A road tunnelling through mountains in South Tyrol has been given undulating concrete portals and sculptural chimneys of weathering steel by MoDus Architects.
The Italian architecture practice designed these elements as part of its work on the Central Juncture Ring Road Bressanone-Varna in northern Italy.

MoDus Architects was asked to design a series of interventions ? including signage, acoustic barriers, tunnel portals and ventilation chimneys ? for the three-mile-long ring road that connects Varna to Bressanone, bypassing the latter's historic city centre.
This completed part includes a U-shaped portal near Bressanone's city centre that accesses a tunnel through the mountainside that opens through another gateway to a T-shaped junction.

Here drivers can turn south towards Bolzano or north to Varna, both routes leading through their own tunnels with concrete mouths designed by MoDus Architects. The concrete for these large, curving gateways is made from material excavated from another infrastructure project, the Brenner Base Tunnel that's currently under construction between Austria and Italy.
 
Photo by Leonhard Angerer
MoDus Architects chose larch wood for the acoustic barriers and clad the chimneys that ventilate the tunnel with Corten steel.
Three of the portals are curved and one is more angular. Striations from the board-marked concrete have been left visible, acting as visual markers that outline the shape of the tunnel mouths.

Rounded chimneys of weatherin...