Innsbruck, 8th December 2018 – Their success in responding to a small but precious assignment in the Tyrolean Alps is “music to the ears” of our architects: The assignment in question was to design a music pavilion with a rehearsal room and store on the new church square in Finkenberg, a village in the heart of the mountainous setting of the Upper Zillertal. The design of this local center for music demanded both a respectful relationship with the church portal and the integration of a historically protected wall.
“We consciously avoided adding strange new forms to the village-scape,” explains Paul Ohnmacht, Head of Design at ATP Innsbruck. “And our design is a contemporary interpretation – barrier-free and energetically sustainable – of the traditional, regionally rooted constructional approach of a timber building on a stone base.”
The project by the Design and Research Group of ATP Innsbruck convinced the jury of the invited competition: “In its architectural form, the materiality and formal language of this entry seeks to establish a relationship with the pitched roofs of its surroundings [...], but without any sense of pandering”, said the prize jury. And yet the pavilion still plays “all the tunes”: The generously glazed base opens up to both the church and the wider valley while merging harmoniously into the sloping village setting. The area in front of the pavilion is used to create a space at the level of the square in front of the church which is as large as possible and suitable for concerts as well as for both sacred and secular celebrations. In the words of the jury: “And, unlike in many of the other entries, there are no other structures in the square to block the view of the roofs of the village and the surrounding mountains.”
