centrum.odorf | FROETSCHER LICHTENWAGNER

1° premio dell'Europan IV, 1996

Architects
FROETSCHER LICHTENWAGNER

Landscape Architect:
IDEALICE Landschaftsarchitsektur

Program:
• Multi-Purpose Hall
• Pre-School
• Day Care Centre
• Youth Centre
• Service Sector Firms
• Grocery Store
• Parking Garage
• Assisted-Living Apartments (27 Units)
• Apartments (78 Units)
• Public Square 4,000 m2

Site: 24,000 m2
Net floor area: 21,691 m2
Volume: 92,000 m3
Construction costs: approx. 23,000,000 €

1. A building generates a public square
This project’s distinctiveness is brought to bear by the bracket-like building configuration which creates its own clearly defined square. At the same time, the variety of uses and their arrangement within the clearly delineated massing provide for a well-frequented building, ensuring that the urban space will be vibrant as well. The building comes complete – so to speak – with its own square.

2. A square generates public life in the quarter
The public square constitutes the new centre of the quarter. The intention was not so much to harken back to a notion of traditional urban form, but rather to allow for an animated platform of everyday life – a life which had until recently appeared to be foundering in the residual spaces between the apartment blocks and in the bureaucratically managed patches of vegetation.

3. Re-interpretation of a quarter
What can architecture achieve in this context? It would be naïve to think that by inserting a building more attractive than its surroundings, the social and structural problems of peripheral housing complexes could be solved. At best, in a comprehensive collaboration of architects with policy-makers, urban planners and property developers, it is possible to effect a re-interpretation of a quarter. This was the intention for Innsbruck’s Olympic Village neighbourhood.
Every new building in the quarter, particularly one with such significance, must take the existing buildings into consideration. It must, in order to endure, operate with the scale of the surroundings. Playing the leading role is not what counts; the goal is to be part of a convincing ensemble – which requires a cast of characters.

4. An urban model: centrum.odorf
The Olympic Village in Innsbruck exhibits all of the characteristics of a European peripheral housing estate and struggles with the same problems: lacking infrastructure, insufficient cultural life, mono-functionalism, as well as segregation of ethnic minorities. The spaces between the blocks – with their endless succession of social-housing windows – are piecemeal and there is, despite the large scale, no trace of spaciousness. All too often such ubiquitous, despondent satellite cities also provide the setting for social conflict, frustration and violence. Or so it would seem. Upon closer inspection one discovers another layer: in coming to terms with a place, one learns to accept the verity of the circumstances. On second glance, the poetic qualities of this unsentimental, strangely foreign place come into view.