The museum as a building type has something of the character of a pro-fession of faith. The aesthetic area of discussion and the high degree of public attention motivate planners and clients to produce programmatic designs that express their convictions in a nutshell. In the case of the private museum of Carinthian collector Herbert Liaunig, who finances his activities in the art world with his income from industrial holdings, this is shown in a particularly clear way. It is not only the enthusiasm for the areas he has chosen to collect (Austrian art after 1945, gold from Africa, glass, miniatures) that directs the client but also his long years of experience with industrial buildings. From his building projects he expects everything: a symbolic character, functionality, and extreme economy. Great demands are made on the planners. In this regard the Viennese office Querkraft is an excellent choice: since 1998 it has made its name internationally with unconventional economic interpretations of building briefs, which often provide unexpectedly creative and vivid solutions through lateral thinking strategies, using simple ready-made and recycled materials. Following an attempt with international star architects Herbert Liaunig only came across Querkraft-Architekten in the second phase of the selection process for building his private museum. Opened in 2008, their landmark museum uses several archetypical architectural motifs: on an underground ritual path you walk along ramps and through rooms which - like Bernini's Scala Regia - appear to taper upwards. The main gallery also quotes archetypes - a long corridor, rectangular in cross section and lit from above like the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. The spectacular cantilever, which projects out of a hill in which most of the building is embedded and hovers above the landscape of the River Drau, brought the project architecture prizes and cover stories. At that time not all the archetypical spatial motifs were accessible to the public: a circular Pantheon type with a single daylight opening at the zenith and roofed by a truncated cone instead of a spherical vault once served as a sculpture depot. It has now been integrated in the display areas as an exhibition space for sculpture. A narrow corridor with wall designs by Esther Stocker that leads there intensifies the experience. Already in the first phase everything was made of highly economical concrete elements - this construction method, which has an archaic effect, is necessary for underground structures and also inexpensive, and here it is also appropriate in terms of idiom. The two new, recently opened museum spaces offer an area for temporary exhibitions with an adjoining outdoor space as well as an area for the miniatures and glass collection. In both spaces the archaic language is further heightened: the temporary exhibitions hall is triangular in plan; the thick ribs of the concrete ceiling slab produce a fascinating raw geometry. Triangular light openings occupy some of the areas between the ribs. One point of the triangular space is cut off by a glass wall that mediates to an open area behind: a kind of sunken arena, also triangular in shape, which leads via a stepped ramp up to the base at the level of the surrounding ground, splays outwards offering new, attractive views. The other new space stands out through the angled corridor that bores its way inside from above and can be walked around.
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