DAM IMPRESSIVE

2.2010
Andreas Eder
ALPINE Head of Marketing
Editorial
Dear Readers,
how to be impressed by a wall?
Easy! Drive to an airport. Any will do – provided it has flights to Sofia in Bulgaria, because
that’s where you have to go. Once you’re there, drive by car south-east for about two and a
half hours, and there you’ll see it: the wall that will impress you. Perhaps you will be able to
stand on top of it, depending on how good your connections are or how charming you can
be. You will, however, not fail to be impressed either way by a piece of construction which
you would barely expect in such a place. A place? It’s not even a place – a point in the middle
of nowhere in the south of the country. Bulgarian backcountry of the finest sort. It’s literally
in the sticks – and it is there that we have built this incredible wall. In fact it’s a dam. An
amazingly impressive dam. Under the hardest conditions we have created an architectural
behemoth; a megaproject which has rightly earned front-page status. Even reading a few
pages about it in this magazine will have your jaw dropping. And if you’re so hard-boiled that
it doesn’t, then you can always make your way to the airport. Just make sure it has flights to
Sofia.
You can also confine your amazement to the comfort of your office or home. Simply keep paging
through the latest edition of INSIDE. Only, it may not be worth closing your mouth at all
until you’ve put INSIDE down again, since we have so much fascinating content for you. In our
portrait of Vienna we take a tour of the Austrian capital. Few places can boast such a harmonious
blend of contrasts. Vienna’s famous attractions are simply irresistible.
As a global company we are always dealing with contrasts, since our everyday work requires
us to work productively with a diverse range of cultures. We are active in more than thirty
countries, which means we have to bring together a broad range of differences and viewpoints.
These may be big or small things, trifles or key issues – what is always inspiring is the incredible
potential which that diversity reveals. It’s often that which is the most impressive thing of
all in fact.
On the pages that follow you can read about water’s impressive properties – and about the
earth, the sun and the wind and how they will provide us with energy in the future. Or the
outer skins of buildings and the way they transform, the importance of exercise in our daily
routines, and the economic benefits of sustainability. And, and, and. In fact we were quite
impressed by how much we managed to get into a 52-page magazine. But read on and you’ll
see for yourself.
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