architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

This part of the former Adambräu brewery, a landmark industrial building of classical modernism by Lois Welzenbacher, came under the federal law on the protection of monuments when the brewery closed down. Most respectful, nearly invisible interventions turned the functionalist structure into what might be described as a pulsating machine to convey architecture. On the lower floors,aut. architektur und tirol continually proposes exhibitions and lectures on contemporary architecture, the upper floors are occupied by the University Architecture Archive.

When the municipal corporation IKB decided to move workshops and warehouses, demolishing the old buildings in the backyard of the company headquarter, this was an opportunity for the regional government to concentrate some services formerly scattered over various places. At the same time, it was possible to create new public spaces and passages to link the city centre with the Wilten district. The offices are grouped around three green interior courtyards with glass roofs, an atrium doubling as the central lounge and two more passage-like entrances guarantee easy accessibility for the public.

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.

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.

Der Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz, der lange ein "Hinterhofdasein" führte, wurde von LAAC Architekten/stiefel kramer zu einer begehbaren, urbanen Bodenplastik umgestaltet. Der Platz, seine Denkmäler und vorhandene Infrastruktureinrichtungen wurden in eine homogene Oberfläche aus hellem Beton eingebunden – eine Topographie aus sanften Hügeln, die neue Blickbeziehungen schafft und den InnsbruckerInnen eine vielfältig bespielbare Freifläche bietet.

Erected directly behind the Triumphal Arch in the 1980s, the "Möbelhaus Greif” ("Greif Furniture House”) was converted after several user changes into a residential, office and shop building. The paramount goal of the conversion measures was to react with a conservatively designed structure at a prominent location in the middle of historical buildings. Among other things, the structured concrete-prefab façade was taken down and replaced by a considerably more toned-down façade design, which enables the texture of its thick mineral plaster surface to haptically emerge.

The cubic structure, and its translucent skin – an alien here – provoked controversial discussions. This 21st century building asserts itself, un-self-consciously, against the adjacent baroque Taxis palace, the Servites’ Church across the street, and the square in front of the seat of the regional government behind. And still it sensitively fits into the urban tissue, respecting proportions and historical axes and throughways.

Since the 1960’s, the Taxis palace, built around 1690 by J. M. Gumpp the Elder, hosts the Region’s contemporary art gallery. To create additional space for exhibitions, a new hall was carved into the courtyard of the baroque palace that now – not unlike in a pond – is mirrored in the glass roof of the new underground hall. That kind of interaction between the historical ensemble and contemporary intervention is characteristic of the entire project, so art exhibitions have found an architecturally fascinating location.

With the objective of doing Innsbruck’s important boulevard justice in terms of design, a project, won by AllesWirdGut, was put up for tender in 2006. With a carpet-like design for the road surface made up of four different types of granite, furnishing made of brass and a differentiated lighting concept, the architects created a location full of atmosphere, which at the same time is a street and a square.

In the past years hardly any building scheme in Innsbruck sparked such heated discussions as the various projects for the new construction of the Kaufhaus Tirol (Tyrol Department Store). David Chipperfield was ultimately commissioned to not only design the "show front” on Maria-Theresien-Straße, but also the entire department store complex. In a respectful handling of the historical substance, he placed a decidedly restrained structure into the heterogeneous street ensemble, whose elongated façade is structured by a double bend and a recessed top floor.

Similar to the Innsbruck main railway station, the architects were presented with the challenge of adapting a representative branch of the Tyrolean MPREIS chain to fit into a cellar without daylight. Here, such as at the railway station, a ceiling of mirrors removes the room’s boundaries thereby highlighting the goods. Untreated wooden floor, white "islands of distinctiveness” and heavy round pillars, which due to the mirrors appear as tall light-pillars in a mighty hall, all influence this new "flagship store” situated in the Kaufhaus TYROL.

What formerly used to be just a parking lot in the back of the old City Hall now has become an exciting mix of heterogeneous functions: city administration, city council, shopping mall, a hotel and various restaurants and cafés. Intelligently graded heights, a glass roof for the mall, plus a central "Campanile” – these are the main characteristics of an unpretentious and still very outspoken ensemble that easily and fluently manages to integrate the pre-existing older buildings and to connect to the cityscape around it.

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.

Next to Perrault’s City Hall and mall, a private investor commissioned an apartment and office building on Anichstraße, the ground floor passage also serves as the southern entrance to the mall. Here, Perrault designed a tower in different shades of dark colours, with a 20 m golden metal curtain in front - an allusion, of course, to the famous Golden Roof - that stages a striking entrance to the mall, since this was not possible on Maria-Theresien-Straße, out of respect for the conservation of monuments.

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 entrance and the shop rooms of an old building, which comes under the federal law on the protection of monuments, had to be adapted to house an optician’s shop. The long main room, with a baroque vault, was returned, as far as possible, to its original state. A sculptural piece of furniture with a tapestry of red felt, and a working table covered by green rubber stand free of the walls to counterpoint the historical brickwork.

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 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.

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.

For many years now, the Innsbruck Tourist Information Center has been located in a former stable building directly adjacent to the city wall. In the course of the renovation and redesign, the interior was cleared of later fixtures, the historic vaulted ceiling exposed, the original floor level restored and a barrier-free access in the form of a concrete ramp placed in the Renaissance hall. In order to restore the character of a city wall, the large arched windows were closed flush with the façade with perforated ceramic tiles.

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.

In a listed house going back to the Gothic period, Schlögl & Süß Architekten realized a new shop for the Swarovski Crystal Worlds. Changes were hardly made on the outside, but the inside was completely restructured and newly designed. Visitors are guided in a one-way system through a sequence of rooms staged by Swarovski in which the new interior architecture and the historic building fabric are contraposed.

Built in the 15th and 16th centuries, the City Tower is one of Innsbruck’s oldest landmarks, and the viewing platform a popular place for locals and tourists. In the course of the renovation, a free-standing double helix with an open stairwell was realized. Not only does it direct the flow of visitors, but is itself an impressive spatial sculpture in the freed-up tower interior.

On the edge of the Old Town, an empty lot left over from the war was filled with a sharply cut austere cube which ostensibly did not even try to fake stylistic allusions to fit in with the surroundings, although the volume, the materials and some details do interact nicely with the historic environment. The front conspicuously completes the "city wall” surrounding the Old Town, an interior courtyard leaves enough free space so as not to interfere with a neighbouring neo-baroque palace, and an old house at the back was refurbished and integrated with the new office space.

After the Bergisel ski jump, the four station buildings and the oblique suspension bridge across the river make up the second project Zaha Hadid realised in Innsbruck. Starting from the fundamental concept of a shell and the shadow thrown by it, she designed an organically shaped glass shell over a concrete landscape, the translucent roof spreading and extending, as it were, the stations’ spaces, thus staging a drama of movement adapted to the particular character of each location.

After long years of having to cope with a lack of working space, finally the rehearsal stages and workshops were transferred to an annex building. The various functions can easily be read from the outside as an addition of various different spatial structures, the piled-up units are obviously inviting future additions whenever necessary.

Innsbruck’s "House of Music” can be found at one the most central locations in the inner city, where the city concert halls and chamber theater housed in the previous building were combined with numerous institutions dedicated to music. The complex spatial program is accommodated in a compact structure with a multilayered façade made of ceramic cladding. Emerging as independent elements, the publicly accessible hall bodies clearly distinguish themselves from those areas used for research, teaching and administration.

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.

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.

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.

This cultural centre – the name literally translates as "greenhouse” – was planted in the city centre in the 1980’s. The hermetic octagonal structure made out of dark Lecca stones was to symbolise the stubbornly provocative mind of the then young and ever-belligerent impresario. Since then, the building was enlarged and also, in a way, "opened”, by Reinhard Honold, in 2001, and has become, together with the events staged there, a well-established part of the city’s cultural life.

Past the bookshop planned by Rainer Köberl on Innsbruck’s Sparkassenplatz is "liber wiederin”, a business premises located around the corner in Erlerstraße in which Thomas Wiederin proved to be a builder with a high standard of quality. The existing shop was adapted by the architects using selected materials and colors and employs natural and artificial light that allows the books to take center stage.

The Tyrol Savings and Loan headquarters in Innsbruck takes up several buildings on Erlerstraße and Sparkassenplatz. In 1994, the restructuring of the customer area, with a new entrance from the square rather than from Erlerstraße, marked the beginning of a complete re-launch of the bank’s headquarters and the square. Generally, what once had been a traditional – and somewhat stuffy - bank hall, emanating solidity and security, now is becoming an ultra-modern high-tech service zone; Wiesflecker’s customer area here was one of the first, establishing "banking by dialogue” as a ground rule, and spreading "service isles” throughout the customer area.

This is another one of the office buildings designed by Johannes Wiesflecker to make up the new Sparkasse headquarters along Sparkassenplatz. The adjacent, older, building became part, in a way, of the square’s re-design: In cooperation with the landscape architect Rainer Schmidt, the building’s front was turned into a "green wall”.

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.

The redevelopment and extra storey added to the office and business premises on the south side of the Sparkassenplatz form the completion of several years of redevelopment work carried out on the Tyrolean bank building enclosing this central Innsbrucker Square. With the objective of the reconstruction work and addition of a storey being the uniting as a homogeneous but not uniform new building, both on the inside and outside, various "room-identities” were placed on top of each other.

The bookstore on Sparkassenplatz, by Rainer Köberl, is a "black box” for books. Through two big store windows one can look into the store. Before and behind the windows there is a lot of space for books to be presented. The floor, the walls, the ceiling and the furniture – everything is black, so everybody’s attention will be focussed on the true stars of the production: the books.

The BTV City Forum, right in the centre of the city core, is the bank’s new company headquarter, containing offices, an ample customers’ centre, an event hall and rooms for contemporary art and photography expositions. The sculptural building complex fits in well with the pre-existing Gruenderzeit block structure, the corner being marked by a striking tower. The core of the building is the grand soaring hall.

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 Tyrolean Chamber of Commerce acquired a town house on Wilhelm-Greil-Straße to expand the existing premises on Meinhardstraße, which was demolished and replaced by a new building. The new main entrance is located in the main house, which is enveloped by a laser-cut aluminum façade, while a two-story wing leads to the adapted structure. The centerpiece is the publicly accessible arcade, which, as an extension of Gilmstraße, offers a new pedestrian connection.

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.

With the Hypo Tyrol Bank Headquarters on the Boznerplatz, a further regional bank has set new architectural trends in the town centre. The transparent building with its vertical slat covering matches the height of the surrounding buildings. With a slight bend at the corner it follows the course of the road and, towards the top of the building it develops into a top floor full of character with a glazed conference room.

Amidst architecturally heterogeneous buildings, the Isser optician’s shop creates a space for the eyes to rest. Almost unimpaired, passers-by can look into the show and sales area and concentrate on the goods presented there, since the purist design refrains from distracting their attention.

The centerpiece of the multifunctional building complex planned by henke und schreieck Architekten for PEMA Holding is a 49-meter tower with a design hotel, restaurant and publically accessible scenic terrace. Attached to this tower, which characterizes the cityscape, is a five-story, slightly pitched structure that provides tenants with well-lit spaces by means of generous courtyards and atria.

A long-stretching red cover encloses the Innsbruck Central Station; its main level had been lowered down to be directly accessible from the underground parking lot. The spacious grand hall with a gallery houses the railway’s customer area, shops, cafés and restaurants. The perforated concrete cover engulfs all the building’s functions and allows quick and furtive, filtered, as it were, glances from the platforms into the city.

At the same time the Central Station was re-built, the station square was re-designed. Separate lanes for car traffic and public transport, and an underground parking lot directly accessible from the station hall make sure that different modes of transport do not interfere with one another. The asphalt’s artificial red color nicely relates to the station building.

The individual stores of the MPreis food chain, which was the first to use high quality architecture to express its corporate identity, are designed by ever varying architects to precisely fit into or react to a specific context. This one, situated on the lower level of the Central Station, without daylight, is a "glittering cave”. Black glass panels form the ceiling and mirror the goods staged on brightly lit shelves and the customers, thus creating a theatre of goods that refuses to be imprisoned by well-defined limits of space.

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.

Across the street from the central station and bus station, an old MPreis branch was expanded and re-shaped to become an appropriately urbane corner of this busy square, with a café and restaurant at street level. The existing building structure, reduced to its barest essentials by all kinds of miracles of stress analysis, is the spectacular eye-catcher in an otherwise rather heterogeneous mass of buildings, together with the green wavy ceiling.

With the P3, PEMA Holding is building its third tower in Innsbruck, directly opposite the Adambräu. The architects realised a slender building consisting of a four-storey base and a 10-storey structure, which forms a clear end to the station area. Hotel "Motel One" is located in the tower, and the "reiter design" showroom and office spaces are located in the base.