architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

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.

Since 2010, people with disabilities have found a job in a restaurant run by Lebenshilfe Tirol in Innsbruck Landhaus 2. The starting point for the conversion was the wish for more flexible event options in the dining area and the creative implementation of the motto "eat colorfully.” The architects implemented these requirements with the help of curtain panels in two colors, which allow different room configurations quickly and easily and fulfill the desired color scheme.

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.

In a 17 m2-large shop, Rainer Köberl set up a Nepalese take-away for Dil Ghamal – a building owner for whom the architect had already planned the "Sensei” and "Meer Sensei” sushi bars. The space is kept in the basic silver color. Its dark walnut, mirror and a Sanskrit proverb on the wall exude a touch of Nepal.

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 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.

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.

It took over 35 years until an inn reopened at the location of the former Umbrüggler Alm. After several failed attempts, the City of Innsbruck tendered an architectural competition in 2013, which Elmar Ludescher and Philip Lutz were able to win with their project. A sloped polyhedral roof covers the organically shaped structure and extends over the south-facing front terrace. Shingled on the outside and appointed with silver fir on the inside, the building is a contemporary interpretation of the "alpine pasture” theme.

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.

A two-story restaurant space created in the 1980s was adapted for a new tenant. Due to the limited financial possibilities, many elements of the interior design (gray tile floors, suspended plasterboard ceilings) had to be retained. The design approach developed out of this pragmatism painted all the surfaces gray and set vibrant colored accents with the furnishings.

A tiny restaurant in which – pursuant to the builder’s operational concept – all eight guests come together at one table was set up in a small shop formerly inhabited by a watchmaker. The building stock was freed of all fixtures and old layers of paint were exposed and integrated into the new design concept. The main element of the very reserved transformation is a white-lacquered steel sheet structure that extends from the street into the interior and becomes a cooking bar and bench for those waiting.

By means of minimal adaptation, an empty shop was transformed into a bar that functions as a classic café-bar during the day and transforms into an exclusive nightclub in the evenings. The existing structure came alive again through targeted interventions; the applied colors, fabrics, surfaces and a sophisticated lighting concept serve to generate the desired flair.

Directly next to the top station of the Gaislachkogl mountain gondola, the "Ice Q” was likewise erected by Johann Obermoser. In contrast to the curved shape of the top station, it is designed as a straight-lined and angular structure. Featuring glass all the way around, the building offers guests impressive views into the alpine world on several stacked levels stacked other. All the way at the top, as a special highlight, is a roof terrace connected via a suspension bridge with the peak of the Gaislachkogl Mountain.

Standing on a slope side in the middle of the Hochzillertal skiing area, the "Kristallhütte” ("Crystal Hut”) is more of a hotel than a pure ski hut. In order to create further accommodation options besides the existing rooms in the stock building, a three-story annex with maisonette apartments was erected. Utilizing the sloping site, the annex is largely edged into the terrain; only the elevated, fully mirrored wellness area completely emerges above ground.

Taking the world of forms found in the high alpine landscape as a basis, the architects from Vorarlberg designed two new stations of the Wildspitz Cable Car as organic sculptures enveloped in curved aluminum sheet panels. Integrated in the mountain station is "Café 3440,” currently the highest-lying restaurant in Austria, with a freely suspended terrace glazed on all sides, which offers spectacular views into the glacier world.

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.

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.

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.

After the redesign of the south building on Sparkassenplatz and the completion of the Tyrol Department Store, the niche in the southwest corner of the square became an attractive, inner city interstice. The Italian espresso and wine bar set up in this plaza niche is operated by two architects, but was designed by colleagues who created the atmosphere appropriate to the gastronomic concept with the help of purposefully chosen interventions and materials.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Situated at the Alpkogel skiing slope in the Galtür skiing area is the "Addis Abeba[r]”, a ski hut without the usual hut romanticism. With the basic idea being a snow crystal, ventira architects placed a white cube with cut-outs and a protruding panorama window box on the slope.

When the new BTV city forum was built, the adjacent school, listed as a protected monument, was bought by the bank, to become part of the headquarters. The ground floor and the first floor were then turned into a restaurant and bar. Very subtle interventions opened the front so as to create opportunities for communication between the urban space and the interior. The materials used, the light design and the colours create a very specific atmosphere.

The Olperer Hut built at an altitude of almost 2.400 metres in the Zillertaler Alps is an intentional and simple answer to the unique and exposed location. The main objective was to develop a very simple shelter to fit the high alpine location. A refuge for hikers and mountaineers with its innovation being in its simplicity.

In 2007 the "Sunna Alm” at the Pitztaler Glacier and Rifflsee ski resort was Europe’s first passive house to be built at an altitude of 2300 metres. Both the inside and outside of the restaurant building are characterised by wood and glass, with which modern tourism and traditional mountain life are connected without slipping into the embarrassing cliché of being rustic. The outside of the building was deliberately finished in larch-wood-shingle as a reference to Josef Lackner’s Rifflsee cable car valley station.

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.

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.

A former office on the first floor of a house, again listed under the federal law on the protection of monuments, was turned into a restaurant where one can take part, as it were, in the visual and acoustic drama that is happening in the street, and then switch effortlessly to concentrating on the works of art provided by the kitchen. The wide oriel window in front is as much part of the street’s public space as it works as a theatre box to look out from within, from an interior space characterised by black panels and various kinds of dark wood.

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.

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 central bus station shapes the southern fringe of the station square. The hotel there was conceived as the counterpart, not only as far as dimensions were concerned, to the station hall. While the station hall is a cube of light below street level, the hotel is a black monolith above street level and, at the same time, keeps waiting bus passengers in the spacious area underneath safe from any bad weather.

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.

A very urbane, if not metropolitan café in a 15th century building listed as a monument? Yes, that is what the "Manna" is. The narrow room, partly stretching over two storeys, is virtually subdivided by a rather complex spatial organisation, the materials – predominantly oak and black glass – contrast the historical substance.

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.

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.

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.

Here, Dominique Perrault, architect of the new City Hall and mall, created a public space over the roofs of the city. With glass walls all around, nothing interferes with the perfect view over the roofs and cupolas of the city centre, over old and new towers, to the mountain tops. Not an everyday sight, but a place to rest for a while.

On the SOWI campus the "Solo Pasta” restaurant and then the "Solo Vino” n. 1 und 2 wine bars opened in rapid succession one after another. All three are characterised by a minimalist and everything but Zeitgeist-minded design making use of few and sensitively tuned materials. Customers can freely walk from one to the other rooms. Following a change in ownership, there has been some refurbishment not quite in line with the original concept

The Hoadlhaus panorama-restaurant in the Axamer Lizum is a steel and glass construction offering a 360° view. The façade facing towards the south consists of seven large glass roll-up doors, which can be completely drawn into the roof’s wooden dropped ceiling. If the weather is fine the mountain restaurant’s conservatory can be transformed into a huge sun terrace.

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 "Jochdohle” is Austria’s highest altitude mountain restaurant (3150 metres). Sitting on a small rock ledge and secured to the rock face is a three storey steel tower, which serves as a structural and functional "backbone”. Steel girders are fixed to the tower in a radial manner. During the summer the round silver shimmering building hovers above the glacier; in winter it sinks into the fresh snow.

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.

The structure of the Horberg lift mountain station at an altitude of 1700 metres dates back to the 1960s. Originally, it was intended that only the lift hall’s restaurant area on the ground floor was to be extended. However, the architects developed a new and extensive concept improving both the functional procedures and the architectural qualities. A characteristic element is the glazed roof at the front end of the building and the hall, which as a spatial gesture has been extended by two bays.

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.

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.

At the time of its completion, the Hotel Maximilian indoor swimming pool was one of the rarest examples of alpine tourism architecture away from the usual clichés. The architects set a radical statement by means of a "controlled collision” with the existing building; a "glass tent” with a sophisticated tensioned roof construction, understood as being an artificial form for an artificial location. Its name, an old dialect term for disorder, was given to the swimming pool by the villagers.

The railway line of the Austrian Federal Railways runs approximately parallel to the Sill on the middle of a railroad viaduct built in the mid-19th century. Bars and clubs populate the mostly converted viaduct arches which make up the Innsbruck party mile "Bögen” ("Arches”). The - meanwhile changed - jazz bar "Bogen 13”, with which Reinhardt Honold and Wolfgang Pöschl ushered in "Deconstructivism” in Tyrol in 1985, long before this was propagated as a "style”, stood at the beginning of this development. In an apparent chaos of materials and forms, elements such as lattice beams, profiles, steel mesh and corrugated sheet panels that correspond to the location are inserted; everything is raw, visually stilted and playfully staged.