Client: Kärntner Landesregierung
Location: Hüttenberg, Kärnten
Dimensions (usable area): 1.500m²
Construction period: 1993-1995

Fotos: Gerald Zugmann, Kilian Holzmann

REGIONAL EXHIBITION HÜTTENBERG

The ruins of the ironworks Heft/ Hüttenberg are located in the Mosinzgraben in the so called Noric Region. Yet, the plant had been shut down during the descent of the Carinthian ironindustry at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1980 the impressive iron industrial monument was declared open air-museum and the existing structures were protected. In 1990 was taken the decision to carry out the Regional Exhibition on the Carinthian History of Mining and Industry in the Heft. Subsequently Günther Domenig was charged to develop a project - inside and with the ruins - for a partly winterproof exhibition- and event-area and to design the exhibition. Domenig's project avoided any injury of the imposing building formation consisting of airpipe-house, furnice top-house, engine-house, coal and ore bar and blast-furnaces; it was reserved and very "pure", but articulated clearly in a contemporary language; and it signalized the characteristics of the whole region with its "suspended tunnel", visible from far. The realized version, combined with sometimes dramatic conflicts around Domenig's project, had to be conceived more purely, smaller and poorer as the original draft, the quality of the work, its substance was not affected by such reservations. Undeniable, Domenig's architectural swearing of the historic site has not harmed the existing structure, on the contrary: the archaic power and atmospheric density of this building formation you cannot remove from. (Liesbeth Wächter-Böhm)