architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

Das Klösterle – ein aufgelassenes Kloster im Ortskern von Imst – stand jahrzehntelang leer. Durch die unmittelbare Nachbarschaft zum Pflegezentrum Gurgltal bot es geradezu für eine Umnutzung an – ein Potenzial, das mit der Sanierung und Erweiterung durch STUDIO LOIS ausgeschöpft wurde. Dabei wurde der denkmalgeschützte Bestand behutsam für "Betreutes Wohnen" revitalisiert und dahinter ein neuer Trakt errichtet, der das Klösterle mit dem bestehenden Pflegeheim verbindet.

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.

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.

In the centre of Natters, a health and social centre was built for the population of the surrounding villages with a residential home, a daytime care facility, a medical practice and a separate house for "assisted living" that is connected by a covered bridge. By dividing the building into two parts, it was possible to realise volumes that were compatible with the locality and to create outdoor spaces with different qualities.

The new building in the centre of Kundl consists of two staggered building elements pushed into each other, which have been given their characteristic appearance by a façade of irregularly arranged fibre cement panels. In the sense of a meeting place for all generations, several social facilities are housed on the ground floor, while two "living parlours" of the residential and nursing home are arranged around an atrium on each of the upper floors.

The combined children’s and cardiac care center (KHZ) – an elongated block that takes up the edges of the existing buildings – arose in two construction phases. The KHZ Ost (Nickl & Partner) was realized in 2008 in the form of a three-story addition and a six-story new building with a multi-layer façade made of folding lamellas. The connected KHZ West (Architekturhalle Wulz-König), with its formally similar but reworked building shell, was completed in 2015.

In place of the dilapidated Mentlvilla, used by Caritas as an emergency shelter for people with substance abuse issues, Jörg Streli was able to construct an initial building block on the future edge of the city from the Main Railway Station to the Südring. Making a conscious reference to Lois Welzenbacher’s Adambräu, he designed a narrow, six-story tower that frees up the street space and the forecourt of the neighboring Carmelite Church.

In 2014, the religious order of the Sisters of Mercy in Innsbruck decided to renovate and expand the facilities of the former girls’ boarding school to make accommodation available to people who fled their home countries. Under the premise of using the existing means as best as possible, the girls’ boarding school dating from the 1960s underwent a general refurbishment according to plans by STUDIO LOiS, who added an annex and a stairwell. The makeover ostensibly did not center on design issues, but much more on combining and reacting to cheaply available resources.

The new Gurgltal Nursing Centre situated close to the town centre replaces the "Kind-Hearted Sisters Old Peoples Home”, which was demolished a few years ago. The project by ARGE Moser Kleon Moser shifts the desired village character to an organised residential group level, with each party having an own kitchen. In a familiar ambience the elderly residents are provided with a new home equipped with adequate contemporary resources.

The last building to be built for the "Am Lohbach” residential development project was the residential and nursing home for seniors designed by Bernhard and Stefan Marte as an atrium house. An open light-flooded building with nursing rooms on the upper storeys organised as residential groups. To the east of the home is a district square with a café for the residents; the café is also open to the general public.

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.

A senior citizens’ residential home is located at a central point of the inner city expansion area "Am Tivoli”. The residential floors are arranged around an inner courtyard and placed onto a recessed base story where the public facilities are housed. Despite the compactness and the required, compartmentalized structure, the clear architectural language of the cubic building conveys a generous sense of space.

With the use of prefabricated wooden components, a constructional, functional and artistic unsatisfactory building was – without disturbing the operational service – redeveloped and converted from a retirement home into a nursing home. The more or less disused terrace balconies were removed and the rooms extended by means of box type modules. The façade was covered in sheet-copper panels, colourful sun blinds contribute to making the building look much nicer.

The State Hospital and University Clinics, on the western fringe of the city centre – originally built towards the end of the 19th century on what was then an empty lot on the outskirts of town – is a "city within the city”. The medical centre on Anichstraße replaced the former gynaecological and ophthalmic wards, the architects organized 40.000 cubic meters in six storeys, around two spacious interior courtyards, so as to give a new spatial order to what was a rather heterogeneous neighbourhood. The intuitively self-explanatory organization of the various units manages to create an air of cosy and calm "wellness”, closer to a hotel than to traditional technology-ridden medical treatment.

Johann Obermoser designed an – for Tyrol – early example of the further development of a building project to provide accommodation for older citizens and those in need of nursing. The outside of the building is dominated by the glass façade, which brightens the inside allowing the residents to casually take part in "outside” life. Towards the yard the L-shaped building presents itself in a warm wood.

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.

With this small indoor pool in a private garden Lackner gave a totally new meaning to what apparently was a rather insignificant and traditional task. It is a small, freely and unconventionally shaped closed space; the light filters through seven Perspex cupolas. It is, thus, also a very intimate private space, and the light dancing on the water adds sensuous joy to the swimming. After a change of ownership, the bath was destroyed in 2018.