architek[tour] tirol – guide to architecture in tyrol

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 former "Speckbacher” public house has served as a boarding school since the founding of the Skiing Grammar School in the 1970s. The hipped roof house originating from the Baroque era was carefully adapted by Dieter Tuscher and Martin Weiskopf to fit modern requirements. A long new building slightly sunk into the ground was built right next to the older construction. Two room-wings and the connecting passage enclose, as a U-shape, a grassed courtyard open to the west.

In response to the town planning situation in the vicinity of the square shaped church from Horst Parson and, as a transition from residential buildings down to the banks of the Inn zone, Johannes Wiesflecker built a high-standard student’s residence with generously designed rooms and common areas all packed into two basic square buildings of different character. Beneath the building is a hollow space serving as a passage to the Inn.

From the outside, the solitary building at the university bridge – a residential building mainly built for use by students – presents itself as a shiny white "monolith” with a distinctive cut off corner and rhythmic offset window openings. A house high "entrance slot” leads to the completely different "inside world” where two bent wall slabs covered with oak slats form a paved courtyard accessible via wide loggia landings.

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.

Developed due to the spatial and architectural circumstances of the village, the KiWi has now become the new village point of interest. Three clearly detectable, independently functioning parts of the building – event hall, inn and community museum – are connected by means of a long stretched out foyer. Despite their clear contemporary shapes, the new buildings blend in naturally with the established structure due to their materiality, colour and dimensions. The inn, the Kirchenwirt, which is under historic protection, was returned to its original condition and carefully integrated into the overall plan.

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.

Although the sports hall was built for the neighbouring primary school and is also used by the community’s various sports clubs, it was actually designed by the architects as a building for public use. A large part of the building, covered by a roof with a double bend, is sunken into the ground; the ground floor opens towards the road through a generously glazed foyer. A stand for 300 spectators completes the flowing crossover from the foyer down to the triple gymnasium.

With small building supplements – a roofed parking space and an additional room on the ground floor – the architect has created an organic connection between the existing residential house from the 1970s and its surrounding natural environment. The Carport, with its polygonal concrete roof and slanted steel-tube supports, defines a new entrance area and integrates the tree population. The polyhedron cellar illuminated from above though a chimney-like shaft opens an existing passage to the garden, thereby creating new connections to the outside.