Steven Holl counters sprawl and pastiche with his LOISIUM, a tilting, aluminum-clad visitors' center that holds its own in Austrian wine country

摘要

The small Austrian town of Langenlois nestles near the northwest end of the Wachau Valley- one of the world's only wine-growing regions officially classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site. No wonder: Its hilly landscape, dotted with castles and blanketed with vineyards, makes this countryside exceptionally beautiful, stretching from the Baroque monastery of Melk- the setting for Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose- to the town of Krems along the gently winding Danube. In springtime, Langenlois's own Baroque buildings -stuccoed in powder blue, dusty rose, bright sienna, and pale green- stand amid a profusion of purple lilac bushes and century-old flowering chestnut trees, as if this were nothing out of the ordinary.