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Bold evo­lution amidst glowing peaks

The courage to face new things and constant change seems to be in the Rainers’ blood. Since Agnes und Willi Rainer opened a little bed and breakfast in 1964, the desire for spirited, innovative further development runs like a marker thread through this family’s ventures into architecture and the tourist trade.

by Britta Krämer in March 2018

The driving force behind their project is by no means the desire to attract attention or to cause a sen­sation, but rather a watchful atten­ti­veness to the needs of their guests, their habits, their daily lives and their con­stantly changing wishes and holiday pre­fe­rences. Guest-empathy, trans­lated into con­tem­porary content and con­genial archi­tecture.

Imposing peaks, craggy cliffs and tim­eless mountain scenery cha­rac­terise the north-eastern part of the Italian Dolo­mites. The spec­ta­cular land­scape and its geo­lo­gical phe­nomena have meant that the Drei Zinnen natural park in the dis­trict of Sexten has always held an irre­sis­tible attraction for moun­tai­neers, walkers, poets and natural sci­en­tists. The latter have proven that this area, 250 million years ago, was a broad plain which deve­loped over the cen­turies into a tro­pical lake with countless atolls and vol­canoes. It was not until the Con­tinent of Africa slowly drifted against the European land mass that mighty moun­tains were pushed up out of the thermal oceanic basin. It is hard to believe that corals, crustaceans and fish once swarmed where cows and goats now graze in lush green meadows between 3000 m mountain tops.

The Dolo­mites have always been a mountain range in per­petual trans­for­mation. Alt­hough the age of the pri­mordial ocean in Sexten is an uni­ma­gi­nably long time ago, it’s memory lies dormant today in the stones, in the soil and in the coll­ective sub­con­sciousness of the inha­bi­tants, and every evening is recalled when the Drei Zinnen begin to glow inten­sively in the sunset. The locals fondly call the red­dening of the stone walls “Enro­sadira” in the Ladin lan­guage. The afterglow is a unique natural spec­tacle and can be explained by the ancient mineral com­po­sition of the rock con­taining calcium car­bonate and magnesium which create dancing nuances of colour in the sunset from radiant orange through to glowing red and intensive violet.

In the middle of these luminous magic moun­tains there is a coll­ection of buil­dings that take their own cue from the Dolo­mites and are engaged in a cyclical, delicate yet sus­tainable evo­lution of their own: The holiday resort of the Rainer family in Moos near Sexten.

Breaking new ground in spite of head­winds

In 1976, a growing stream of guests demanded an extension of the bed and breakfast into an 80-bed hotel. Willi and Agnes Rainer decided “If we had to run up debts, then so be it” and they set out in search of the right architect on the basis of three clear (and for the time quite boldly modern) pre­mises: 1. All rooms were to face south, 2: there had to be plenty of light and 3: the building should be an alter­native to the ubi­quitous tra­di­tional Tyrolean style of con­s­truction. The rest they were happy to entrust to the inge­nuity of the architect. Freshly gra­duated Aus­trian Peter Thurner had the most con­vincing ideas and so he was duly hired.

The architect designed a semi-cir­cular terrace with lami­nated timber trusses. The openness and spa­ciousness of the building was an absolute inno­vation. Thurner’s extension also included the first indoor swimming pool and the first sauna in Sexten. The façade cladding with local larchwood shingles empha­sises the sym­biotic intert­wining of archi­tecture and the land­scape sur­rounding it, cha­rac­te­ristic of all buil­dings of this family-run resort.
Peter Thurner’s modern building style caused quite a stir in Sexten and not a little scep­ticism. The aban­donment of local building tra­di­tions was seen as a negation of their cul­tural heritage. No orna­ments, no deep sadd­leback roofs, no little windows and no ornate little towers. Yet the rea­li­sation quickly dawned that this outra­geous modern archi­tecture, paid tribute more powerfully than any other building in the com­munity, to the essence of the Sexten Dolo­mites, their topo­graphy and spec­ta­cular beauty.

A look at the hotel’s timeline gives an insight into the most important stages in the sub­se­quent exten­sions, new builds and further con­s­truction, and makes it clear that the story of Family Resort Rainer is also, and above all things, a family saga.

Strata

Courage is her­editary and Judith Rainer takes after her father. Yet she goes her own way, and has a unique vision. In 1994 she opened Resi­dence Königs­warte opposite the main building. No hotel rooms this time, but eight remar­kably spa­cious apart­ments wel­comed guests with new needs tra­velling to Sexten: A homely feel, plenty of room and comfort, all the faci­lities a family would need, self-catering but with a direct link to the hotel faci­lities in the main building if desired. Home away from home – the concept is cat­ching on, and Resi­dence Königs­warte is quickly approa­ching full capacity.
With the extension to Königs­warte — Strata — Judith Rainer wanted to tread new ter­ritory, and for this she enlisted the ser­vices of architect Ulla Hell, asso­ciate of Plasma studio. Again, the new project gave rise to scep­ticism long before it opened in 2007.
Plasma studio has head­quarters in London, Peking, Sexten and Hong Kong. Even with one of its first pro­jects, the four partners in Plasma studio were causing a furore: This aspiring planning practice created the fourth floor of the Design-Hotel Puerta America in Madrid. (the other storeys were designed by famous archi­tects such as Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, Arata Isozaki, John Pawson and Zaha Hadid).

Ulla Hell con­siders archi­tecture to be an extension of topo­graphy and the spirit of a place. It is con­cerned with trans­lating the essence of cul­tural pat­terns into archi­tecture and to embrace the land­scape as it is and inte­grate it into the building. The­r­efore, the highest requi­rement for the new build was that it should unfurl itself into the land­scape, taking on its topo­graphy instead of domi­nating it.
Super­im­posed larchwood batten layers wrap them­selves around the house like the rock layers of mil­lennia-old massifs. That is where Ulla Hell derived her working title for the con­s­truction – Strata (the Italian word strato means layer), and the name stuck. Land­scape and house flow into one another. Strata nestles against the slope and it seems as if its structure grew up natu­rally from the soil. The building opens up com­pletely to the south side through a glass wall, giving its occu­pants a view over the glowing Drei Zinnen.

The mate­rials were chosen for cul­tural and climate reasons. Only 4 local mate­rials are used: loden cloth, larchwood, natural stone and leather. Just a year after Strata opened, Plas­ma­studio won the Pipers Award in the “Next gene­ration archi­tects” category. In 2015, Resi­dence Königs­warte – Strata gained an under­ground link with Hotel Rainer. The meta­mor­phosis in Moos con­tinues.

Alma and Para­mount

Next door to Resi­dence Königs­warte is Resi­dence Alma. Here the host is Christoph Rainer, Judith’s younger brother and husband of architect Ulla Hell. Plasma studio planned to convert this 1970s building as early as in 2004. In 2012, Alma was extended and the hosts them­selves found a roof over their heads here – and what a roof it was! The old sadd­leback roof was removed and a modern structure, con­sti­tuting the top floor of Alma, was placed atop the building, giving the house a very sculp­tural appearance.

The brand new annex to Resi­dence Alma — Para­mount — (another working title that stuck) – has been wel­coming guests since December 2017 into its large, light-drenched holiday apart­ments. Here the design con­cepts of Strata and Alma have been har­mo­niously deve­loped. The adjoining steep slope has been opened up and new space has been inserted behind the older existing building. Para­mount and Strata interact with one another both spa­tially and sty­li­sti­cally: This time, two bands of larchwood slats follow the geo­me­tri­cally complex volumes, making their way behind and over the white of the existing cube removing the borders between roof and facade. Light slots welcome the broad pan­orama and the view hea­venward into the building.

The green roof area has become a spec­ta­cular bel­vedere and an open-air spa. Steam rises from a hot hydro-massage pool. Bodies relax between gently gurgling water jets, quietness befalls the endless snowy land­scape, the day draws to a close…and then the Enro­sadira makes the three mountain giants glow – perhaps with hap­piness. A better balcony seat is hard to imagine.

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Text: Britta Krämer, March 2018

Credits: Where not stated dif­fer­ently, the image rights are hold by Judith Rainer/Family Resort Rainer

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