architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

The new school building in the densely built-up centre of Innsbruck provides a differentiated range of rooms despite the necessary compactness. The building is divided into three parts by trapezoidal incisions, which are connected on the side facing away from the street by balcony zones that provide the pupils with a kind of vertical schoolyard.

Like many other schools, the HTL Bau und Design (Technical High School for Structural and Civil Engineering and Design) is affected by an acute shortage of space. ao-architekten realized the desired extension as a compact, single-story addition to the main wing, which clearly stands out from the existing structure through a band of windows running around the entire story. In the building, which is characterized by an open spatial structure and supplied with northern light via sheds, a studio-like ambiance with a high quality of stay was created for the seven final-year classes.

In the course of the organisational transformation of the former "Pädak" into a university of teacher education, the existing building, which was constructed in the 1970s, was renovated and extended. ARSP Architekten added two more volumes to the existing ones and created clearly structured areas for the individual units of use.

In the centre of Kundl, between the secondary school and the music school, a new primary school building was erected in place of an old building in the format of a compact structure in which the functions are vertically layered. On the ground floor, which is glazed all around, are the communal areas, above are two learning floors and below is a large triple sports hall shared with the secondary school and clubs.

The primary school of Brixlegg was built in the mid-1960s by the Brixlegg architect Josef Gschösser according to the concept of an atrium school. The school was upgraded functionally and spatially through targeted interventions with careful handling of the existing building substance. As part of one of the measures, the main entrance was relocated to the east and redesigned as a sheltered entrance area.

On the Neustift school campus, several schools, previously scattered across various parts of town, were brought together for a total of around 500 pupils. fasch&fuchs.architekten naturally integrate the extensive spatial allocation plan into the landscape. They designed a carpet-like school campus that develops like a cascade between two head buildings and offers a differentiated range of spaces with streets, squares, ramps, courtyards and gardens.

Several educational institutions belonging to the Sisters of Mercy school association are housed in a building complex dating back to the 1930s. In the course of the most recent renovation, conversion and expansion measures, this heterogeneous building stock situation was resolved. A façade made of translucent polycarbonate panels consolidates the various existing buildings; the interior was returned to its concrete structure and complemented with natural materials.

The heritage-listed primary school in the centre of Landeck was renovated, adapted for contemporary learning methods and extended with an annexe. On the ground floor is a hall glazed on three sides, which makes the new building look like a floating volume in the park; below it lies a gym, and on the roof is a spacious breaktime patio framed with wooden slats.

On a very cramped site directly on the Isel River, space was to be created for the expansion of four schools. The architects designed a narrow, floating structure directly above the river front, which connects the existing buildings and provides plenty of new space. Amply visible classrooms, structured by the steel framework, are arranged along an open corridor.

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.

From the original notion of building a tree house with pupils, a whole open air classroom — a simple wooden structure docked with a footbridge and a terrace onto the slope above the school — evolved in a complex process. From the project idea, to the design, up to the 1: 1 implementation, the project was accompanied in numerous subject areas, enabling a specific topic to be covered in an interdisciplinary manner.

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.

The extension of the tourism school constructed in the 1980s consists of a statically independent addition to the second floor, which further develops the existing L-shaped building into a type of courtyard and simultaneously simplifies the structure into a new, large shape. At the same time, the statically developed truss structure forms the spatial pattern and, as an important design element, characterizes the atmosphere of the new "theory floor.”

The University of Innsbruck’s childcare facility was designed, planned and built by students from the architecture faculty as part of a bachelor thesis. Clad with wooden slats reminiscent of a bird’s nest, the structure opens up towards the Inn River through floor-to-ceiling glass fronts. On the inside, floors and walls form a flowing continuum of spaces with different atmospheres and usage possibilities.

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.

The new day care center for the growing district of Kranebitten was built on a part of the spacious forest playground. Since a flat, L-shaped structure, together with two terraced wings, encloses a large inner courtyard, the children are provided with the necessary free space directly "in the house” – an additional play area in the public realm was not needed.

bilding received its own house, planned and built by students at the University of Innsbruck, in Innsbruck’s Rapoldipark. The pavilion-like workshop building not only provides children and young people with an optimal offer of space, but also enriches the park with its unique architecture. Terraces placed in front of the building and floor-to-ceiling glass fronts connect the contoured structure with the surroundings. Slanted floors and walls on the inside form a flowing continuum of spaces with different atmospheres.

In the course of renovation, both of the faculty buildings erected at the end of the 1960s in a very similar form by Hubert Prachensky and Ernst Heiß were differently designed according to their respective uses. The building for the construction engineers now shows itself as a tower with a clear and closed façade. By contrast, the architecture building received a skin made out of variously tilted glass wings that lend the structure vibrancy and lets the house appear open.

The Innsbruck location of the AZW Training Center is situated in one of the "Huter Houses”, a building complex erected at the beginning of the 1970s. In the course of the spatial expansion that became necessary, the stock was reorganized around an infrastructural core and enhanced by a second upper story. By relocating the main entrance, the previously unsatisfactory, backstreet-like entryway was significantly improved and a permeable and open communication zone was created.

A new building for an "inclusive” school was erected directly adjacent to the "Hauptschule Hötting”, a "classic” of Tyrolean Modernism. In reaction to the existent development and the attractive location near the Inn, Helmut Reitter developed a roundly oriented structure that takes up the building lines of the surroundings. In the interior, the attention was directed to the interstices; instead of corridors in the actual sense there is a varied succession of paths and "squares” with a large variety of open areas.

There are two conditions that make the annex building architectonically remarkable, regardless of its utilization: the functional involvement of Art in Construction (a powerful concrete relief by Karl-Heinz Klopf) in the architectonic concept and the creation of space through the static structure. A high, spacious hall, spatially structured on different levels by a huge exposed concrete truss, opens up in the basement between the old and new gymnasium.

A new building emerged at the western end of the university campus for the autonomous Institutes for Chemistry/Pharmacy and Theoretical Medicine. Based on the highly complex requirements for research and teaching, on one hand, and the growing urban structure, on the other hand, the Architekturwerkstatt din a4 developed a compact structure with functional- and design-related courtyards, indentures and recesses.

The Rattenberg Secondary Modern School has been located in sections of the Augustinian Monastery since the 1970s. With the annex building, Daniel Fügenschuh complemented the monastery complex with a new side arm. In its structure and materiality, the slender, vertical building orientates itself to the surrounding development and integrates into the small-scaled city structure of Rattenberg.

In place of the original town planned, unsatisfying and unused rest room running along the street, the new library building creates a flowing crossover from urban space to the university campus. The library is situated beneath the existing buildings and connected to the reorganised main library. The library’s roof provides much-used open space and serves as a new university town-side entrance.

The school building realised by Kurt Rumplmayr is a reduced cube design, which is transparent from all sides. The building, which completes the new village square, also resembles one inside. The public functions are arranged on the ground floor around a lowered gymnastic and events hall, the classrooms on the upper floor are accessible by means of a central light flooded hall.

The facility mainly built of visible concrete and glass, creates, in dimensionally varying layers, a crossover between the landscape, the edge of the slope and the busy road running along the Inn. The inside of the building, which from the side facing the road appears to be cubic, opens up towards the garden through the surrounding open area. Here, numerous sports facilities including an outdoor swimming pool enable children to carry out their activities.

Although the sports hall was built for the neighbouring primary school and is also used by the community’s various sports clubs, it was actually designed by the architects as a building for public use. A large part of the building, covered by a roof with a double bend, is sunken into the ground; the ground floor opens towards the road through a generously glazed foyer. A stand for 300 spectators completes the flowing crossover from the foyer down to the triple gymnasium.

The former "Speckbacher” public house has served as a boarding school since the founding of the Skiing Grammar School in the 1970s. The hipped roof house originating from the Baroque era was carefully adapted by Dieter Tuscher and Martin Weiskopf to fit modern requirements. A long new building slightly sunk into the ground was built right next to the older construction. Two room-wings and the connecting passage enclose, as a U-shape, a grassed courtyard open to the west.

A solitary cube with an intriguingly structured façade of concrete, glass and larch wood – this is the annex of the Amras elementary school. Very appropriately adapting to the scale of the usually smaller, village-like buildings of a city quarter that had actually once been a small farming village, it does not add to but rather detract from, as it were, the mass of the old school building, and still manages to define e new central square for Amras.

The old Mariatal school buildings, clustering closely together, resemble an abbey. Marte-Marte architects wanted to re-develop the ensemble of buildings preserving those specific spatial qualities while, at the same time, adding architectural surplus value. The new dormitory continues, as it were, the west wing of the old building, thus closing off the ensemble from the street, creating a new interior courtyard dominated by the old main school building, under the federal law on the protection of monuments, and a new solitary structure.

Based on town planning considerations, the new secondary modern school building was designed so that together with the polytechnic and nursery school, it would create an integrated spacious premises. The inside of the "passive house” school is flooded with light. The school’s central hall opens up into a space illuminated from above, around this an open staircase providing access to the class and group rooms.

Together, the new solitary music school building, the revitalisation of the neighbouring "Klösterles” (Konvent) and a subterranean connecting passage, all form a joint architectural structure developed at a prominent town location. The building links three neighbouring spaces to form a new town centre. The new building’s glass façade opens up towards the market square; a semi-transparent layer of expanded copper provides privacy and serves as protection from the sun.

What formerly had been the university botanic garden is now a park-like public green with old trees right in the centre of town. By situating the transparent structure of the new elementary school along Angerzellgasse, and by building three underground gyms – which are used by the adjacent high school as well – it was possible not to disturb the park as a peaceful "green island” in the hectic inner city.

The compact common school centre belonging to the four valley communities is at a right angle to the valley; its horizontal position blends with surrounding nature. The outside of the building reacts with the location’s rough climate; the inside consists of bright rooms, which have been adapted to fit their various uses with their colour and shapes. The triple gymnasium has been sunken halfway into the ground; the roof can be used for breaks and as open space.

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.

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.

Such as the Church Centre constructed by AllesWirdGut, the nursery school also forms an artistic unit in accordance with town planning ideas. The building is situated at the northeast edge of the plot, thus at a distance from the busy road. Large windows and a saw-tooth roof allow light to flood the inside of the building, which, right down to the very last detail, is adapted to suit children. In 2016, the kindergarten was expanded with a one-storey wooden building (architecture: Karl Gitterle).

On a street corner of a densely built town area next to, at present, two vacant sites, riccione architects have built a solitary building with the possibility of future extensions. Above the ground floor, in which, apart from a lowered music hall, the town archive and the town library are accommodated, are three optically detached upper storeys for the school’s classrooms. Generously sized glazing and powder coated aluminium panels influence the building, which despite its transparency and openness, complies with all acoustic requirements.

In 1973, Viktor Hufnagl, an architect from Vienna, constructed a hall-school, which at the time was a revolutionary concept, hence, an experimental building for the prefabrication of schools. Due to problems with the building’s structural design it was necessary to redevelop the school complex. The redevelopment carried out by Peter Märkli and Gody Kühnis preserves the old building’s room and material qualities, reinterprets its character and modifies it with use of contemporary means.

A first impulse for the development of the inner city was the relocation of the university from the outskirts of town to the centre of Kufstein. Henke and Schreieck designed the "Möbel im Park” (furniture in the park), a cubic building with a glass outer surface structured with wooden slats. The energetic and innovative double layer façade with integrated room ventilation is a feast for the eyes of the studying (future) "Facility Managers”.

To the adjacent building south of this one, Lackner (1995-96) added a "crown”, the Brenner archive, thus substantially redefining both its shape and identity.

In order to only minimally disturb services at the pre-existing university cafeteria and to make optimal use of the available building area, Lackner sort of built a bridge over the cafeteria. Glazed steel frames in brilliant orange stretch over the old building that was also given a brush-up in the process. Receding terraces contain seminar rooms and the library of the school of translators, transforming the old cafeteria building into a "city balcony” next to the river.

The new Social Sciences and Economics building is a most important urban joint between the Old Town and the historical park of the Imperial Garden, widely commended not only as a great work of architecture, but as an achievement in urban development. Formerly, the massive military barracks had virtually occupied all the available space, tightly closing itself off from the street, now there is a vital public space, a truly "open university” in the heart of the city centre.

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.

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 Ursulines’ School, dating back to the Seventies, is radically different, both spacially and structurally, from any other school building in Austria. The Public School is built up in layers, as it were. The classrooms, every single one getting daylight from two sides, are situated on the top floor, the sports and leisure sections form an open central space on the ground floor as well as underground. The structure consists of one-storey-high steel frames with diagonal braces, which not only determines the way the building presents itself to view, it defines also the sequence of large-scale interior spaces allowing for manifold visual interrelations.