Töging am Inn, Germany
Robert Maier Architekten’s new Hydroelectric Power Plant in Töging is built right next to an existing and listed power plant area from 1924 that cannot be adapted for the new technical power plant parts to provide clean energy.
In order to be able to integrate the large-scale technology of a hydroelectric power plant, including its massive pipelines, into the environment and to avoid disturbing the historic existing building, the architects decided to let the new power plant recede into the background as much as possible.
To integrate the large-scale technology of a hydropower plant into the landscape, the massive new building was largely inserted underground into the terrain.
The Hydroelectric Power Plant in Töging has been awarded a 2024 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The above-ground parts of the building are reduced to an upper water and an underwater area, which break out of the slope as individual elements.
In the underwater area, a set-back incision is created below this massive wall, which is subordinate to the material.
A cleanly accentuated black joint is created here, where the delivery and access areas as well as the technical and functional areas are located.
The upper concrete disc is created with a three-dimensional concrete structure in the form of waves, which creates a connection to the ripples of the water surfaces.
The incision underneath, using perforated, vertically arranged meander plates, creates the connection to the vertical steel lamellae – the screening systems – in the inlet areas of the power plant.
The inlet structure and the underwater building with power plant technology correspond in their architectural form and are connected to each other via the intensively greened slope.
Project: Hydroelectric Power Plant Töging
Architects: Robert Maier Architekten
Lead Architect: Robert Maier
General Contractor: Porr GmbH & Co KGaA
Client: Verbund Innkraftwerke GmbH
Photographers: Rainer Taepper
