View from Innsbruck: look out Graz and Vienna. Innsbruck is hot on your heels with a growing number of world-class buildings, nurturing a new generation of home-grown architects.

Tyrol, with its provincial capital Innsbruck, has experienced a recent architectural breakthrough. Over the past few decades, a third independent architecture scene has been established in the west of Austria, alongside those more widely known in Vienna and Graz. The result has been an avalanche of new and exciting buildings that have put architecture back on the public agenda, a late renaissance that began with the foundation of a new architecture course at the University of Innsbruck in 1969. Since then Josef Lackner, among others, has educated several generations of architects, and built a range of buildings, such as the Ursulinen Schule and the Bartenbach light laboratory, which underpin his theories.

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Historically, though, both public and private sectors have been slow to join the initiative. Politicians and private businesses have widely ignored the potential of local architects, resulting in the region having had few noteworthy buildings, despite having hosted the Olympic Games twice in 1964 and 1976. In the 1920s, pioneering architects of the Tyrol chose to take the Modern Movement to the most remote valleys of the eastern Alps where they defined a new architectural language. By combining local techniques and cultural traditions with the International Style, architects such as Baumann, Welzenbacher, Mazagg and Holzmeister not only produced several noteworthy buildings, but also sought to refine the alpine topography with their architecture, equalling the quality of more widely known examples from Switzerland.

The Nordkettenbahn, for example, designed by Baumann in the '20s, features four cable car stations that lead directly from town to mountaintop to the north, some 2500m above sea level. On each level, the buildings reflect the difference in the terrain, with the uppermost 'Hafelekar' appearing to hang from the mountainside, like a swallow's nest.

Lois Welzenbacher created a range of strong urban planning statements when seeking to bring modernism to Innsbruck, including a ten-storey public services office next to one of the central squares; the Hochhaus was the town's first high-rise building. It has been recently refurbished by Ben van Berkel as part of a competition-winning scheme which included the provision of an electricity substation for the inner city. A second building to receive a facelift is the Sudhouse, part of a former brewery. By inserting a glazed screen in the front facade, Welzenbacher chose to expose the four copper vats on the mezzanine to give passers-by a glimpse of what was produced inside. As a listed building, it will provide a new home for the 'Architektur Forum' in September 2004, when the design in a collaboration by architects Giner+Wucherer and Rainer Koberl is completed. This will provide a much needed base for an organization that has quickly become an important local institution, publishing new planning proposals on their website www.architekturforum-tirol.at as well as organizing awards, competitions, exhibitions and publications.

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The freight station will be relocated, so opening up the city quarter which reaches out over the river Sill to the East. And there are plans to double the size of the stadium for the European Football Championship, the EM 2008. The region also boasts a number of prominent examples of internationally renowned contemporary architecture. They include Zaha Hadid's ski-jumping slope on a hilltop, housing schemes by Baumschlager & Eberle (AR June 2001), the soon to be completed central train station by Riegler Riewe, and Dominique Perrault's town hall (see later in this issue)--a unique mixed-use complex, including shopping mall and hotel, which brings a new urban scale to the inner city.

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Despite these international players, however, it was the vibrant local scene of architects that inspired this change in attitude leading to the improved public reception of modern architecture; for instance the ar+d highly commended scheme by Manzl-Ritsch-Sandner Architects for a station building at the 2001 world championship skiing venue of St Anton am Arlberg (AR December 2001), and their Zielstadion; and the town house by riccione architekten (Bortolotti, Cede and Ramoni).

This in turn led the private sector to move away from traditional Lederhosen architecture, in favour of modern architecture--a breakthrough in public opinion that has been clearly reflected by hundreds of new private houses throughout the region, such as Arno Fessler and Honold's tripartite house for three family generations. Business in the region has taken the initiative, most prominently demonstrated by the family-run chain of supermarkets 'MPREIS': a 120-outlet supermarket chain, that throughout its recent expansion has appointed many emerging new young architects, such as Giner + Wucherer and Rainer Koberl, in an attempt to bring new qualities to shopping, giving everyone the opportunity to experience architecture anywhere in the province.

Photographs by Daniel Fugenschuh, Martin Tusch, Heidi Fessler, Markus Bstieler and Gunter Wett.

Several books have been published in recent years such as a guide of 260 buildings called Bauen in Tirol seit 1980 by Otto Kapfinger (Anton Pustet) and Liesbeth Waechter-Bohm's Neue Architektur aus Tirol/New Tyrolean Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press).