Municipal Center Kuchl
The new building in Kuchl, a town in the Tennengau region of Salzburg, accommodates a pharmacy and offices for the municipal authorities on the ground floor and the two storeys above. There are also four apartments situated in the uppermost storey. The Raiffeisen Bank, the second client along with the municipality, did not want a timber construction on the ground floor. In the competition-winning project LP architektur designed this plinth level as a resolute glass and reinforced concrete structure with three upper storeys built in wood.
This wood structure could not remain visible and was clad with facing wood panels, inside silver fir with a natural finish and outside rough sawn silver fir with a white glaze. The requirements (sound proofing, fire protection, ductwork) for all of the building components were too varied and complex – in contrast to the Maschinenring project in St. Johann im Pongau. Whereas the Maschinenring building exemplifies a material-saving optimized timber construction through the addition of same-sized office units, in Kuchl the advantages of composite constructions were exploited (for example, thin steel beams were used in the municipal assembly hall in place of laminated beams, which are visually too high).
The white glaze protects the wood cladding and gives the “new center of the wood town Kuchl” its identity. The building presents a four-storey front to the regional highway with the distinctive window elements of the assembly hall; its two-storey component mediates the neighboring buildings.
On the forecourt to the southwest an entrance with maximum transparency invites visitors into the two-storey foyer of the municipality. This central reception and information point is the interface to the public service and registry offices on the ground floor.
On the first floor the loggia between the offices of the mayor and building inspector are publicly accessible. The flexibly configurable assembly hall on the third floor has a spacious terrace to the south with a view to the Hoher Göll Mountain.
