Peak Performance: A concert hall carves its own niche in the Austrian Alps while bowing to the neighboring midcentury playhouse and the breathtaking landscape beyond.
In the picturesque Austrian village of Erl, just east of the German border, where the rugged Alps seem to descend from the heavens to meet the undulating valley below, a striking, angular structure, the Tyrolean Festspielhaus, or Festival Hall, pierces the landscape that inspired it. “We conceived of the building as tectonic plates shifting over one another,” says Sebastian Brunke, one of the project architects (along with Jörg Rasmussen), of the Viennese firm Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA). “The opening between the two plates forms the foyer, which glows at night and through which the Alpine landscape flows like a carpet.” Reflecting the mountains above, the upper volume's sharply pointed cantilever juts out almost 100 feet. Its radical design juts out, too, in Erl–a typical Tyrolean town of traditional wood chalets with flowerboxes full of geraniums.
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