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“The history of modern architecture in Vorarlberg has entailed resistence against the classic Rhine Valley style”, says architectural critic Otto Kapfinger. Below: Alcatel headquarters in Lustenau’s Millennium Park / „Die Geschichte der modernen Architektur in Vorarlberg ist auch eine des Widerstands gegen den klassischen Rheintal-Stil“, meint Architekturkritiker Otto Kapfinger. Unten: Alcatel-Zentrale im Lustenauer Millenniumspark OTTO KAPFINGER THE OBSERVER / DER BEOBACHTER “There is tremendous pressure in Vorarlberg to succeed. At age 25 you have to be married and have a house of your own, otherwise you’re considered a failure. One of the things I discovered in researching my books is that practically every house you visit in Vorarlberg is so neat and tidy that you could immediately start taking photographs. Modern architecture arose in opposition to the cultural tastes of the petite bourgeoisie. It is a history of resistance against superficial copies of the old Rhine Valley style, and it has strong economic, societal and ecological aspects. At some point this programme for minorities started attracting the majority because it was simply so reasonable. Today we find people living in these houses, whom one would never suspect at first glance of harbouring such modernity. Resistance and green ideology have a certain tradition in Vorarlberg: Franz Michael Felder, a simple farmer’s son from the Bregenzerwald, founded the first co-operative in Austria 20 years before the Hainfeld Manifesto to protect the Danube was signed. And one of the first green politicians, Kaspanaze Simma, came from Vorarlberg. The hardship of life, sheer stubbornness and a tradition of personal autonomy have resulted in a clear, utilitarian style of architecture. People here are very rational. They discuss things like grownups and take one another seriously.” „Es herrscht in Vorarlberg ein gewaltiger Leistungsdruck. Mit 25 muss man verheiratet sein und ein Haus haben, sonst hat man versagt. Bei den Recherchen zu meinen Büchern habe ich auch festgestellt: Egal, in welches Haus man hineingeht – es ist fast immer so aufgeräumt, dass man es sofort fotografieren könnte. Die moderne Architektur ist aus einem Oppositionsmoment gegen den kleinbürgerlichen Kulturgeschmack entstanden. Es ist eine Geschichte des Widerstands gegen die oberflächlichen Kopien des alten Rheintal-Stils, mit starken ökonomischen, gesellschaftlichen und ökologischen Aspekten. Irgendwann ist dieses Minderheitenprogramm mehrheitsfähig geworden, weil es eben so vernünftig war, so dass heute auch Menschen in diesen Häusern leben, denen man auf den ersten Blick diese Modernität gar nicht zutrauen würde. Widerstand und grünes Denken haben eine gewisse Tradition in Vorarlberg: Franz Michael Felder, ein einfacher Bauernbua aus dem Bregenzerwald, hat zwanzig Jahre vor dem Hainfelder Manifest die erste Genossenschaft in Österreich gegründet. Auch einer der ersten Grünen, Kaspanaze Simma, kam aus Vorarlberg. Die Härte des Lebens, die Starrköpfigkeit und die Tradition einer hohen Bürgerautonomie haben eine klare, zweckorientierte Architektur hervorgebracht. Die Alemannen sind sehr rationale Leute. Man redet erwachsen und nimmt einander ernst.“ VORARLBERG SKI-WELTCUP In the mid-1980s when travellers from eastern Austria drove from Vorarlberg into Switzerland, the area around St. Gallen was likely to leave mouths hanging open in astonishment. Not because Switzerland was so clean and neat – Vorarlberg, Austria’s westernmost province, was that, too – but because everything seemed so carefully styled. Every autobahn reststop, every commercial building by the side of the road seemed aesthetically superior to most structures in Austria. One of the highlights of this strange focus on aesthetics, for example, was the way the strip of grass down the middle of the Swiss autobahn was mowed. When mowing was done, a “vacuum-mobile” rolled down the road, inhaling the clippings. It may have nothing to do with architecture, but it’s part of the picture. It’s Switzerland. Today when you travel by car or bus from Altenrhein Airport to Vorarlberg, you’ll again be astonished. And not necessarily only in Switzerland: perhaps in St. Margareten, too, as you roll past a bizarre building by the late Austrian artist and designer Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Or even in Lustenau, a fairly ugly community that at first glance seems to consist entirely of through streets. In the late 1990s, a handful of top local architects built the Millennium Park on the main road from Lustenau to Dornbirn, completely redefining the concept of industrial and commercial construction. Here you’ll find the highest concentration of remarkable architecture in Vorarlberg: the black, elegant administration building by Carlo Baumschlager and Dietmar Eberle for the espresso-machine-maker Saeco; the exposed concrete building by the young architects Bernhard and Stefan Marte for the electronics firm “sie”, which gets a dynamic lift from the “ten-metre board” protruding from its side. It’s not really a diving board, of course, but a narrow, long balcony where the employees can go for fresh air. Then there’s the overwhelmingly chic building for Walch’s Event Catering: here the architects Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller had the idea of covering the wood construction with a woven canvas skin that was further decorated by the artist Peter Kogler. In any case, we haven’t driven far yet, and we have already found lots of exciting things to see and talk about. Farther down the road we come to Schwarzach and a colourful residential structure by Christian Lenz right beside the railway tracks. And to various single-family dwellings that may represent no well-known name but show the typical signs of having been designed by a “construction artist”: rather simply built with the use of lots of wood and oriented towards the south with generous amounts of glass. The term “construction artist” (German Baukünstler) helps us understand the roots of this unique architectural phenomenon found nowhere else in Austria in the same density. The term was invented to avoid the licensing constraints of a bureaucratic state. The price the movement’s protagonists had to 79
VORARLBERG “The architectural climate in Vorarlberg is like the theatre climate in Vienna: it embraces every class of society,” and Roland Gnaiger’s TV series Plus or Minus has clearly helped. Above: apartment building by Gnaiger and Udo Mössler in Dornbirn / „Das Architekturklima in Vorarlberg ist wie das Theaterklima in Wien: Es erfasst alle Bevölkerungsschichten.“ Mit seiner TV-Sendung „Plus oder Minus“ trug Roland Gnaiger wesentlich dazu bei. Appartementhaus in Dornbirn von Roland Gnaiger und Udo Mössler (o.) 80 “In the early 1980s the head of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation at the time, Gerd Bacher, decided architecture was an interesting topic for television. Just after 7 p.m. – in prime time – he gave every province the opportunity to present two projects, one positive and one negative, in a programme called Plus or Minus. I was responsible for Vorarlberg and soon had an audience of real fans. Sometimes I got balled out on the street for having criticised a hotel building. But the people of Vorarlberg were interested in the topic long before the programme. In the mid-1960s an interested group of young architects, teachers, graphic designers and artists began working on alternatives to the existing style of construction. Working together, they set austere cubes into the landscape with a high degree of minimalism but with a maximum of ecological quality. The group defined architecture not as art but as service. The houses they built cost no more than a small condominium. That really appealed to the people of Vorarlberg, who tend to be economical and a bit more prosaic than the other Austrians. In any case, architecture has a much higher reputation here than it does in the other Austrian provinces. It may be that I contributed to this understanding with my Plus or Minus series. In the seven or eight years the programme was shown, I was on air 152 times.” pay was something they could live with in a region where everybody knows everybody else anyway: they can’t call themselves “architects”. But professional titles were not particularly relevant within the context. Because the nucleus of the Baukünstler was a small network of rebellious planners, artists, graphic designers and teachers, who in the 1960s began exploring alternatives to the local provinciality of the post-war era. “One of the central figures associated with this group was a teacher at the College of Education in Feldkirch, Franz Bertel”, says architectural critic Otto Kapfinger, who has devoted several books to the Vorarlberg phenomenon. Bertel was one of the founders of the satirical cabaret group Wühlmäuse, a close friend of the revolutionary architect Hans Purin and the mentor of numerous young talents, whom he encouraged to study architecture. Many of them did, either in Innsbruck or Vienna, and then returned to Vorarlberg. Hans Purin was the architectural mastermind of the group and was one of the first who dared to replace the dominant, classic Rhine Valley style – simple houses with exterior walls clad in wooden shingles – with wooden framed buildings of Japanese severity. “At the time these buildings were derided as matchbox or shoebox designs”, says Kapfinger, “because Purin used a flat instead of a pitched roof.” ROLAND GNAIGER, THE AMBASSADOR / DER BOTSCHAFTER „Anfang der 80er-Jahre hatte der damalige ORF-Intendant Gerd Bacher die Idee, Architektur zu einem Thema fürs Fernsehen zu machen. Zur besten Zeit, also kurz nach 19.00 Uhr, räumte er jedem Bundesland die Möglichkeit ein, in ,Plus oder Minus‘ jeweils zwei Projekte zu präsentieren. Ein positives und ein negatives Beispiel. Ich war für Vorarlberg zuständig und hatte binnen kurzer Zeit eine richtige Fangemeinde. Manchmal wurde ich beschimpft auf der Straße, etwa weil ich ein Hotel verrissen hatte. Diese Anteilnahme der Vorarlberger am Thema existierte aber schon vor der Sendung. Mitte der 60er-Jahre begann eine interessante Szene von jungen Architekten, Lehrern, Graphikern, Künstlern, der bestehenden Bauweise etwas entgegenzusetzen. Gemeinsam setzten sie knallhart Kuben in die Landschaft, die mit einem Höchstmaß an Minimierung versehen, aber mit maximaler ökonomischer Qualität ausgestattet waren. Diese Gruppe definierte Architektur als Dienstleistung und nicht als Kunst. Denn die Fertigung der Häuser kostete damals genauso viel wie eine 75-Quadratmeter-Eigentumswohnung. Das ist den Vorarlbergern, die von ihrer Mentalität her ökonomisch ausgerichtet und ein bisschen prosaischer sind als der Rest Österreichs, sehr entgegengekommen. Vom Image her genießt der Architekt hier jedenfalls einen wesentlich besseren Ruf als in anderen Bundesländern. Es kann schon sein, dass ich mit ,Plus oder Minus‘ zu diesem höheren Verständnis beigetragen habe. In den sieben, acht Jahren, in denen die Sendung lief, war ich 152 Mal on air.“ The irresistible attraction of these rather plain buildings: they cost no more than a small condominium and could be built in only a few days. “The other advantage is that the owner can build a lot of the house himself. Anybody can drive a nail into wood”, explains architect Hermann Kaufmann, one of the pioneers of wood construction in Vorarlberg, even though he’s already part of Purin’s successor generation. “Wood”, says Kaufmann, “is the best material for do-it-yourselfers. You can drive over on your lunch break or after work and nail down a couple of boards.” And there was another convincing argument for a province of people known for their thrift: wood is cheap because it comes from the local forests, and the work is cheap because the owners can do much of it themselves. Even the heating bills are lower, because wood provides wonderful insulation. “The argument of economy finally overcame every resistance”, says Kapfinger with a smile. “The majority ended up adopting a minority viewpoint because it was so reasonable.” Now a new generation in Vorarlberg, like the brothers Bernhard and Stefan Marte and the architectural partners Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller, are working to optimise the older forms. And there are ambassadors eager to share their treasures and carry them in the form of international commissions and foreign teaching positions into the wider world. Baumschlager and Eberle have meanwhile received commissions from Munich, Berlin, Beijing and Zurich. Dietmar Eberle teaches at the Institute of Technology in Zurich. Hermann Kaufmann is “hammering together” his wooden buildings in Switzerland and southern Germany and teaching at the Technical University in Munich. Roland Gnaiger is building a hotel in Switzerland, heads the university architecture class in Linz, and is much in demand as a lecturer at international events. The respected international design magazine Wallpaper devoted an entire issue to the Vorarlberg phenomenon, writing in its preface: “Having scoured the globe we are unanimous in our decision to name Vorarlberg as the most progressive part of the planet when it comes to new architecture.” Meanwhile, Vorarlberg has become so open architecturally that almost nothing is taboo. In 1961 there was still heated discussion over the expansion of the Brand Parish Church by Helmut Eisentle, Bernhard Haeckel and Leopold Kaufmann when the three architects gave the Late Gothic church a simple but dominant wooden collar. But today the spartan but sensual funeral chapels of Marte & Marte are viewed with admiring and even proud eyes. After all, a church is not just a place of quiet, a supermarket not just a consumer destination, a school not just an educational institution, a bridge not just the connection between A and B, and a house not just a roof over the heads of a family. These are all places where people move, touch and are moved and touched. Vorarlberg architects have understood that and communicated it perfectly. “If Vorarlberg wants to present itself culturally, architecture is the perfect vehicle”, is the prevailing view of all the province’s architects. Roland Gnaiger thinks he knows why: “The difference between Vorarlberg and the rest of Europe is that we have an architectural climate that includes every social class. It’s like the theatre climate in Vienna.” And there’s statistical support for that notion. In his book Konstruktive Provokation. Neues Bauen in Vorarlberg (“Constructive Provocation: New Architecture in Vorarlberg”), Otto Kapfinger lists the province’s facilities. 81
Seite 1 und 2: A brilliant view of the mountains f
Seite 3: Wood is a warm and reasonably price
Seite 7: VORARLBERG 84 It might be from anot

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