Bergisel ski jump
Having hosted the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics, Innsbruck was an established and important ski jumping venue in Austria, but by the 1990s the jump’s 30-year old construction no longer conformed to international regulations. A particular problem was that athletes had begun to jump much greater distances than previously and so the jump needed to be redesigned.
To address this the Austrian Ski Federation launched an international tender in 1999 to find an architect to design a new jump on the Bergisel Mountain in Innsbruck. The project was part of a wider refurbishment programme for the whole Olympic Arena.
Idea
Zaha Hadid Architects won this competition by proposing a building that would function as much more than just a ski jump. Like much of Hadid’s work, she approached the brief by generating ideas that broke out from the form of the client’s institution. To this end, Hadid’s Bergisel ski jump is a hybrid building comprising a specialised sports facility and public spaces, including a cafe and viewing terrace.
At a length of around 90m and a height of almost 50m, the construction casts a dramatic, serpentine silhouette against the backdrop of the Alps. The building is a combination of tower and bridge, structurally divided into a vertical concrete column and a spatial steel structure which integrates the ramp and cafe. The ‘head of the snake’ loops away and back 180-degrees to allow the uppermost areas to overlook the ski jump itself, with the viewing gallery and cafe nested 40m above the mountain’s peak.
Impact
When the Bergisel ski jump was completed in 2002, replacing the previous jump completely, the immediate impact of Hadid’s building was probably visual: a new landmark construction overlooking the Alps and downtown Innsbruck, strung with chains of lights gently shifting colour at night.
But in design and engineering terms the structure was a complicated undertaking, requiring linked underground, surface and aerial construction. Its design achievements were quickly recognised with the project winning a clutch of high-profile awards including the Austrian State Architecture Prize and Tyrolean Architecture Award in 2002 and the Gold Medal for Design from the International Olympic Committee and an Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, both in 2005.
In 2004, Hadid was appointed by Innsbruck cable car company INKB to design four cable railway stations and a bridge for the Nordpark Railway Stations, linking visitors with Innsbruck’s northern chain of mountains.