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The 160-foot-high Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria, offers dazzling views of its Alpine surroundings. The curvilinear structure, envisioned by the late Zaha Hadid, has also become something of a landmark for the city since its completion in 2002. It replaced a defunct ski jump that hosted the aerial sport during the 1964 and 1975 Winter Olympics, which will soon kick off, in part, in the Italian town of Cortina d’Ampezzo. Writing in 2003, RECORD contributing editor Sarah Amelar lauded Hadid’s uninterrupted steel-clad “ribbon” that wraps the café, which cantilevers a daring distance of 43 feet from the core—a gesture Amelar described as “echoing the act of jumping.” The tourist attraction appeared as a sidebar in a longer RECORD feature about the Iraqi-British architect, who, since her 1983 design for the Peak in Hong Kong, had garnered significant attention for inventive, idiosyncratic designs and a big personality. By 2003, Hadid had shaken loose her label as a paper architect, having realized a series of high-profile commissions, such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati and the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany. A year later, the celebrated architect would go on to win the Pritzker Prize—the first woman to do so.

© Architectural Record, January 2003

“A Grand Leap: The Innsbruck Ski Jump”
By Sarah Amelar
Architectural Record, January 2003

When asked if she skis, Zaha Hadid winces and is soon reminiscing about basking on the warm beaches of Beirut and Baghdad. Though she’s not a skier, it’s hard to imagine a project better suited to her talents than a world-class ski jump. Her well-established affinity for sloping and dynamic forms makes her a natural to design a quintessential larger-than-life ramp: the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria.

In 1999, Hadid won a competition to replace an obsolete jump that had served in the 1964 and 1975 Winter Olympics. The new course, solely for top-level competitors, needed to meet current international standards while integrating a public café and viewing terrace into its tower. The architect responded with a single and remarkably fluid gesture: a continuous, steel-clad “ribbon” that wraps the café, atop a 160-foot-high concrete tower, and pitches downward, becoming a 327-meter run that swoops into the steeply raked stadium, still rimmed by Olympic torches. In a gravity-defying feat—echoing the act of jumping—the café cantilevers 43 feet off the concrete core (which houses paired elevators for visitors and jumpers). The single, sweeping new shape—sometimes likened to a cobra or a high-heeled sandal—appears, much as Hadid had envisioned it, “to extend the topography of the slope.”

Unlike its predecessor, this course is usable year-round—with or without snow. In warm weather, competitors head down the enameled track and land on synthetic turf. But like its predecessor, the new jumpers’ perch frames an eerie view of a local cemetery at the bottom of the hill, right on axis with the course.

Visible along the main approaches from Germany and Italy, the tower has become a local landmark, with some 1,000 to 2,000 visitors ascending it daily. People have even asked to hold weddings up there.