ICE STATION ZAHA 05/27/08

Words :: Will Jones // Images :: Werner Huthmacher

With sublime flowing forms that hardly seem to touch down, these exquisite glass sculptures would be quite at home in an art gallery. That they are even more suited to their current positions, perched on the side of the Nordkette Mountain in Austria, is testament to the design skill of Zaha Hadid Architects. But sculptures they are not: Hadid’s latest works are in fact four stations on the new Nordpark Cable Railway in Innsbruck, which opened on 01 December 2007. The railway creates a link between the city and the cable car to the summit of the Seegrube Mountain, which towers over Innsbruck. The railway starts in the centre of the city at the Station of Congress. It travels to Loewenhaus station before crossing the river and ascending the Nordkette Mountain north of Innsbruck to Alpenzoo station. The final station is at Hungerburg village, some 945 feet above the city.
“Each station has its own unique context, topography, altitude, and circulation,” says Hadid. “We studied natural phenomena such as glacial moraines and ice movements - as we wanted each station to use the fluid language of natural ice formations, like a frozen stream on the mountainside.
“A high degree of flexibility within this language enables the shell structures to adjust to these various parameters whilst maintaining a coherent formal logic. Two contrasting elements ‘Shell & Shadow’ generate each station’s spatial quality, with lightweight organic roof structures of double-curvature glass ‘floating’ on top of concrete plinths, creating an artificial landscape that describes the movement and circulation within.”
Hadid won the competition to design the stations in 2005. It is the second project that the architect has completed in Innsbruck. The Bergisel Ski Jump was opened in 2002 and later awarded the gold medal for design by the International Olympic Committee. The practice does not rest upon its laurels, though. At Zaha Hadid Architects in London, countless staff are crammed like willing veal carves into an old school building, working tirelessly on the minutiae details that make Hadid’s architecture so exacting and special.

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