Mining the past.

This reinterpretation of an abandoned Carinthian steelworks uses the material that used to be produced to reveal aspects of process, buildings and culture.

Some of the Austrian Lander - the country's nine counties - have a tradition of presenting an annual Landesausstellung, a regional exhibition paid from state funds which is usually focused on some small town within the province, concentrating on its local history and activities. The injection of money allows a venue to be set up in a new or converted building, usually a prestige piece by a progressive architect, which remains after the exhibition closes as a permanent asset to the town. Examples of such buildings shown in earlier ARs, both created for the Landesausstellungen of Styria, were the Glass Museum at Barnbach by Klaus Kada (November 1989, pp48-54) and the cultural centre at Murzzuschlag by Konrad Frey (February 1992, pp65-68).

Here we are concerned with the exhibition building created for the first Landesausstellung in adjacent Carinthia, held in the summer of 1995. The theme of the exhibition was mining, an industry local to the area, and the intention is that the buildings will henceforth become a conference and exhibition centre both for public events and for hire by private firms. The accommodation schedule included one large lecture hall and about 10 smaller meeting rooms as well as exhibition space. The architect was Gunther Domenig, who was born in Carinthia and is building his famous Steinhaus there. Yet he made his reputation mainly in Graz, where he is professor at the school and a leading figure in the New Graz Architecture (AR October 1995). Domenig runs two offices, one headed by professional partner Hermann Eisenkock, so many of the projects carried out in his name have little direct input from the great man himself, but there are also projects on which he chooses to concentrate his personal energy, and this is one of them.

The tiny town of Huttenberg lies about halfway between Graz and Klagenfurt, nestling in a narrow valley in the mountains that divide Styria from Carinthia. Though not easily accessible in earlier times, it is an area rich in coal and iron ore, and became in the nineteenth century a centre for iron and steel production. A couple of kilometres upstream of the town a large works was built where ore could be reduced close to its source before being sent away as pig metal by rail. Disused since 1908, the works has lost its roofs and crumbled somewhat, but it is listed as a historic monument and the place is still dominated by the dramatic forms of the blast furnaces and their ancillary bellows and machine houses. Though largely functional in design, the ruins show some architectural pride and pretension in details such as quoins, pediments and castellations, and the massive stone walls were evidently built to last.

It is often difficult to know what to do with industrial buildings of this kind, for owing to their scale and specificity they do not lend themselves easily to conversion for other purposes. When left unmaintained, they become a liability, so even where the land is not under pressure for new uses, they tend to be reduced to heaps of rubble. Those situated in major cities were generally long ago demolished to make way for newer and younger industries, for even where the same processes continue, methods are completely different; building types regarded a generation ago as commonplace have completely disappeared.

The Carinthian Landesausstellung for 1995 provided a chance to preserve and reinterpret the old works. For the exhibition itself a good deal of display space was required, both for visual presentations and for artefacts, preferably organised along a sequential route for large numbers of visitors. The old works was also to play an important part in the exhibition, but the odd-shaped blast furnaces did not lend themselves easily to conversion without destroying their integrity. Initial ideas to inhabit them were dropped when costs became prohibitive, and it proved better, perhaps, to keep them empty while making their dramatic forms visible from a great variety of viewpoints.

Domenig and his clients accepted that the place would be transformed, but they set about making this transformation in a way that reveals what is there to best advantage and makes a clear contrast between new and old. Some buildings could be colonised, but this was done in a way that makes the modification evident. The old boiler house at the south end which serves as entrance, for example, had lost its roof and needed a new one if it was to become an interior space once again. Instead of attempting to reconstruct it as it had been, Domenig added a modern flat one within the old walls. The old window holes have similarly not been glazed in the old way, but made weather-tight with modern steel and glass screens within. The modern vocabulary contrasts clearly with the old, revealing clearly the two layers of history and their fascinating interaction.

The two main additions were a great cantilevered hall at first floor level close to the main entrance - the future meeting room - and a long open gallery like a girder bridge which runs across the top of the complex and projects out over the end. Together, they define a new axis growing out of the geometry of the old works but hitherto insignificant. The cantilevered hall marks the lower end of the complex, projecting down-valley towards the town and sheltering the glazed cafeteria beneath it, while the bridge-like gallery is the culminating and linking element tying the whole group of building forms together. It carries hints both of the underground galleries of mines and the superstructures used to support the lift cages: its lightly poised delicacy was intended to evoke the fragility of human life.

Both new additions are large dramatic frame structures in steel, daringly long in span so that one can see that they are doing some work. They are of sufficiently heroic scale to compete with the old massive stone structures which they complement, yet they are also of a recognisably different kind: assembled lightweight elements as opposed to massive earthbound ones. It is clear that they belong to another time and reflect another purpose, yet they also show off in a modern form the material that the works was built to produce.

The exhibition covered many aspects of the history and geography of the region, with large visual displays, models, tools and household objects, and even some substantial machines included intact. The visitor's experience along the contrived path was evidently important for Domenig. It unfolds in orderly sequence space by space, as the route winds up via the initial ramp, through the building into the cantilevered hall, then out across open galleries through the old works, then in again at higher level to traverse a series of linear galleries towards the back end. The intermediate outdoor spaces are given extra definition with steel fenced walkways, which serve both as an ordering device and as viewing platforms, sometimes reaching a dead end.

Increasingly, comprehensive views open down into the old buildings and across to the outside world. Having gone through most of the exhibition sequence, the visitor finally rises into the bridge-like gallery at the top to experience the most breathtaking views out and across the valley as well as down into the blast furnaces, revealing their innards in various stages of preservation. After exposure to the final displays, the visit culminates in a magnificent view from the prow of the gallery, an eagle's nest of a place several storeys above the entrance. Visitors return to the car park via a side court at upper level, which leads down an already existing country path round the side of the hill, presenting new views down to the river but also displaying the cantilevered hall to advantage. The whole sequence is well choreographed, clear to follow but full of unexpected views.

The popular and critical acclaim already enjoyed by this building doubtless arises from the exciting spatial experience just described, but it is further enhanced by the apparently simple detailing and restrained character of the new work contrasting so deliciously with the old - precision versus mass. One penetrates many very thick stone walls of the old structure, but the stone is left naked and untouched, eroded and broken in places. The vocabulary of the new parts is light, linear and deceptively straightforward: black steel framework, diagonal mesh, beds of gravel as a base, glass, and various kinds of metal cladding.

In the few places where massive new load-bearing supports were required, they are made in the modern way, in cast concrete, quite unambiguously. The details are elegant and thoughtful. In contrast with Domenig's earlier and more fiercely expressive work it seems remarkably reserved, and all the better so. Indeed, it deserves a place alongside the contemplative conversions of Giancarlo De Carlo (AR June 1995, pp83-88), Carlo Scarpa and Karljosef Schattner (AR November 88, pp51-62). Such projects demonstrate how much kinder it is to complement an old building with something new and honestly different, rather than attempting an extension within its own vocabulary, which might initially seem more sympathetic, but turns out inevitably compromised both by modern requirements and by the use of techniques that we can no longer master.