architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

Since 1984/85, an underground air cushion funicular has been connecting the eastern end of the village of Serfaus with the cable cars in the west. In the course of renewing the technical installations, the four stations were adapted to today's requirements and designed as non-barrier meeting places, each with its own character. The two stations "Kirche" and "Zentrum" in the centre of the village were completely rebuilt.

The Martinsbrücke, a pedestrian and cycle path bridge over the Inn River, connects the communities of Zirl and Unterperfuss, and is located on the Inn Cycle Path. In terms of design and technology, it is a prime example of a sophisticated bridge construction. With a total length of around 100 meters, it is the first wood-concrete composite bridge in Europe of this size. Supported on the banks by inclined concrete struts, it spans the river in an elegant arc and naturally blends in with the surroundings.

While the Nordkettenbahn cable railway (architecture: Franz Baumann), built around the same time, was sensitively adapted for a new cable car technology, this apparently proved not to be economically justifiable for the Patscherkofelbahn (architecture: Hans Fessler), which opened in 1928. A three-station monocable gondola lift, characterized by a very strict and purist approach focusing on function, arose in place of the old aerial tramway.

Directly connected to the existing "Grenobler Brücke” road bridge, the new tram bridge over the Inn is an integral part of the planned regional railway between Völs and Rum. The project by Hans Peter Gruber (architecture) and Thomas Sigl (structural engineering), which won an architectural competition, consists of a girder bridge in composite construction on which a foot and bike path is integrated below the tram line.

Directly next to the Olympia Bridge, the small bridge temporarily opens up a construction site for the Brenner Base Tunnel and, once the construction work has been completed, will relieve the Sill River bank of heavy traffic as a direct connection between the Südring and the St. Bartlmä commercial zone. The simple and elegant bridge is designed as an integral bridge, a concept in which the abutment and the span merge into a coherent whole.

In the scope of an extensive flood protection project, the area where the Sill runs into the Inn was redesigned. A significant component is the new bicycle and pedestrian bridge named after Innsbruck's twin city, Tiflis (Tbilisi). Built without piers, the structure features a boat-shaped cross section, and its 42-meter span closes a gap in the path network along the river promenade.

Just 150 metres from the Galzigbahn– also planned by the Driendl* architects – the new Rendlbahn connects the town centre with the other side of the valley for the first time. The lower level of the dynamic steel, glass and concrete building is used as a bus terminal, with guests being able to directly access the gondola’s boarding area via an escalator. A long sweeping footbridge connects the end of the ski slope with the valley station, which has been integrated into the surrounding area.

The glacier terminal extension provides the existing Stubaier glacier cable lift valley station with a new reception area. The extension connects the existing heterogeneous buildings and, for the first time presents the single and double cable lifts as a single unit. A form-giving element is the curved and greened roof, beneath this is the transparent cladding of the lifts reception area.

After the Bergisel ski jump, the four station buildings and the oblique suspension bridge across the river make up the second project Zaha Hadid realised in Innsbruck. Starting from the fundamental concept of a shell and the shadow thrown by it, she designed an organically shaped glass shell over a concrete landscape, the translucent roof spreading and extending, as it were, the stations’ spaces, thus staging a drama of movement adapted to the particular character of each location.

After the Bergisel ski jump, the four station buildings and the oblique suspension bridge across the river make up the second project Zaha Hadid realised in Innsbruck. Starting from the fundamental concept of a shell and the shadow thrown by it, she designed an organically shaped glass shell over a concrete landscape, the translucent roof spreading and extending, as it were, the stations’ spaces, thus staging a drama of movement adapted to the particular character of each location.

The Galzigbahn valley station presents itself as a very individual and at first sight, strange artificial design. However, the glass-steel-concrete building is by no means an architectural self-dramatisation, but a form developed directly from the innovative cable lift technology. A sweeping building with a glass roof rises above massive concrete head walls. This portrays the lifts sequence of motions and reveals the technical inner mechanism.

The Ahorn mountain and valley stations in Mayrhofen in the Zillertal both differ from many other contemporary lifts due to their precise association with the location and landscape. It’s not the highly complex technological "content” as a shuttle-lift – which alone due to the technology requires very high structures – that puts them into focus, but the constructive dialogue of the station’s high constructions with their respective surroundings.

The pedestrian and bicycle bridge, a four-field steel composite structure running next to the four-lane "Olympia Bridge,” spans 250 meters over the railroad tracks of Innsbruck’s Main Railway Station and the Sill River. Blinding out the car traffic, the 300-meter-long parapet beam bends as a dynamically formed separator element from east to west. A large-scale exposed concrete beam breaks away from the terrain in the east and shows the stairs.

The stations originally designed in the late 1920s by Franz Baumann certainly are some of the most important monuments of modernism in Tyrol. In the course of a technological upgrade of the cable railway, the stations had inevitably to be adapted both functionally and spatially. All the necessary interventions, however, were developed strictly along the lines of either severely restoring the original building as designed by Baumann, thus cancelling all later additions, or ostentatiously showing contemporary additions to be just that: changes added because they were necessary.

A long-stretching red cover encloses the Innsbruck Central Station; its main level had been lowered down to be directly accessible from the underground parking lot. The spacious grand hall with a gallery houses the railway’s customer area, shops, cafés and restaurants. The perforated concrete cover engulfs all the building’s functions and allows quick and furtive, filtered, as it were, glances from the platforms into the city.

The double lane expansion of the Arlberg tunnel carried out in 1998 provided the chance to demolish the old railway station originally in the middle of the village and build a new one on the south side of the valley. The design, emerging from a Europe-wide contest, is a new interpretation of the "Railway Station”. The actual station building is not a solitary building away from the railway lines, but a part of the landscape designing process.

Starting at the Seegrube is a short chair lift up the west slope to the Frau-Hitt-Warte. Both lift stations are reduced to a functional and technical minimum, are by no means spectacular, but are still individual architectural designs. The steel-wood constructions were prefabricated and lifted to their locations by helicopter; here they were connected to their previously constructed foundations.

On the Tyrolean side, the Steinplatten lift provides access to the Steinplatte Waidring skiing area situated on the high plateau at the Tyrol-Salzburg-Bavaria triangle. A characteristic element of the valley station planned by Peter Thurner, is the wave shaped roof under which various rooms and areas of activity can be found. Long and sweeping, it is suspended above the massive base areas forming a large covered open space area.

As a connection between the office area on the left bank of the Inn and the business centre in the Angedair district, Thomas Schnizer designed a footbridge with a horizontal structure that has a resolving effect on the urban area. With its well thought out details and the well planned access ramps, the bridge combines the town design with constructive sensibility.

The technical challenge of building one station for two cable lifts was solved by the winner of the Fisser mountain lift contest – two buildings placed to form an angle and affixed by a single sheet steel roof. Due to the drop in the level of the ground, it was possible to keep the volume of the double station quite low, hence, integrating it with the overall appearance of the community of Fiss.

The architectural originality of the Rifflseebahn valley station is typical for Josef Lackner’s (1931 – 2001) work, which he always kept at a distance from fashions and trends. In this case, with the in form and content he played with the theme of regional building, which he took and transformed into new relationships – for example, he took autonomous buildings developed in room and functional programmes and covered them with "old fashioned” wood shingle.

Situated at the entrance to Obergurgl, running up to the Festkogel alpine hut, – the location of the valley station was also influenced by the architects – is one of the first new generation cable lifts. To express the architectural topical excitement between technology and nature, Peter Thurner and Antonius Lanzinger developed an autonomous sculpture as a massive exposed concrete base with a glass and sheet metal roof placed on top.

During the 1980s, the Hochbrixen cable car stations were the turning point of decades of Tyrolean cable car design stagnation. Committed to a constructive approach to a solution, the architects interpreted the stations as architecturally refined purpose built buildings, this without falling back on past and present day clichés.

Together with the construction of the Arlberg tunnel, the construction of the steel-lattice railway bridge across the Trisanna (1882–83) was the greatest technical achievement during the complete construction of the Arlberg railway. Two huge stone piers to which the stone viaduct-arches on both sides are connected support the steel lattice construction, which at the time was Europe’s second largest bridge. The bridge was reinforced in 1923 and replaced by a steel construction in 1964.

Mit der Mittel- und der Bergstation der Vallugabahn setzte Willi Stigler sen. zwei autonome und auf den jeweiligen Ort abgestimmte Baukörper in die Felsregion. Ganz der Sprache der 1950er Jahre verbunden, vermitteln die beiden Stationen mit ihren dynamischen, plastischen Formen und der Farbgebung Optimismus und Fortschrittsglauben. Wie Adlerhorste kleben sie selbstbewusst am Berg und lassen die Touristen die Dramatik der Landschaft "hautnah" erleben.

The architect Franz Baumann originally constructed the three "Nordkettenbahnen” cable car station‘s buildings – Hungerburg, Seegrube and Hafelekar – from 1927 – 1928. These belong to the most important modern age buildings in Tyrol. The way the highly sensitive architecture was adapted to match the mountain is still a fine example of alpine building. Especially worthwhile visiting is the Hafelekar mountain station, which is pressed into the rock like a swallow’s nest and provides a view towards the town and Karwendel.