Campus Technik Lienz
To seemingly suspend gravity and allow architecture to take flight has long been a dream of modernism. Here, the dream is rooted in a coherent urban planning concept that brings together what belongs together.
The Campus Technik Lienz consolidates several educational institutions in one location. At the time of its opening in 2018, it included a Tyrolean vocational school, a private higher technical college, and satellite branches of both the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck and the University for Medical Informatics and Technology in Hall in Tyrol.
The framework conditions were exceptionally challenging. The site along the banks of the River Isel was already occupied by existing buildings that had accumulated over time. The designated plot would have extended this row of structures along the waterfront promenade with yet another multi-story standalone building —isolating the new volume and placing it far from the main entrance of the campus.
Instead, the architects proposed a single-story structure that hovers on columns above the river promenade, extending 150 meters in front of the existing buildings and connected to them by bridges. The entrance to the university area is now not isolated, but where it belongs: together with the other institutions, right at the start of the campus.
Inside this floating body, users might feel as though they have entered a spacecraft docked at its landing station along the Isel. The floors are a vibrant yellow, the light partition walls are a gray-blue reminiscent of the Lienz Dolomites, and the curtains pick up the watery green tones of the rushing river.
Is this floating architecture worth the investment? In any case, no other solution would have interwoven the institutions so effectively—pedagogically as well as spatially—while simultaneously creating such generous outdoor spaces along the river promenade. The fact that the cooperation between the universities has now ended cannot be blamed on the architecture. An expression of optimism and belief in a better future, this building will continue to inspire its users for decades to come.
[ Higher Technical College, Tyrolean Vocational School, MCI International University, Lienz ] Architecture: fasch&fuchs.architekten. Client: Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung. Structural engineering: Werkraum Ingenieure ZT GmbH. Procurement procedure: Invited, single-stage design competition with implementation (below EU threshold). Planning and construction period: 2016–2018. Usable floor area: 1 800 m². Address: Linker Iselweg 21, 9900 Lienz, Tyrol.