Galleria d'arte Karl Plattner | UPC Architects

The “Mohrenwirt” in Burgeis is one of the oldest accommodation facilities of Southtyrol. With the merge of the “Mohrenwirt” and the Hotel Plavina, a connection between the two facilities became necessary.

The famous artist Karl Plattner, known all over the world, has been a frequent guest and over the years, the family collected several paintings by the artist, that had never been shown to the public.

As a result, the connection between the two accommodation facilities was designed as art gallery, to finally present the so long hidden pieces of this great artist.

“As we designed the “Art Gallery Karl Plattner” our main goal was to imitate the aesthetics of Plattners paintings”, UPC Architects.

A central pillar of this aesthetic was the well thought – out image structure that Plattner portrayed in his paintings.

To capture the style and to be loyal to his art, as he has been for a lifetime, the art gallery became a winding corridor with clear lines and comprehensible area limitation. His love for big chromatic fields, that can be found in most of his works, is represented as space to flaunt the separate artworks.

Another key aesthetic in Plattners compositions has been the three-dimensionality on a pure area. To translate this very important attribute, UPC Architects designed the art gallery not as a flat corridor, but with a three-dimensional movement as you walk through it. As the horizontal movement of the art gallery represents the line guidance of the painter, the slight height difference between the Mohrenwirt, the centre of the gallery and the Hotel Plavina, can be seen as the three-dimensional movement of the artist. This winding corridor with its narrowing and broadening on a three – dimensional movement, gives the viewer privacy while looking at a painting, space to talk about it and it makes the way through the art gallery seeming to be shorter than it is.

Plattners colour - palette consisted of mostly natural and washed out colours since more importance has been given to the geometry and the texture of his paintings. But these often-pale artworks gain more depth as you understand the emotion that the artist wanted to convey.

To imitate and reconstruct the emotional intention of Karl Plattner, material choices were pretty clear: A bright industrial floor, exposed concrete walls and a ceiling made out of black wooden wool plates panels; to, at one hand gain a stronger contrast between floor, wall and ceiling, and at the other hand, improve the acoustic atmosphere in the art gallery.

The “Art Gallery Karl Plattner” has been intended as a “black cube”. There is no natural light, and the used materials take a step back, to focus on the single artworks.

Many of Karl Plattners works were public orders and thus they were always accessible to everyone. Following this logic, the “Art Gallery Karl Plattner” can also be visited by non – guests of the “Mohrenwirt”.