Out of the box
Inspiring facades 4 - Art gallery (Austria)
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It sometimes disappears into the wine valley. Then suddenly, it's visible again. Like an impressive work of art in a breathtaking landscape, featuring on the Unesco World Heritage list. The Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems, designed by Marte.Marte Architekten, is the magnificent result of consistently thinking outside the box, enhanced by the judicious application of VMZINC Shingles. Prepare to be impressed!
Art gallery (Austria)
Architects: Marte.Marte Architekten ZT GmbH
Technique: VMZINC Shingles
Surface aspect: AZENGAR
Installer: Spenglerei Handler, A-Neutal
With the commissioning of its 3.000 m² of exhibition spaces, intended to showcase Austrian art, the brand new Landesgalerie Niederösterreich has successfully met a challenge to insert a daring, modern, innovative architecture into an old town centre nestled in a wine valley by the Donau. The building now functions as the entrance gate to the Wachau region, a tourist destination situated some 80 kilometres from Vienna. The Landesgalerie's atypical, almost sculpture-like shape, plays mischievous games on the eye and maintains a dialogue with its surroundings.
Pattern of volumes and lines
The concept Marte.Marte Architekten has devised, starts from a fascinating play on volumes and lines. At the bottom, glass arches emphasise the overall impression of geometric distortion. The facades welcome visitors with these low, wide arches that form a prelude to their museum experience and transition seamlessly upwards into a 'skin' of scales, made of zinc. These shingles enclose four floors in circular motion, forming a bright outer shell around the building. Inside the building, visitors feel like they are walking through the stomach of a gigantic animal, as Marina Hämmerle (Marte.Marte Architekten) describes the experience. But its opaque volume does not isolate the building from its surroundings. Quite the contrary. The building's characteristic rotation orients its direction of motion towards respectively the historic city centre and the Donau. Depending on the viewpoint, the Landesgalerie is either snugly nestled into the landscape or prominently visible. Its cleverly integrated fire safety and windows give the opaque volume a light and airy look and offer visitors marvellous views of the region.
Bespoke diamond-shaped shingles by VMZINC
The wall-covering consists of VMZINC shingles, which allow unlimited creativity thanks to their range of available formats, surface finishes and depths: square, rectangular, diamond-shaped or bespoke... These shingles can be applied to every type of project. The system consists of small, overlapping elements, fixed with special clips being perfectly suitable for complex shapes. The walls of the Landesgalerie, for instance, are cladded with more than 7.200 bespoke diamond-shaped AZENGAR matte shingles (57x57cm).
Top-down
The first thing that strikes us is the unusual positioning of the shingles. Dr.-Ing. Knut König (Head of Marketing Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia and Central Europe at VMZINC): “A specific study preceded the installation, to weigh the pros and cons of various options. We usually start applying the shingles at the bottom, but here we decided to attach them starting from the top, using interlocking fasteners for the shingles. This choice was an architect's request to obtain a clean horizontal edge at the top of the building.”
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