architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

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.

With the Swarovski Manufaktur in Wattens, Snøhetta developed a hybrid location for production, creative collaboration and representation for the Tyrolean crystal manufacturer. A column-free hall with natural light through openings in the ceiling offers space for machines, robots and workbenches, but also for offices and meeting zones. A large open staircase, which also serves as a meeting point and arena, leads up to a wooden platform suspended from the ceiling, into which further offices and showrooms are integrated.

TIWAG’s new hydroelectric power station control center is located on the premises of the Silz hydroelectric power station. The definitive building of the area is the distinctive turbine house realized by Ekkehard Hörmann in 1978, which the new building designed by Bechter Zaffignani Architekten ZT makes reference to in its height, width and alignment. The core of the monolithic building erected in brown-dyed exposed concrete is the control room of the control center, which outwardly appears as a horizontal element. In contrast, the visitors’ center is executed as an elongated, single-story structure.

Way back in a valley in East Tyrol, right next to a torrent, an old, traditional furnace was expanded, with the addition of a "black spatial entity” that with its oblique lighting cubes resembles a negative print of the torrent. Glass panels along the sides mark the high water line of previous floods, large windows bring lots of light into the room, and allow for a good view of the surrounding landscape.

Set into the landscape in a self-confident and eye-catching manner, the glass building – deriving from a contest put up for tender – accommodates a "work-landscape” in the form of an open-plan office. Three inner courtyards and the transparent façade allow the building to be penetrated with light and green-nature, slight level differences allow varying perspectives between the "winding” offices and terraces and the parking space "pushed” under the building.

For the Dinkhauser packaging materials corporation, Lackner realized one of his last works. The lot sort of had grown with the enterprise, reorganizing it was an essential part of the task. So he added a new high-shelve storage area with unsupported steel frames stretching over 25 m to an existing shop. Large prefabricated concrete elements and triangular glass panels are the dominant elements that masterfully catch the attention of passers-by.

For the Amsterdam UN Studio (Ben van Berkel and Caroline Boss), this was the first international competition they won. The sculpturally carved building boasts an outer skin of black basalt, rising out of an environment of blackened concrete. The interior is, of course, not open to the public, it hosts the transformers and the control centre that are part of the essential infrastructure of the city.

This is a both structurally and spatially most intriguing variation on the theme of industrial buildings: Without any support, folding wood box elements stretch over two shops, each 44 m broad and over 100 m long. Through glass panels along the single elements, which somewhat resemble boats turned upside down, daylight flows in freely. The zigzag movement of the diagonal entrenchments adds rhythm to the façade.