Zaha Hadid's Four Alpine Funicular Stations In ... - SandraHofmeister

above the bridge winds gently,
like the river inn.
Innsbruck / AustrIA
174 Zaha hadid Four Funicular stations
Horse-drawn carriages are parked
opposite the imperial palace in the shade of the
chestnut trees. a crowd of school children armed
with skateboards meet up in front of the Tyrol
theatre. on this sunny, late-summer’s day everything
is as usual in innsbruck. ‘we had problems
with the glass for the roofs,’ a helpful passer-by
comments. He points to the other side of the river
inn, adding proudly: ‘But we’ll soon be opening
the Hungerburg funicular. really cool!’ You
might have thought he was personally responsible
for the new funicular railway and its stations
designed by Zaha Hadid.
since the ski jump was built on Berg isel, the
inhabitants of innsbruck have taken the Londonbased
architects to their hearts. despite the
baroque tradition and alpine kitsch consistently
surrounding this regional capital of Tyrol, the
locals support the futuristic forms conceived
by the Hadid practice. That also applies to their
Despite the baroque
traDition anD alpine
kitsch surrounDing
innsbruck, the locals
support haDiD’s
futuristic forms
latest project: four elegant funicular stations
in solid concrete and glass, plus a striking
suspension bridge that snakes across the inn
along a curving route. protests at the planning
stage related to maintaining the old funicular,
whose famous chain bridge over the inn will
remain as a monument. They were never about
the new architecture.
GlAss
structures
tHe formS of tHe double-Curving roofs
and their individual elements were developed
with modelling software applied in car- and
boat-building. using 1:50 models the architects
tested the results for surface continuity,
which was extremely important for the design
(with the working title of ‘Shell and Shadow’).
when the materials were considered, mineralbased
material and metal were also reviewed,
but after their reactions and possibilities had
been tested, they were soon rejected. the
architects, together with pagels metalltechnik,
opted for thermo-formed glass, which was
tested in various processes for stability and
durability in an overhead structure. the roofs
of the individual stations comprise around
2,000 10-12-cm-thick glass elements that
have been varnished and coated. no two panels
(which were made in China) are the same.
the exact production of each glass surface,
The new line links the town centre with Hungerburg
– the stylish innsbruck suburb sitting
at a height of 868 m at the foot of the nordkette
mountain range. along its 1.7-km line, the funicular
overcomes a gradient of up to 46% and
passes four stations, the architecture of which is
in the same design idiom, without being merely
repetitive. The town, and its 130,000 inhabitants,
is justifiably proud of the stations: Zaha Hadid’s
design shows yet again how alpine architecture
can be, ideally, though all too infrequently. and,
vice versa: innsbruck and Tyrol are also a stroke
of good fortune for the London architects,
who won the international competition three
years ago in collaboration with the austrian
construction company, strabag. after all, Hadid’s
computer-generated, elegant curves come into
their own in the contemporary mix of baroque
and mountain setting as nowhere else. They call
up associations with icefalls, snowdrifts and
its measurements and curvature were decisive
for the roof ‘shell’. the roof surfaces that
came about in this way correspond in design
to the undulating solid-concrete curves of the
building’s plinth.
production entailed inserting the individual
glass elements at a high temperature into a
‘plaster-cast’, thus forming them precisely in
accordance with the architects’ 3-d data. in
addition, a float glass counterpart was inserted
which had been treated on the reverse in
the bright green colour of the inn. the individual
glass elements have been attached with no
visible anchorage to a steel support structure.
the support comprises transverse and longitudinal
ribs with diagonal bracing. the glass
elements are neither clipped nor screwed in
place, but bonded on metal brackets in the
steel support, meaning that no mounts are visible
on the outside that might detract from the
effect of the iridescent, smooth roof surfaces.
the top of the glass roof fits flush. rainwater
collects in a concealed surrounding gutter,
which serves for snow retention in the winter.
landslides – purely organic forms that belong in
the alpine décor and mark the architecture of
the station buildings.
The lower terminus serving the funicular
railway, which was financed as a public-private
partnership project, is located at the congress
centre beside the imperial palace which is
orientated towards the court gardens and the
inn river. Traffic flows at a sharp angle
round the corner. cycle paths and pedestrian
crossings intersect and at the centre of this
busy interchange a roof membrane of gleaming,
double-curving glass arches up and appears to
float above the undulating plinth of solid concrete.
a dynamic piece of architectural sculpture,
and a kind of reptile, the skin having the colour
of the river, that has nestled in the traffic at the
edge of the town centre. The narrow radius of the
bend in the road is reflected in the contour of the
building. its architecture takes on the speed and
Continued on page 180∫
long section mArk #11/2007-2008 175
congress
station
altitude
568 m
Plan.
section.
model Photo.