architek[tour] tirol – der architekturführer für tirol

The cemetery of the church of St. Gertraud, located on a slope above Außervillgraten, was extended to include urns in 2023. A 60-metre long, light-coloured concrete wall with a slightly projecting roof slab was built on the slope in front of the old rubble wall. To the south it runs parallel to the church and enables intimate access to the cemetery and chapel. In the northern part, the urn graves, each consisting of one closed and two open niches, have been set into the wall in a loose arrangement.

In the rural village center of Erl, the church, cemetery and parish garden form a clearly enclosed unit marked off from the surrounding development. As a secular antipode to the church, a new parish rectory was placed in the garden. Its location and polygonal ground plan layout were derived from the existing structure. Analogous to the roof of the church, the structure was enveloped with a copper façade, which will take on a characteristic blue-green patina over the years.

With the Granatkapelle (Garnate Chapel), Swiss star architect Mario Botta executed his first structure in Austria in Penkenjoch im Zillertal. As a firm counterpoint to nature, he placed an oversized crystal in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron on a ledge east of the reservoir. Clad with corten steel plates on the outside and laid with slender larch wood slats on the inside and lit solely through an opening in the roof, the sculptural structure stands out on account of its clear and precise geometry.

The meanwhile functionless pastor’s rectory provided the spaces needed in the Aschau parish for various groups, the administration and celebrations. This rectory, which is attached to the church and listed, was gutted and adapted for the new uses. Ancillary rooms and a small apartment are located in a narrow annex, which adopt the existing building lines in the sense of further construction.

Tourism pioneer Heinrich Klier had a chapel dedicated to the memory of his companions built directly on the ridge of the Schaufeljoch Mountain. Very plain in its form and materiality, the structure is reduced to the basic elements of a classic chapel and offers a place of calm and contemplation, which is open to everyone, in the midst of a lively ski circuit.

In the course of the cemetery expansion, a new funeral hall, whose exterior façade made of quarry stone masonry is based on the solid natural stone wall of the cemetery, was erected. The space in the interior, featuring wood paneling and simple benches, ties into the tradition of the farmhouse parlor. A narrow window and a circumferential glass strip placed under the roof bring natural light into the space and establish the relationship to the village, resp. the mountains.

To create the necessary space for a variety of purposes without, however, outgrowing the scale, both in area and volume, of the surrounding buildings, Lackner designed a two-storey building, setting the congregation room, most unusually, on the top floor. The main building is more or less "a house just like any other”, but is then upgraded by a lateral cover and a ceiling ideally as well as structurally separated from it.

The striking trench-shaped roof of the white building is not a mere theatrical gesture, it is meant to convey that this is a very special building. At the same time, it holds the wooden ceiling of the interior, thus creating a very introspective room for worshipping. The light strictly comes from above; this and the minimalistic choice of only two materials for the interior strongly underline the sacrality this space is meant to exude.

The church for the new Olympic Village was Lackner’s first major building. With the spatial organisation as well as the then "strange” choice of materials (raw concrete, granite cobblestones) he was way ahead of his time. The square central congregation room rests on a somewhat higher podium and is encircled by a low balustrade wall. This rather closed "central box”, as one might describe it, is then surrounded, on a slightly lower lever, by a stations of the Cross assageway the glass panels of which open up to the everyday life outside.