Buildings
Hariri Sisters Take Salzburg
(archrecord.construction.com - 10/06/2006)
By Tim
McKeough
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Residents of Salzburg, Austria, birthplace
of Mozart, will soon experience a harmonious composition of
a different sort—a cutting-edge architectural addition
from Hariri & Hariri. In August the New York–based
firm won the commission for a mixed-use urban development
in an invited competition. The project will rise on the former
site of Salzburg’s Stern Brewery and create approximately
100 mixed-income housing units, facilities for a post-graduate
school, and a large gallery. The jury unanimously praised
the design’s “clear urbanistic tenor” and its
integration of new and old structures.
Where other proposals called for tall
towers, the winning design spreads a cluster of angular buildings,
none more than eight stories tall, over the five-acre, hourglass-shaped
site. “Scale was a major issue because the city is already
so dense and has a scale of its own,” says Gisue Hariri,
who founded the firm with her sister Mojgan. “It’s
very different from most of the larger cities we know.”
Rainberg Mountain hems in one side of
the five-acre site with a vertical rock face. Inspired by
the quarrying that took place there, the Hariris placed rectangular
volumes around a shared garden that are reminiscent of stacked
blocks of stone. “We proposed blocks that looked like
they were chiseled from the rock face, which gave us the opportunity
to form each one differently,” says Gisue. “Even
though it may look a bit random, the planning of each one
was done very carefully in terms of location and angle to
take advantage of views and light.”
A new canal will be cut between the
mountain and hourglass-shape site, with a public promenade
snaking along its route. The upper floors of the buildings
are designed to cantilever over the footpath to preserve privacy
for apartment dwellers and create dramatic spaces at grade
for a spa and restaurant.
On the eastern section of the site,
an existing brewery building will be renovated to house classrooms
and residences for the school. Behind it, sculptural skylights
will pierce the ground of a grassy public square to bring
sunlight deep into the old brewery’s underground vaults,
which will contain the House of Architecture, a gallery and
lecture space to be run by Initiative Architektur Salzburg.
Construction of the $57 million project is scheduled to begin
in the spring of 2007.
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