The commission was to create a meeting room, which was to be modern, functional and above all inexpensive, for an active cultural association, in an unprepossessing former cinema in the rather desolate railway station forecourt in Stainach. The architects' room for manoeuvre was restricted by the task set as well as by the usual constraints. These preconditions allowed neither opulent language nor major architectural interventions: these are the very circumstances which suit the thinking of Riegler/Riewe. The appropriate result accordingly followed. The existing building remained untouched, apart from a few necessary interventions in the simple external skin, which in general related to the installation of services and a new circulation system. The melancholy charm of the place was not affected, the building was not aesthetically clad nor re-designed but simply left as it was. At first glance there is no obvious sign from which one could assume that contemporary architecture is to be found behind the skin.

From outside one would not expect anything special, above all if one was actually interested in the function of the place. On entering the building one is almost inevitably surprised by the quality of the sensitive interventions. In a certain sense the Wolkenstein Cultural Centre is symbolic of Riegler/Riewe’s architectural position: they make their buildings in such a way that they can only be experienced in the process of occupying and using them, in this way they become self-evident.

The external plainness corresponds to the stringent and economic design of spaces in the interior. The minimalisation is a contrast to the usual rural richness. Necessity, intelligently applied, determines the choice of materials, the furnishings and the functional articulation of the spaces and produces a pleasant neutrality for various forms of artistic communication. A neutrality which, in the best sense, allows (and offers) nothing more than room.

Arno Ritter