THE OVERCOMING: Big mountains. Big threats. Big Memories. Big Wall. Protection, Security. There is no place for tenderness, no huddling to the wall, which can resist 11 tons per squaremeter, no fooling around. The remembrance of vanquishing the avalanche-retaining wall on the other hand should stay in mind for a long time. The Path is staged as spatio-temporal experience, that suprises, amazes and provokes thoughts.
THE MASS: The Visitor is confronted with a massive, raw, 2500m³ wood mass that is layered in a non-readable manner. No Building, no staircase; a cube with 15m side-length out of stacked tree log´s. With 14m height, obvoiusly stacked higher than on normal sites near sawmills. The movement of the visitor creates the path. The space is not cut out, it is made by pushing out the logs. The interior space transformes into volumes which can be recognized from the outside.
THE SEQUENCE OF SPACE: The first staircase is tunnel-like with only a little light from the side leading to a view to the south framing the Balunspitze. The second staircase ("Ravine") affects the introverted plateau ("The secret Ground"). The third stairs open up the view northward, out of the valley and along the wall. The fourth "bridge-stair" let you see the mountain, Grieskogel, that sent the avalanche. The wall can not yet be overseen. After the last turn you traverse the ravine and enter the promenade deck on the roof of the exhibition center. The introverted atmosphere of the stairs has changed completely. Like on a tray presented and exposed to wind and weather are the visitors. They become observer and protagonists at the same time.
THE CONSTRUCTION: The trees were cut in fall 2004 in the village of Galtür. A maximum lenght of 5.30m determines a maximum diameter of 30cm, because there is no need for thicker logs on the market. If the width of the stairs is 2m there are 3.3m left for the static mounting. The lateral stacks are supported by two vertical steal beams, aswell as horizontal and crosswise, (16mm) interlaced steelcables. The middle stack is rotated 90 degrees and is mainly supported by the lateral stacks. In contradiction to this massive, heavy construction, the bridge, is elegantly and delicately built out of modern, heavy loadable plywood and composite lumber beams. The clear span of the bridge is 12m. The material of all stairs is either reusable or it is already reused wood.
THE END: At the end of the exhibition the logs and the steel was sold again. The bridge was rebuilt at a new site traversing the close-by ravine of the Sanna creek. The moved earth was pushed back covering the spot again. The tower remains only a memory.
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