If you ask someone about contemporary timber construction in Austria, Salzburg is certainly not the first place that comes to mind. As a quintessential city of stone, even 19th-century authors sought to characterise the genius loci through the metaphor of music transformed into stone. Although wood was used almost exclusively to build in the nearby coun-tryside, the tradition of timber construction that emerged was robust but not highly refined. Prestigious buildings took cues from the city, which was and is made of stone. Up until the end of the 20th Century, building regulations put timber at a disadvantage; larger multi-storey buildings only became possible after revisions to the Salzburg building code in 1996 and 2004. This more recent development is the focus of the exhibition "Holzbau Salzburg | 20 Years | 20 Examples" designed by Eva Zangerle. It clearly shows that in timber construction, Salzburg has undergone development of aston-ishing density over the past 20 years. Never-theless, pioneering buildings had been built even earlier, which is all the more remarkable despite, or precisely because of, the difficult constraints. Gerhard Garstenauer's residence and Studio (1980) has long been considered a classic of modern timber construction, but Friedrich Brandst?tter's residential village from the mid-1980s, Noah's Ark, can also be counted among the pioneers of ecologically sustainable design. Roughly ten years later, a group of young architects around mastermind Max Rieder conceived the housing project "Holzstoss", which unfortunately was never built. By that time Rieder himself had already built his duplex house in Gr?dig near Salzburg, creating an avant-garde timber home that gained attention far beyond the region. With its numerous essays, the catalogue that accompanies the show is a detailed compan-ion to the exhibition. Monika Brunner-Gaurek, building researcher at the open-air museum in Gro?gmain, describes in her essay the histori-cal timber construction methods used in Salzburg. In his article, Peter Nigst places the region's more recent timber construction tradition in the context of national as well as international developments, thus making a laud-able contribution to the qualitative positioning of the buildings presented. Herbert Lechner and Tom Kaden from TU Graz address eco- nomic aspects and their advantages for climate-neutral construction. In addition to portraying developments since 1999, the aim was to make the r?nge of building projects and construction techniques and materials comprehensible to the widest possible audience. Hence the exhibition appeals to visitors with sensorial and interactive ele-ments that demonstrate the possibilities of timber construction technology and the oppor-tunities they offer for our future. Devised less as an exploration of architectural history, it purposely relies on graphic clarity and materi-ality to convey the role of timber in the context of a new, regional building culture. The exhibition runs through 2 July 2021 at Architekturhaus Salzburg.
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