Zaha Hadid's Concrete Museum Nestled Atop Italian Mountain

Reinhold Messner surely holds his esteemed place in the adventurous realm of mountaineering, as is evident from a few of his extraordinary feats – including being the first man to climb Mount Everest without an oxygen cylinder, and the first man to ascend all of the world’s fourteen 8000-m high mountains. Such feats are also accompanied by his patronizing of various architectural accomplishments – that entails a series of museums nestled atop Italian Alps, all dedicated to mountain culture. And the sixth (and last) of these impressive museums, christened as the Messner Mountain Museum Corones, was designed by Zaha Hadid, and made its debut in July of this year.

Nestled atop the Mount Kronplatz at a height of around 7,000 ft (around 2,130 m), the museum is envisioned as a concrete structure ‘incorporated’ within the summit. This embedded nature of the building allows it to be projected outwards along the edge of the mountain, ultimately culminating into three angular concrete canopies (emerging at the floor level). These outward platform-like spaces surely do offer some adventurous and breathtaking views of the surrounding Italian Dolomite landscape.

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Photo credit: Werner Huthmacher

As for the inconspicuous nature of the museum, the slightly hidden facades are specifically made from glass-reinforced fiber concrete. This accounts for a pale gray exterior that seamlessly blends into the proximate limestone surface (of the mountain). On the other hand, the interior walls of the museum are treated with a darker gray tone to match up with the anthracite coal buried deep in the mountains. As Hadid made it clear in a press statement –

The idea [is] that visitors can descend into the mountain to explore its caverns and grottos, before emerging through the mountain wall on the other side, out onto the overhanging terrace with its spectacular, panoramic views.