In 1862 and 1863, Gottfried Semper designed and built an Italian country house in the style of Schinkel for the customs director of Bergell, Agostino Garbald, and his wife, the poetess Silvia Andrea, in Castasegna on the Swiss border with Italy. In 2002, the Basel architectural firm Miller & Maranta won the competition for the restoration, repurposing, and expansion of the villa, which is now used as a so-called "Denklabor," a seminar center for ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, as well as other educational and business groups. The Villa Garbald and the new building Roccolo successfully illustrate how high-quality architecture from the 19th and 21st centuries can engage in dialogue with each other. Here, landscape, historic building fabric, and modern architecture uniquely blend into a symbiosis.