with racks for sticks, ice picks and crampons, and where footwear is out of bounds in the parlours, have furniture designed for the regeneration of fatigued walkers, the multisensoric treatment of body, mobility and accommodation. This makes the case study interesting, furthermore, for discussing epistemological and methodological questions of a comparatively conceived ethnographic cultural analysis of "walking-home".