architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

Instead of two existing buildings south and east of St. Paul’s Church, the NEW HEIMAT TIROL constructed a social pastoral center for the parish of St. Paul, as well as a residential building with approx. 70 rental apartments. Marte.Marte Architekten place the comprehensive space allocation program in three loosely arranged structures around the church, which, in their entirety, also act as the new neighborhood center for Innsbruck-Reichenau.

Around 1,000 new apartments are to be built in the coming years on the so-called Campagne Areal in the Reichenau district of Innsbruck. As part of the process-accompanying neighborhood development work, a temporary place of information, exchange and networking – designed, planned and partly built by students of the architecture faculty – was erected.

In the next few years, around 1,000 new apartments will be built on the Campagne site in the Reichenau district of Innsbruck. On the first of the four construction fields, Bogenfeld Architektur implemented a concept based on the main idea of an open-air living room. Between four buildings of different shapes, they create a sequence of alleys, squares and gardens that are intended to promote a lively coexistence.

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.

Built on a very small plot of land at the edge of a public green zone, the house gives people with chronic mental illnesses a temporary home. There are small apartments on the upper floors, while the attic and ground floor offer communal lounge and therapy areas. An outer skin made of colored exposed concrete elements surrounds the entire polygonal structure, reinforcing its monolithic character.

The project by ARTEC Architekten, which resulted from a competition, reacts to the extremely sensitive building lot on the Innpromenade by placing itself as gently as possible into the riverbank landscape through mounting pillars and cantilevers. A low service wing lies at the street; the main wing of the residential home is segmented into interleaved housing units arranged around an interior space that opens towards the top. The green space newly designed by Auböck & Kárász seamlessly continues under them.

The annex of a competition-compatible hall with a grandstand, which emerged from an architectural competition, makes the previously disoriented building appear new as the "missing head for the existing body.” This new construction, the defining design element of which is the supporting structure, consists of a glass base for the hall and a closed cube above it for the grandstand.

A new entrance area with a restaurant was realized on the east bank of the Rossau Pond, which creates a point of attraction with its sun terrace that goes beyond its operation as a bathing facility. To achieve this, the site was re-terraced with two angled retaining walls. Spanned by projecting wooden roofs, the oblong restaurant structure and the lower-lying cash desk pavilion with their façades blend into the shore landscape.

Situated on a former agricultural property directly on the Innpromenade, the Rum Sports and Exercise Center includes several sports fields and facilities for the local soccer and weight training clubs. The centerpiece is an elongated bridge structure with a restaurant and grandstands on the upper floor, to which a transverse structure connects in the north, where, among other things, a large competition hall can be found.

The new centre of the Olympic Village, the winning project of a Europan competition, is said to be, and really is, a textbook example of urban density added to a pre-existing tissue, injecting also new meaning and creating a new identity for "suburbia”. The L-shaped building consists of a lower part containing shopping areas and public institutions like a kindergarten and a 16-storey residential tower, and encloses a square with (fortunately only) few pieces of urban furniture, thus leaving a lot of space for a variety of potential uses, creating a stage for the every-day vitality this city district is able to exude.

Covered by something like a crochet veil of bronze sheets, and actually rather small in comparison to the looming apartment buildings, the building of the bank’s branch office is hovering over the halfway underground customer parking lot. With a small square in front, and the drive-in telling machine, this precious little jewelery box of a bank projects a new urban quality into what before had been just another suburban block.

In 2006, Lorenzateliers compiled an urban development study for a former industrial estate in Mühlau for the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and suggested the conversion of monofunctional areas in the sense of a mixed-use city. In this context, a complex of 52 apartments spread over two south-facing, terraced rows of buildings was created on Kreuzgasse, offering a high quality of living with spacious loggias and terraces.

The MPREIS supermarket is situated 3 m below road level, all one sees, when looking from the village center, is a hovering roof, because the mass of the market building and entrance area is nestling against a slight turn of the road. A café, a terrace and a children’s playground, and additional spaces for various other shops make sure this supermarket serves as a village meeting point where people can do more than just their everyday shopping.

The centre is situated next to the church, the churchyard and the seat of the municipality of the large village of Rum. The complex of one-storey and two-storey buildings, respectful of the more rural character of the village, reflects the proportions of the surrounding buildings. The nicely renovated old seat of the village administration, a stage and grandstand with a roof, for all types of events, and the other parts of the complex together shape a graciously designed square.

The extension of the house for senior citizens built during the late 1990s by Hermann Kastner is an elevated two-storey building with bright spacious rooms. Together with the original building, the L-shaped extension forms a central and protected courtyard with a café and roofed open space. A central element is a chapel built above an oval-shaped ground plan in the courtyard; this was intentionally designed as an introverted place of peace.

Developed due to the spatial and architectural circumstances of the village, the KiWi has now become the new village point of interest. Three clearly detectable, independently functioning parts of the building – event hall, inn and community museum – are connected by means of a long stretched out foyer. Despite their clear contemporary shapes, the new buildings blend in naturally with the established structure due to their materiality, colour and dimensions. The inn, the Kirchenwirt, which is under historic protection, was returned to its original condition and carefully integrated into the overall plan.

Schenker Salvi Weber erected a new, two-story building for a kindergarten and nursery as an extension to the listed Absam Primary School, which fits into the historic villagescape in its volume and with its scrape-finished plaster façade. The triple gymnasium was placed under ground; a spacious plaza, which functions both as a protected schoolyard and as type of village square, developed above it.

"Swarovski Optik”, specialist for long range optics, was founded in Absam in 1946 where since then, the industrial facility has grown continuously. As part of a structural company reorganisation, a concept for the conversion and extension of the ensemble was drawn up together with the architects. The plans were then implemented over a number of stages taking those working for the company into account.

In the new building, which resulted from an architectural competition held by "Dorferneuerung Tirol” a state organization dedicated to village renewal in Tyrol, two different uses are accommodated on two levels. The Volunteer Fire Department received a modern operations center, situated at ground level and oriented to the access road. Lying above this component, which was built with steel-reinforced concrete and partially dug into the slope, is the club house, executed as a timber construction. Featuring a festival area attached on the same level, it provides an attractive setting for the community’s active club life.

On a slope east of the village of Absam, adjacent to a school building from the sixties, the new regional professional school for construction and painting bridges the gap between the old school and the distinctive edge of the hill. The building’s organization follows a strictly horizontal logic. Unplastered concrete bricks with integrated insulation for the walls and rough concrete for the load-carrying structure make sure the future construction workers get an idea of what their job is all about, creating a "hands-on” atmosphere very apt for this particular school environment.

A low structure, which is partially sunk into the ground and fluently blends into the landscape, arose as an extension to the "Tyrolean Vocational School for Landscaping, Spatial Design and Fashion” housed in parts of the Salesian women’s convent Thurnfeld in Hall. Three courtyards divide the building into the various areas of use, which are connected by an open access zone with adjoining rooms arranged like islands.

With the SFZ, a new building featuring restoration workshops, laboratories and workplaces was constructed in Hall for the collection holdings of the Tyrolean State Museums, which were previously stored in eleven individual depots. Based on the image of a treasure chest, Franz & Sue conceptualized a monolith largely closed to the outside which refers to the building’s function through the façade design. The interior is organized according to the onion principle: the outer ring accommodates the depots, a middle ring provides circulation, while the work rooms and studios are grouped around a large, green atrium in the core.

The general idea was to bridge the gap between the Old Town and the residential area farther to the east with a third university building along Milserstraße.
Thus, a classy student dormitory housing also a kindergarten was added to round up the EWZ campus. Just as the university building itself, the dormitory is designed as an atrium-type house. Around the open interior space, there is a cluster of social rooms for general use, with generously spacious terraces, while from their private rooms the students can look out into the park.

The research and teaching campus of the Eduard Wallnöfer Centre for medical innovation is situated in the middle of a spacious park near the Old Town of Hall.
The architects designed the abstract glass cube, which is accentuated by angular perforated sheet metal sun-blocking blades, as a forceful counterpoint to the surrounding park-scape. A two-storey assembly hall defines the center of the atrium-type building, which houses a private university and other educational institutions.

A center hitherto unique in Austria, the Hospice House Tyrol has been opened on the grounds of the State Hospital in Hall, bringing all the offers of the Tyrolean hospice community together under one roof. The project’s leitmotif is the flowing transition between the building and nature. In the midst of numerous trees stands an open and intimate house, zoned inside by courtyards.

The School Center in Hall in Tyrol by fasch&fuchs.architekten is part of a large number of schools realized by the architectural office that respond as contemporary statements to new educational concepts. Two secondary schools and the district special needs school were combined at one location in the immediate vicinity of Hall’s town center. Meshing with the outside space in a variety of ways, the new structure forms a flowing inner and outer educational landscape.

The older house in the Abbey Garden (Stiftsgarten), built 1979-86, was a pioneer masterpiece of considerate and respectful high quality care for seniors: Very close to the town centre, resembling a small city quarter consisting of rows of buildings along a green lane. Later additions, then, were the Seidner garden house, embracing a green square open towards the south, and the atrium-type Magdalenen garden house. Together, they form an ensemble of three self-sufficient care centres, with their different typologies, materials and facades underlining the autonomy of every single building.

Behind Hall‘s outer city wall, Martin Scharfetter and Robert Rier created the new branch office of BTW. A stern façade grid and the dyed white cement lend the building, which is reminiscent of a villa in its type and scale, a classic impression that is broken up by the interplay of open and closed window fronts and the execution of the precast concrete components.

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.

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.

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.

The very compact albeit, at the same time, very pervious ensemble close to the Old Town is home to a 10 class middle school, the Hall gymnastics association and the ice sports centre, thus having to combine various functions. In order to preserve as much as possible of the existing green spaces, the southern part of the lot only got an underground building, while all "daylight” functions are concentrated in a single transparent building that takes in, as it were, as much as possible of the surrounding landscape.

The former granary in the commercial area of Hall was converted into a transshipment center for wood pellets for an energy company and expanded to include a space for company events. The basic idea of the design was to place a crown on the existing tower and thus transform the anonymous commercial structure into an architecturally striking building. The two-story addition was encased in a filigree precast concrete façade, the grid of which refers to the structures found in the existing building.