architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

Since 1984/85, an underground air cushion funicular has been connecting the eastern end of the village of Serfaus with the cable cars in the west. In the course of renewing the technical installations, the four stations were adapted to today's requirements and designed as non-barrier meeting places, each with its own character. The two stations "Kirche" and "Zentrum" in the centre of the village were completely rebuilt.

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.

At the east border of Serfaus is Villa Rasilla – The name stems from a Rhaeto-Romanic term for field name – a holiday home designed by Noldin & Noldin. The two ground floor levels with the wellness-sauna-area, the bedrooms and bathrooms, have been built as a masonry wall construction; the top floor has been added as a self-supporting wooden cube with a wide and protruding partially roofed terrace.

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.