Island for itself

A place with an extraordinary location that often hosts outstanding guests. This is a brief description of the Island Hall in Lindau. It lies like an island in an imaginary triangle between the old town, Lake Constance, and the mountains, and often serves as a meeting place for Nobel Prize winners. For this reason, its reconstruction, undertaken by Auer Weber office, was an absolutely unique project.

"Every project is for us a bit like building on a green field. We start completely from scratch and rely solely on our intuition, experience, and creativity," says Moritz Auer, managing director of the leading Munich architecture firm Auer Weber. Its employees have received numerous awards for their work in the past—perhaps because the office has its distinctive handwriting, making it unmistakable. "When creating the design, we focus a lot on the purpose of the building itself, its surroundings, and the specific conditions. And to be honest, we also care a lot about the overall effect," Auer explains.

In the project of the Island Hall, the location was a crucial factor. The building is positioned between the old town, Lake Constance, and the mountains, and from the beginning, it was clear that the key aspect of the construction would be the roof of the building. The roof is visible from a wide area and forms a symbolic landmark of the structure.

Golden color leads

Before the actual reconstruction, Moritz Auer referred to the building as the "huge pizzeria" because it reminded him of a typical restaurant from an unnamed chain selling pizza. Thus, the task was not just to reconstruct carefully, but also to rid the building of such associations. The dominant feature of the structure is undoubtedly the roof construction, which acts as a changing horizon. It changes throughout the day depending on the intensity and angle of incoming light as well as the time of day. Accordingly, the roof covering creates various color shades, from gold to matte brown and sometimes even slightly reddish. "We decided to use PREFA Falzonal in a custom copper color, which PREFA Aluminiumprodukte really perfected. Thanks to this, the building today forms a cohesive whole with the newly constructed parking garage that seems to perfectly replicate the larger structure," specifies Auer.

A place for everyone

The main requirement of the reconstruction was to transform the surroundings of the large hall, which also had to remain preserved, as it was a popular venue for prestigious meetings of Nobel Prize laureates. The Island Hall was built in the early 1980s and has practically remained the same since then. "It was necessary to aerate the space a bit and bring a breath of contemporary modernity into it while preserving the genius loci and emotional charge," says architect Auer. He also had to address another task—how to make the space sufficiently versatile so that it could also serve as a multipurpose conference center. "We wanted to create a real meeting place. A space that would serve just as well for private events as for large official occasions. Fortunately, we succeeded, so today the hall, thanks to a smart partitioning system, offers many options for arranging the space according to specific events. Moreover, during the realization, we tried to take advantage of the advantageous location with the building oriented towards the lake," Auer describes the key aspects. Thanks to this, the Island Hall now boasts a pleasant "lake" restaurant that serves not only tourists and prestigious guests but also local residents.

Roof as a landmark

One of the key moments of the entire reconstruction was the selection of the optimal roof covering and the choice of the new roof's shape. The shape of the roof is quite complex and consists of 38 different surfaces, each with a different slope, size, and direction. "The roof covering Falzonal from PREFA Aluminiumprodukte seemed optimal to us. Moreover, the reconstruction took place in the months when the tourist season peaked, so speed was also a factor. Working with PREFA covering is very easy, which saved us a lot of precious time, and the overall result exactly matches our expectations," concludes the roofing company's owner, Johannes Bernwieser.

About the project

Project name: Island Hall
Object, location: multipurpose hall, Lindau, Germany
Type of building: new construction
Architects: Auer Weber Architekten München, Arch. Moritz Auer
Implementation: Täumer GmbH, Johannes Bernwieser
Type of roof: PREFA Falzonal
Color of the roof: special custom color
PHOTOGRAPHY: Croce & WIR