Hit the Beat Architectural Project
Hit the Beat
Hit the Beat is an architectural regeneration project for the railway station area in Chiasso, a border city marked by its raw, industrial soundscape. The project reframes this sonic harshness as a creative opportunity, transforming the city’s mechanical rhythm into a driving force for urban revitalisation. In a fragmented urban fabric, sound becomes connective tissue — orienting, revealing, and animating space. Centred on music & leisure, the proposal envisions a new public ground where architecture and sound converge. Key interventions include a Sound Art Master’s School and a Concert Hall for Experimental Music & Arts, complemented by the adaptive reuse of existing buildings into an Event Hall and a Welcome Centre for immigrants. These programmes are tied together by a continuous urban park that reclaims the station’s ground floor as vibrant civic space. Designed as an open-air sound library, the project proposes Chiasso not only as a place to pass through, but as a destination for cultural production, social exchange, and acoustic exploration. By amplifying the city’s sonic identity, Hit the Beat invites new forms of public life and artistic expression.
The project was awarded the Swiss Engineering Ticino Prize in 2020 and exhibited in 2021 at Chiasso–Ponte Chiasso: Integrazione, curated by Muck Petzet at Spazio Officina, Chiasso Cultural Centre.
Sound Art Master School
The concept envisions a building that establishes a strong dialogue with the atmosphere of the city. The tower is conceived as a machine — a dynamic structure offering ever-changing vantage points to observe and listen to Chiasso’s urban soundscape. Its central core is deconstructed, and circulation is shifted to the external perimeter, becoming a vertical infrastructure that enables multiple access points and connections between the building and the surrounding public space. At the base of the tower, a Music Piazza is designed for open-air improvisation, encircled by a Soundpark featuring instruments and sound installations that can both be played and respond to the ambient sounds of the city.
POLIFEMO — Concert Hall for Experimental Music & Arts
Set on a raised podium that doubles as both a public piazza and a performance stage, the building redefines the boundary between architecture and sound. At its threshold stands the ticket office — conceived as an outdoor sound pavilion — strategically placed at the end of the urban axis linking the m.a.x. Museum and Cinema Teatro. Named Polifemo (from the Greek onúno, “chatterbox”), the concert hall is designed to host performances of experimental music — sounds that move, multiply, and create vast acoustic landscapes. The space is envisioned as a playable architectural instrument. Built with two skins, the outer shell is designed to modulate sound, while the inner lining acts as a resonant surface, capable of being tuned and adapted to the performance. From the spacious ground-floor foyer, a system of ramps guides musicians and visitors through the volume, encouraging movement in sync with the sonic flow. At the top, Polifemo’s ‘eye’ opens onto a view of the railway, while the rest of the façade is veiled in satin glass blocks — a translucent curtain behind which sound and light unfold in synchrony.
The idea is to transform the movement of the train into music.
The ticket pavilion therefore becomes a sound sculpture that resonates with the passing trains.