architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

Designed by Rainer Köberl and Daniela Kröss, the museum building lies like a small fortress on a steep slope. Rising above a roughly pentagonal layout is a tower-like structure that gets its conciseness from the clear form and the reduction of the design elements to reddish-colored concrete in connection with bold red steel elements. From the entrance on the ground floor, visitors are guided through two exhibition levels up to a viewing terrace, which leads over a footbridge into the ibex enclosure.

Dating back to the 13th century, the core of Heinfels Castle had fallen into disrepair over the past century. In 2007, the South Tyrolean company Loacker took over the ruin and, in cooperation with the Federal Monuments Office, the State of Tyrol and the newly founded museum association, developed a concept to make them usable for tourism and culture. In a balancing act between old and new, parts of the large castle complex were preserved and restored, while others were reconstructed and reinterpreted.

The Längenfeld Nature Park House is the operational center of the Ötztal Nature Park and includes, among other things, an exhibition about the natural diversity of the valley. Proceeding from the topographical conditions, Hanno Schlögl designed the house as an artificial rock, with its exposed concrete surfaces, imprinted by the horizontal formwork, taking up a role that mediates between rock and wood. Purposefully placed perforations, a transverse concrete slab and the inclined canopy emphasize the structure’s sculptural character.

Built in the 15th and 16th centuries, the City Tower is one of Innsbruck’s oldest landmarks, and the viewing platform a popular place for locals and tourists. In the course of the renovation, a free-standing double helix with an open stairwell was realized. Not only does it direct the flow of visitors, but is itself an impressive spatial sculpture in the freed-up tower interior.

With the Visitor Centre, one of the most visited sights in Tyrol has been given a prestigious entrée. Almost invisible from beyond the outer city wall, the new building pushes itself between the existing "Feuerwerkhaus" and the new fortress courtyard and closes the square. In keeping with the existing development of the fortress, the partly two-storey large space was given an outer façade and roof cladding of untreated larch wood.

On the occasion of their 20-year existence, the Swarovski Crystal Worlds doubled in size in 2015, adding a new cabinet of wonder, an extensive park and several structural components. The entrance area, conceived as a "white forest” with its wide-jutting concrete roof supported by birch tree trunks and the design of the store, derived from a river landscape, originate from s_o_s architekten. On one hand, Snøhetta erected the well-lit, organically formed pavilion for the Daniels Café & Restaurant; on the other hand, the play tower encased with crystalline glass panels and the adventure playground that lies in front of it.

A new museum was constructed in Bergisel with the "Riesenrundgemälde” being its main attraction. The architects solved the complex task at the location of both historical and landscape importance, with a flat solitary and "reserved design” building situated on the edge of the slope leading to the Sillschlucht. However, when travelling towards the main traffic routes, the round painting takes on the appearance of a sculpture with it being presented in a hollow.

With the "Tuum,” ("tower”), the village center of Oetz possesses one of the oldest and most significant secular buildings in the Ötztal Valley, which was made accessible to the public through the complete refurbishment and adaptation of the museum. The unobtrusive exterior design, the staging of the route guidance and the design of the additions needed for museum operation form an exciting dialog with the historic stock.

Hasegg Castle with the twelve-angle mint tower is the landmark of the town of Hall. Originally, it dates back to the 13th century, but had undergone rather chaotic growth over the centuries. With a few very intelligent and respectful interventions, it was possible to implant a museum. A "must see” is the historic mint tower with its two staircases which you now can enter using a new sculptural steel spiral staircase.

Since the 1960’s, the Taxis palace, built around 1690 by J. M. Gumpp the Elder, hosts the Region’s contemporary art gallery. To create additional space for exhibitions, a new hall was carved into the courtyard of the baroque palace that now – not unlike in a pond – is mirrored in the glass roof of the new underground hall. That kind of interaction between the historical ensemble and contemporary intervention is characteristic of the entire project, so art exhibitions have found an architecturally fascinating location.

The hall with dominant 9 m high breccie columns, dating back to about the middle of the 19th century, is one of rather few still existing remnants of a once flourishing salt industry in Hall. Very subtle interventions sufficed to change it into a fine arts hall, with a smaller north wing added. Together with another saltworks building which was turned into a "media tower” by Schlögl & Süß, the revitalized monument of industrial archeology suggests a new town gate.