Factory Hall in Vorarlberg

 - Sabine Drey

This new industrial building of the Gobbi concern in the Austrian municipality of Höchst on Lake Constance is enclosed in a filigree facade of silver-fir louvres. Housed within this homogeneous outer skin are various functions such as offices, exhibition spaces and a large production hall, where the company manufactures high-quality stone kitchen worktops. The location on the edge of town is characterized by housing structures, small commercial firms and planted areas.

Factory Hall in Vorarlberg
© Radon Photography

The open wooden facades and a peripheral canopy roof projecting out of them roughly halfway up lend what is really an industrial building the appearance of a lightweight pavilion, the low-rise form of which is well integrated into the rural context. Internally, a reinforced concrete wall divides the two-storey tract, with offices and a showroom, from the works hall. In the latter, the architects have combined a load-bearing structure of laminated timbers with acoustically effective solid wooden roof sections. The rib-like construction is echoed by the facade louvres, which are visible internally through the window strip pat the top.

Wood also dominates as a material in the office and exhibition tract, although here and there the exposed concrete surface of the dividing wall sets a contrasting accent. In addition, high-quality natural stone is manifest on certain floors and walls - as a token of the company's status. Most walls and ceilings, however, as in the case of the hall soffit, consist of dowelled wooden elements. The heat pumps on the roof serve to activate the concrete core in the hall, whereas those in the office tract supply an underfloor heating system with warm water.

Outside the dip-impregnated, triple-glazed, fir-framed fenestration stands a shade-giving, lightweight structure in the form of the louvred facade.

Architecture
Ralph Broger mit Holger Fritz
Location
Alemannenstraße 16, 6973 Höchst (AT)

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