In Conversation

Ulla Hell: In Dia­logue with the Topo­graphy – Con­ti­nuing to Shape the Land­scape

The South Tyrolean architect draws her grounded approach and distinctive design language from her deep roots in her homeland, the Dolomites, while new ideas often emerge through exchange within the international network of Plasma Studio.

by Jan Hamer & Ulrich Stefan Knoll in April 2026

Hello to South Tyrol! One of your most recent pro­jects is the newly opened Reinhold Messner House in Sexten. How did you come to be com­mis­sioned with the rede­ve­lo­pment of the former mountain station?

The idea for a Reinhold Messner museum dates back almost 30 years. At that time, Reinhold Messner and my father-in-law, Willi Rainer, got to know each other. As Reinhold Messner was looking for a site in the South Tyrolean Dolo­mites, they remained loosely in contact over many years.

When the cable car station on Monte Elmo, which con­nects Sexten to the ski area, reached its capacity limits and was replaced by a gondola lift, this old, disused station sud­denly became available – com­plete with a remar­kable pan­o­ramic window over­looking the Sexten Dolo­mites. Standing there at 2,000 metres above sea level, you look straight out towards the moun­tains from a hori­zontal per­spective. The tra­pe­zoidal opening cap­tures a 180-degree view stret­ching from the Veneto to the Puster Valley. Reinhold Messner was enthu­si­astic, and the cable car ope­rators also wel­comed the idea of creating a publicly acces­sible, cul­tural building under his direction.

From a regu­latory per­spective, the project was a huge effort. The legal framework gene­rally requires that when a new cable car station is built, the old one must be demo­lished. While this makes perfect sense in prin­ciple, in this case it was for­t­unate that the demo­lition did not happen. The structure is an extremely solid con­crete building, anchored 17 metres into the ground by a tension shaft, with walls up to 160 cen­ti­metres thick.

As an architect now based in Sexten, and through my father-in-law’s con­nection to Reinhold Messner, I was ent­rusted with the project.

You’ve demo­lished the station’s former side wings, haven’t you?

Exactly. The main structure is a very well-pro­por­tioned building. Over time, however, a series of small exten­sions had been added, clus­tering around it like little growths.
Natu­rally, it was a major point of dis­cussion for us whether it was legi­timate to remove these ele­ments and instead create a new ent­rance situation, given the fact that we were dealing with an upcy­cling project.
In the end, the decisive factor was once again the land­scape. By removing the roofs of the exten­sions, we were able to introduce a new land­scape roof and calm the rather con­gested overall setting – with the neigh­bouring self-service restaurant of the lift faci­lities, a play­ground full of attrac­tions, and the ski slopes. Those setting out from here towards the Carnic High Route will now find a quiet spot on the far side, with views towards the Veneto and the Sexten Sundial.
The con­verted building was intended to become a place of sto­rytelling as the Reinhold Messner House – a space that conveys the mountaineer’s values.

How should we imagine such a “place of sto­rytelling”?

Ever­y­thing you see inside bears the imprint of Reinhold Messner and his wife. They return regu­larly, bringing new exhibits and arranging them them­selves. As I knew from the outset that this would be a kind of work in pro­gress, it was clear that the building had to be able to accom­modate wha­tever the users might choose to do with it over time.

When I first entered the building, it imme­diately became clear that, alongside the remar­kable view, the most fasci­nating space was the one where the coun­ter­weights once moved to enable the lift’s ope­ration.

It was the­r­efore important that visitors first see these tech­ni­cally impressive spaces upon entering. This is also where we located the ver­tical cir­cu­lation. One des­cends through the large tension shaft into the building, only then rea­ching the rooms that were ori­gi­nally situated beneath the cable car entries. To make these acces­sible to everyone, we had to raise the floor level slightly. Instead of working with ramps, we created a con­ti­nuous surface remi­niscent of a skate park. Only here does the vast, slightly outward-tilting pan­o­ramic window fully come into play. And another aspect I found par­ti­cu­larly exciting about the project was fire safety …

Wait a minute – it’s rare to hear an architect say that fire safety is exciting!

Yes, it is. Actually, we would have had to coat the entire steel structure with fire-retarding paint or encase it, which would have meant losing the sense of the building’s tech­nical cha­racter. Sprinkler systems were not an option anyway due to the lack of water on the mountain.

We even­tually found a fire safety engineer who works with a dif­ferent cal­cu­lation method. The focus was pri­marily on escape route planning and deter­mining the maximum number of people allowed in the building. This made it pos­sible for us to pre­serve the building’s tech­nical origins in a very pure way and make it tan­gible, while still ensuring the necessary level of safety.

A very beau­tiful project. Is it well received by the public?

Very much so. Of course, the fact that Reinhold Messner himself is around quite often adds a certain appeal. You can sense on site that most visitors come because they genuinely want to learn more about him. There is, for example, an archive where you can browse through his books and look at pho­to­graphs. This is very well received. All the aspects that were important to me from the outset were suc­cessfully rea­lised in the design. It was also a par­ti­cu­larly inte­resting task to navigate the tension between client and user.

Let’s change the subject: we always follow with great interest the complex around your Family Hotel Rainer and its ongoing archi­tec­tural deve­lo­pment. With Para­mount Alma, you once described this as a process of con­ti­nuous extension.

That’s right. At the moment, too, there are already new plans underway: at Königs­warte Strata, we are curr­ently refur­bishing the inte­riors.

This mainly con­cerns the oldest rooms and is largely due to the fact that the holiday apart­ments were not ori­gi­nally designed for family holidays, which has become our core focus over the years. Cooking, too, did not play a par­ti­cu­larly signi­ficant role at the time. In that respect, guests’ expec­ta­tions have simply increased.

Will you also be adapting the spatial layout – will you be enlarging rooms, for example?

Not pri­marily. We already have a number of rooms that are very generous in size and sui­table for larger families. In that sense, I believe the current offer is suf­fi­cient.

And do you approach all your pro­jects coll­ec­tively as a family?

Yes, alt­hough it is not always easy to work tog­ether across several families and gene­ra­tions. Decisions within such a family con­stel­lation may take longer, and dis­cus­sions about quality stan­dards can be more extensive … but it is a con­scious choice we have made and one we find sti­mu­lating – including the necessary points of friction.

What sur­prised us during our visit was the existing building from the 1970s, with its won­derful bar and restaurant area, which has a very distinct archi­tec­tural quality.

At the time, in the mid-1970s, it was one of the earlier examples of timber con­s­truction in hotel archi­tecture, and the hall still derives its cha­racter from this glulam structure, with its unique atmo­sphere and sculp­tural stove.

I am doing ever­y­thing pos­sible to pre­serve it, because it is the heart of the house – not only in atmo­spheric terms, but also in relation to the story we have to tell. It was an extra­or­di­narily bold and forward-looking decision by my father-in-law, who in the mid-1970s wanted to expand his small guest­house and tra­velled far and wide to find out what he could pos­sibly build. At some point, he came across a very young Aus­trian architect: Peter Thurner. He had just gra­duated at the time and designed the project with great com­mitment and enthu­siasm. As my parents-in-law even had to borrow money from guests to realise the project, it represents a special part of our family history – one that abso­lutely deserves to be pre­served.

Alongside this, ultra-modern buil­dings have since been added on the opposite side of the road, with an entirely dif­ferent archi­tec­tural lan­guage. How did you arrive at this intri­guing formal expression?

The older part of Strata was also designed by Peter Thurner. He was actually sup­posed to design the planned extension as well. However, he felt that this was out of the question and told my father-in-law and my sister-in-law, who runs the hotel, that they had once given him a chance as a young, inex­pe­ri­enced architect – and that now they had a sister-in-law or daughter-in-law who had just com­pleted her archi­tec­tural studies, and she should be given the same trust and oppor­tunity.

That is how I came to be com­mis­sioned, and I tried to design a building for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law that responded to their brief. Alongside the budget, the key factors were the excep­tional location with its magni­ficent views, which needed to be cap­tured, and the desire for wood to be both visible and tan­gible.

It was important to me to create some­thing that enters into a dia­logue with the topo­graphy.

That is why we did not simply con­tinue building the existing structure, but instead con­tinued the land­scape we found there.

It was a very bold decision on their part because in the end it meant having, under one roof, almost two distinct pro­ducts with entirely dif­ferent archi­tec­tural expres­sions.

A great story, Peter Thurner really pushed you into it!

Abso­lutely. I don’t think my father-in-law would otherwise have dared to entrust “this girl” with the entire respon­si­bility – espe­cially as it was, in fact, one of my very first built pro­jects, and I had nothing to show at the time.

Is the concept of “con­ti­nuing the land­scape” one of the central approaches in your pro­jects?

I’m not sure I would describe it as a primary design prin­ciple. It is often simply a response to the places where we have had the oppor­tunity to build in dia­logue with the topo­graphy. The question of which tech­niques, means and archi­tec­tural lan­guage we can use in that context has always been of great interest to us.

The approach to the sur­roun­dings and their influence on massing and form is some­thing we con­sider highly for­mative. But on another note: could you tell us a bit more about Plasma Studio? You are not a con­ven­tional practice, but rather an inter­na­tional network…

We met in London, but at some point I moved back to South Tyrol – partly because, in the early 2000s, there was strong demand here for archi­tec­tu­rally ambi­tious holiday and tourism pro­jects, and partly because I simply need the pro­ximity to the rocks, to nature, and to being active within it.
My partners Eva and Holger initially remained in London. When we won a com­pe­tition in China in 2010, they moved there and found a partner in Chuan Wang with whom we could col­la­borate on equal terms. A few years later, Eva moved to Sin­gapore and Holger to Hong Kong, while we con­tinued col­la­bo­rating with our partner in Beijing. Since 2007, Peter Pichler, based in Vienna, has also been a per­manent member of the team. On average, we work in a group of around eight to ten people.

And how do you actually col­la­borate in practice, how are decisions made?

The way of working that we all became familiar with during the COVID-19 period has, in fact, always been our way of working. Espe­cially in the early stages of a project, it is very much about exchanging ideas back and forth. The best pro­jects emerge when we manage to col­la­borate well. Once the project moves into the exe­cution phase, it natu­rally passes into the hands of one person or another.

As an architect, I want to think in spaces
and remain the director.

So you do manage to exchange ideas suf­fi­ci­ently and engage in dis­cussion?

On the one hand, it is a question of cha­racter – how much one is willing to engage in debate. On the other hand, it has to be said that while the demands placed on us as archi­tects are incre­asing, fees are not. That ine­vi­tably affects the wil­lingness to engage in lengthy dis­cus­sions for eco­nomic reasons. I often try to address this by making it clear from the outset that certain ser­vices need to be out­sourced, so that I still have enough energy and mental space for the actual archi­tec­tural dis­cussion – rather than merely satis­fying regu­la­tions or pro­ducing yet another cer­ti­fi­cation cal­cu­lation.

If I were to do ever­y­thing myself, there would be no time left at the end of the day, and I would no longer be able to think about archi­tecture at all. I would be thinking only in numbers, in regu­la­tions, in for­mulas – not in spaces. As an architect, I ulti­m­ately want to remain the director. The ambition must be, and must remain, to keep hold of the threads and retain control of the project. In that sense, I believe it is better for certain aspects to be handled by spe­cialist planners. To be honest, I hope the next gene­ration will approach this a little more intel­li­gently.

How do you gene­rally assess the current situation of building in South Tyrol, also in light of the bed cap – how has the situation in the region deve­loped?

The bed cap is being imple­mented effec­tively, which I con­sider both right and necessary, as South Tyrol has a great deal of unbuildable land­scape and the available land is limited. We are cha­rac­te­rised by valleys, and accessing a valley requires a road, which in turn has limited capacity – so nume­rical rest­ric­tions are simply essential. What is still missing, however, is a nume­rical limi­tation on the number of people present in certain areas, par­ti­cu­larly in ski resorts. In my view, this would also require a clear legal framework.
There is, in any case, the new regional spatial planning law, which regu­lates building in alpine and agri­cul­tural green zones and the cor­re­sponding land sealing quite strictly – so in that sense, a small brake has already been applied.

Of course, South Tyrol, like many other regions, has an extreme demand for housing, and in this respect we in South Tyrol are not par­ti­cu­larly inno­vative. When it comes to tourism-related con­s­truction, we should focus on main­taining quality, caring for the existing building stock, and accepting that, for the time being, further growth is simply not pos­sible. The way things worked over the last 20 years just isn’t fea­sible any more. We cannot accom­modate more people – the routes to reach us are already at capacity.

We com­pletely agree with that. On another note: you have also been involved in the dis­cussion around “women build dif­fer­ently”.

Alt­hough, par­ti­cu­larly on con­s­truction sites, there is often little under­standing for family situa­tions – when the site calls, it’s urgent!

Yes, my children some­times com­plain that they have spent too much time on building sites or at trade fairs … but they have grown up all the same. And in any case, our pro­fession is by no means limited to con­s­truction sites – we are con­stantly engaged in solving pro­blems. And I find that a truly fasci­nating aspect of our work: that we can dedicate our­selves to finding solu­tions.

That would make a fitting closing statement!

I would also like to thank you for your net­working work, which I have fol­lowed for many years. What you do is incre­dibly enri­ching and valuable for us as hosts. And the guests who come via HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE are quite simply our ideal guests. It is a perfect match.

Thank you for the kind words – and many thanks for the con­ver­sation, Ulla!

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Ulla Hell studied archi­tecture at the Uni­versity of Inns­bruck, Eind­hoven Uni­versity of Tech­nology and Delft Uni­versity of Tech­nology. A defining turning point was her time at Ciudad Abierta (Chile) — a radical expe­ri­mental space at the inter­section of archi­tecture, land­scape and poetry, which had a lasting impact on her per­spective on space.

This was fol­lowed by London: at Plasma Studio, Ulla worked alongside the Argentine Eva Castro and the German Holger Kehne on inter­na­tional pro­jects cha­rac­te­rised by con­ceptual clarity and spatial pre­cision. This col­la­bo­ration gave rise to a con­nection with the studio — deli­berately con­ceived as a network — that remains a cor­ner­stone to this day.

Then came the deli­berate coun­ter­point: a return to the moun­tains. Based in Sesto, Ulla Hell now com­bines inter­na­tional practice with the local context. As a partner at Plasma Studio, she heads the office in South Tyrol and oversees designs on a wide range of scales — from the con­ceptual approach through to imple­men­tation on site. Her work is cha­rac­te­rised by con­sis­tency, per­se­verance and a healthy dose of idealism.

In par­allel, she taught at the Uni­versity of Inns­bruck until 2022, bringing her per­spective and expe­rience to the aca­demic dis­course.

Interview: The interview was con­ducted by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll.

Photos: Ulla Hell © Harald Wis­thaler (cover image), Reinhold Messner Museum © Florian Jae­nicke (1/2, 4–7) © Ulla Hell / Plasma Studio (3), Königs­warte Strata © Cris­tobal Palma (8/9) © Hertha Hurnaus (10) © Ulla Hell (11), Family hotel Rainer — Exterior © Harald Wis­thaler (12/14), © Private archive Family Rainer (13), Family hotel Rainer — Interior © Alex Filz (15) © Harald Wis­thaler (16), Para­mount Alma and Königs­warte Strata — Topo­gra­phical context © Ulla Hell (17), Para­mount Alma (in the back­ground: Strata) © Hertha Hurnaus (18), Para­mount Alma — Topo­gra­phical context © Ulla Hell (19), Para­mount Alma © Hertha Hurnaus (20), Appropriate_Bistro Berg­steiger @ Florian Jae­nicke (21/22), Mountain road in the Dolo­mites © Anton Rosca / Uns­plash (23), Ulla Hell © Harald Wis­thaler (24)