2000–2006 New Architecture in South Tyrol

Over the past 15 years, the South Tyrolean architectural scene has undergone an enormous upturn: in all parts of the region, projects have been realized that are by all means worth seeing; the accomplished architectural tasks reach from district heating plants and various educational facilities to museums, traffic buildings, residential and office blocks. All projects aim at creating a kind of architecture that suits the landscapes of South Tyrol. Therefore, the architects are not only required to provide modern solutions, but also to intensively deal with the deep-rooted building culture and lifestyle. In the autonomous province of Bolzano in South Tyrol, there are numerous architectural monuments of great historical value that call for appropriate preservation and sometimes are also supposed to meet new purposes. In such cases, architects have to study the historical context to develop their proposed designs. For that matter, refurbishment and revitalization projects involving the rationalistic buildings of Italy’s fascist era are particularly demanding building tasks.
For a long time, the creative building scene of South Tyrol was not duly taken note of beyond its borders. The international prize for “Neues Bauen in den Alpen” [“Modern Architecture in the Alps”] granted by Sexten Kultur first drew public attention to the topic of building in mountain regions and thus also highlighted the new buildings in the region south of the Brenner. To present the large variety of the architectural landscapes of South Tyrol in a compact form, the Südtiroler Künstlerbund [South Tyrolean association of artists] and kunst Meran have decided to initiate a joint exhibition and book project to comprehensively document the wide range of current building activities in South Tyrol on the occasion of the anniversaries “60 years Südtiroler Künstlerbund” and “10 years kunst Meran”. The title “2000–2006 New Architecture in South Tyrol” has been chosen for the joint project. From more than 300 nominated buildings, an international jury (Joseph Grima/Domus, Milan; Roman Hollenstein/NZZ, Zurich; Hanno Schlögl/architect, Innsbruck, and the curator of the overall project, Bettina Schlorhaufer/art historian, Innsbruck) has selected 45 architectural projects from all parts of the state which have now been consolidated for an exhibition and a book publication.

The visual design of the exhibition and the book was greatly assisted by the photographer Robert Fleischanderl from Innsbruck. His photographic editing of the architectural projects was primarily guided by the fact that kunst Meran and the Südtiroler Künstlerbund want the exhibition and the book to present the regional architectural activities in their landscape context and in a form that is comprehensible even for non-architects.

The publication on the exhibition by the same name will be published by the Springer Verlag (Vienna, New York, ISBN: 3-211-29954-8, price: 39.95 €), and its theoretical part will include texts by Bettina Schlorhaufer, Joseph Grima, Roman Hollenstein, and Walter Zschokke. In a second part, the individual architectural projects will each be documented by a short text, drawings, and photos by Robert Fleischanderl. Moreover, some of them will be introduced with an artistic intervention by Robert Fleischanderl consisting of a portrait photo of a “user of architecture” and a “bonsai interview”.

The exhibition and the publication are meant for international recipients; therefore, they contain German, Italian, and English texts. The exhibition has been designed as a walking exhibition.