architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

For many years the steep south slope next to the road leading to the Arlberg Pass was considered as being unsuitable for development. To realise the "Lux Alpinae” construction, the slope was dug out three storeys deep, a two-part building was constructed close to the slope. The rooms, accessible via a loggia landing, have room-high glass fronts and protruding balconies facing towards the south. Finally, a curved shell roof gives the glass, steel and exposed concrete hotel building a dynamic look.

Due to the relocation of the railway lines, the family running the hotel had to close it down and relocate by opening a new hotel on the grounds of the old railway station. The hotel they built is a flexible useful house with rooms, which due to the sliding partitions, can be turned into completely functional apartments. The outside of the hotel is decorated with a wood-shingle-façade and large glazed areas; protruding alcoves in the rooms provide resting areas with a view across the mountains.

Hotels in the style of oversized farmhouses are still being built in Tyrol. The "Arlmont” – constructed by the Tatanka Ideenvertriebs GmbH – shows that the younger tourist generation are now starting to change their views. Instead of a carved wooden balcony, a balustrade made of a reddish coloured exposed concrete surrounds the building with its organic sweeping outline. Room high windows offer guests an ambience bathed in light.

The small holiday apartment facility "Aradira” – name of Rhaeto-Romanic origin – consists of four apartment villas arranged terrace-shaped along the slope. Each unit offers guests maximum privacy, a small sauna and wellness facility is available for shared use.

Right in the middle of the tourism metropolis Ischgl, with its hotels and Après-Ski-Setting in between folklore and "Ballermann” (name given to a location for partying and having general fun) is the "Adler”, a building that for many doesn’t seem to suit the location. The architect – who runs the place himself – constructed a slim white building "encased” in terraces, a glass core and light coloured wooden balustrades, which offers its guests bright, simple and variable apartments.

Seen as a pleasing contemporary contrast and built at the foot of Laudegg Castle (1200s) in Ladis is the "Refugio Laudegg” apartment house. The four buildings, slightly staggered in position and height, remind, with their small components and materials, of the traditional stable construction method. The new facility, the castle, restaurant, lake and impressing mountain world, together, all form a homogeneous ensemble.

At the east border of Serfaus is Villa Rasilla – The name stems from a Rhaeto-Romanic term for field name – a holiday home designed by Noldin & Noldin. The two ground floor levels with the wellness-sauna-area, the bedrooms and bathrooms, have been built as a masonry wall construction; the top floor has been added as a self-supporting wooden cube with a wide and protruding partially roofed terrace.

Situated directly in the centre of Serfaus is the generously designed Arche holiday home. Above the ground floor, in which apart from the living area there is a self-sufficient holiday flat, is a protruding wooden box with four large bedrooms. Slightly at an angle to this, the top floor offering guests a large wellness area including an atrium and restroom and a view of the skies.

The Pezid apartments in Serfaus are a classic example of the intelligent restructuring of post war architectural "burdens of the past”. The old, hardly ever put to use balcony façade, was transformed into useful space with loggias with "reclining-chair-oriels” integrated on the inside. In 2007 this transformation to a "modern-mountain-hotel” was awarded the BTV (bank for Tyrol and Vorarlberg) - Building-Owner-Award-Tyrol.

The first contemporary conversion of the hotel in the middle of Sölden, the "Liebe Sonne”, was carried out on the top floor. The roof space was originally closed at all sides, but after being opened up, is now a two-storey wellness area with the appropriate open space. During the second stage of conversion, the entrance area and the complete ground floor, with its hotel hall and restaurant, was completely renewed in a simple manner and with natural materials.

The "3-Seenhaus", which belongs to the "Jagdschloss Resort Kühtai", is located directly at one of the cable car stations in the winter sports resort of Kühtai, which lies at 2,000 m above sea level. As a contemporary addition to the historical ensemble, a timber frame construction was erected in a reduced formal language, consisting of two underground connected buildings with hotel rooms and studios or spacious holiday flats.

The McTirol (former CUBE Biberwier) can be found at the edge of the town centre directly next to the Marienberg lift. Its concept has been adjusted to fit active sports holidaymakers, its design is an element of lifestyle. The inside of the Cube, which from the outside is plain, has an open interior design with ramps and generous open zones to accommodate for hotel life, which first and foremost, is kept out of the rooms.

Since the 1940s, the BMW-Group has been running a holiday hotel between Schloss Linderhof and Plansee. As in accordance with company philosophy, BMW intentionally built a contemporary new building. The building designed by the Vorarlberg architects Kaufmann Rüf consists of a ground floor made of in-situ concrete, onto which a completely equipped upper floor as a solid-wood-module with room-high windows was erected within a very short period of time.

As part of the newly designed entrance area of the lake Natters camping area, the architects created a long and narrow building for the necessary infrastructure functions that sets up to now unheard of quality standards in the world of tents, caravans and mobile homes. Despite its rather large volume, the two-storey building unpretentiously sits on the lakeshore, sort of becoming part of the landscape. There, you find everything you need for a camping holiday, plus a lot of small highlights and brilliant new ideas.

The Penz design-hotel with its interior design by the Vienne office Jiszda & Partner, forms the northwest completion of the Town Hall area planned by Dominique Perrault. The completely glazed north façade provides the rooms with a lovely panorama view; from the outside the dark glass reflects the images of the buildings around the square. A restaurant with an American bar and terrace can be found on the completely glazed top floor.

The hotel is an example of high-quality redensification right in the heart of Innsbruck. On the one hand, the façade of the existing building on Maria-Theresien-Straße was restored, the old building gutted inside and completely reorganized. On the other hand, a new structure that responds to the neighboring development as a narrow block with a concluding head building went up in the inner courtyard.

With the P3, PEMA Holding is building its third tower in Innsbruck, directly opposite the Adambräu. The architects realised a slender building consisting of a four-storey base and a 10-storey structure, which forms a clear end to the station area. Hotel "Motel One" is located in the tower, and the "reiter design" showroom and office spaces are located in the base.

In 2016, the former "Hotel Mozart", which dates back to the 1950s, was transformed into a boutique hotel where each room has its own identity. On offer are garden appartments, minimally furnished business rooms, mini-rooms with intelligent spatial solutions that have been thought out down to the last detail, or lavishly furnished themed rooms. The adjacent pub garden with terrace was also designed with great attention to detail.

Next to the former Seeber tower hotel designed, in the Thirties, by Lois Welzenbacher, the architects placed a second solitaire whose shape, materials and colours boldly contrast with the older building. The Welzenbacher building, a white angular cube with balconies whose situation and shape suggest a circular movement, was beautifully retrofitted, and can now enter into an exciting dialogue with the new conical glass tower. At their base, the towers are linked by a building containing the lobby as well as a café and restaurant.

During the 1980s, Hotel Windegg was reconstructed and extended in a contemporary and landscape related manner by the architect Hans Peter Petri. After changing hands, the hotel was converted for a second time, whereby the bedroom wing and the striking staircase tower remained in place. Heinz-Mathoi-Streli constructed a new three-storey building directly next to the hotel. This building, with its vertical larch-wood façade, is clearly different from the original white building.

The transformation of a historic town house into a boutique hotel is the latest example of the urban renewal process in Rattenberg that started in 2003. In the course of this process, several houses in the old town, which is protected as an ensemble, have been revitalised and vacancies filled with new life. With respect towards the heritage listed building, the very narrow house was renovated from the core up and supplemented with contemporary structures where necessary.

The cautious renovation of an old farmhouse and the new building extension with four holiday flats provides a new interpretation of the topic of "Old-New”. In place of the old stables, a massive structure with the original building’s dimensions was constructed and then covered with the old stable’s planks – a refreshing approach based on the transferring of the customary.

Hotel Neuwirth – a heterogeneous conglomerate of building components from the most diverse dates of origin – was converted in the course of a reorientation into a nature and active-holiday hotel. The existing roof framework of the western part of the building was completely taken down, all of the balconies were removed, and a new roof structure for seven two-story apartments was erected. The rooms located below were renovated and complemented with a continuous balcony zone; the entire stock façade was thermally renovated and encased with a shingle façade.

The guest house in Lanersbach was built in 1910 as one of the region’s first places of accommodation. It had been necessary to modernise the small log cabin with the guest and private areas not being separate areas. The sensitive extension in the form of a cube matches the existing buildings concept and orients its materiality on the surrounding area’s farm houses.

After a change of ownership, a town house with its core dating back to the 15th century on Kufstein's town square was converted into a hotel with a restaurant, coffee house and its own roastery and extended by a new building on Marktgasse used as an office building. Through targeted contemporary interventions, the historical substance was further developed into a new unity in which the old and the new always remain recognisable.

Hotel Sattlerwirt is a classic "Tyrolean Hotel” with a pitched roof, balconies and additions built over the years. In contrast to the old stock left unchanged, Madritsch Pfurtscheller conceived a side wing which is very simple and clear in its use of forms. It features a wellness area in the basement, a newly structured entrance area, foyer, hall with a bar and seminar rooms on the ground floor, as well as two stories of rooms.

Wolfgang Pöschl extended Hotel Adler, a large Tyrolean building of the 1980s, to become a three storey high "Black Spa” in 2001. The building has a wellness area with a sauna, indoor swimming pool and fitness room and is partially sunken into the earth. In 2008 a further storey seen as a foreign body, the "Kitz Summer Spa”, was added to the existing building. The glazed ground floor was fitted with luxury suites, above these "hovers” a roof terrace with a swimming pool enveloped in shingles.

Directly in the centre of Matrei is the now historic hotel Hinteregger. The architects used a former cinema hall as a supporting structure for the extension of the northeast wing. The former outside wall was plastered with clay and integrated as a "heating wall”, a wooden construction at loggia level was placed ahead. A wellness zone has been set up on the first floor; its completely glazed front opens the room towards the garden.

Hotel Rauter, situated in the centre of Matrei, was redeveloped in a number of construction stages under the motto of a concentrated and creative "adjustment”. The wellness area with its indoor swimming pool, the rest room designed as a forest of wooden slats and the garden with its outdoor swimming pool, are dominated by the contrast between the white pools, the furniture and the larch wood.

A hotel complex, highly controversial on account of its dimensions, was erected in the middle of the forest at an elevation of 1,300 meters. At the center lies the multistory, elongated structure of the hotel with a widely visible tower. Grouped around it and built upon mushroom-like concrete bases are 42 chalets, whose various building types were developed out of the topography. In order to carry out the massive intervention into the high alpine landscape as sparingly as possible, great attention during the planning stage was focused on integrating the resort into the landscape and regional architectural traditions were tied in without making use of flat alpine clichés.

The small family owned boarding house in Sillian was converted and extended by the architect Peter Jungmann. The original building’s ground floor was opened as a dining room and fireplace-lobby, a terrace facing towards the south was added. The flat extension building with eight hotel rooms was completed using local building materials and furnished with harmonious materials and detail.