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Urban space at an interface of epochs
The redesign of the Domplatz is intended to extend the lively inner city atmosphere of the Hauptplatz in Linz in a southerly direction. The core of this urban conversion project is a new hotel that mediates with sovereign flair between the various eras of the buildings around the Domplatz.

Between baroque and gothc revival: the hotel mediates in a heterogeneous urban situation.

Photos: Paul Ott

The inner city of Linz, or to put it better the part of the city generally regarded as the inner city, is laid out in a strictly linear fashion. The numbers of people who frequent the main street, the Landstraße between the Hauptplatz and Mozartstraße, are very high, even in comparison with other Austrian inner cities, but this figure declines rapidly with every metre one moves away from this main north-south axis.

In this situation the redesign by hohensinn architektur of the Domplatz (Cathedral Square) in Linz, which is located at the end of the continuation of Mozartstraße that is named after Bishop Rudigier who initiated the erection of the cathedral in the 19th century, is far more than a mere adaptation of a public square to reflect changed ideas about the function of urban space. Not only does it create an appropriate space in front of the church (whose size alone is most impressive) for the first time in this building’s almost one hundred years of existence, the new Domplatz also offers the city of Linz the chance to expand its centre with a square defined by streets, at the southwest corner of which the newly designed building stands. This opportunity seemed particularly seductive because, at least as far as the square itself is concerned, it is not related to commercial consumption. 
The building as a sculpture: moving elements instead of classic horizontal division.
The starting point for the new building was the erection of a hotel whose underground garage extends underneath practically the entire site, almost up to the walls of the church. It is hardly surprising that this imposing building site demanded considerable powers of imagination from the citizens of Linz, especially once the plans to reduce the existing green space considerably in size were made public. Today both the part of the new building above ground as well as the sizable underground element fit well into the heterogeneous setting, as if they had always been there. The approach to the underground garage was made discretely from the narrow Stifterstraße. Although the exit from this underworld (which is in very elegant shades of white, matt yellow and dark red) could not be made without a building, the appropriately delicate glazed lift and staircase tower was moved far enough away from the cathedral’s axis of symmetry to prevent it unintentionally acquiring a more important role than would be fitting.
Lobby and restaurant: floating space from facade to facade.

The article in full length and more pictures can be found in architektur.aktuell.
Restraint informs the overall design of the square: with the exception of a still extensive green section in the northeast the entire area around the cathedral is paved with light-coloured square slabs. By not emphasising any particular visual axes or directions to walk, while still preserving a slight topographical movement, a freedom of use is introduced that has become a rarity in our completely styled inner cities. Yet this is not a paved wasteland but a well-ordered sequence of public spaces whose organization is closely related to the new hotel building in the south-eastern part of the site. 
Typical floor plan (with old building).
Josef Hohensinn positioned the new building that is erected over a roughly rectangular floor plan with a short side on Stifterstraße to the south, which is here widened by including a path, and with its east front relatively close to the two existing Baroque buildings that close the square towards Herrenstraße. By making a slight bend the east facade moves from being parallel to Herrenstraße and thus widens the narrow lane that ultimately leads into a small square framed by the new building and the historic existing fabric, at the edge of the large open space. During the warm part of the year the restaurant in the northern one of the two renovated old buildings opens an outdoor “garden” and the hotel also provides tables outside for its guests. You can sit here protected from traffic noise at an unusual interface between epochs and scales. The small-scale Baroque houses, augmented by an obviously new steel and glass construction, stand opposite the heroic romantic colossus of the Mariendom (cathedral), a manifesto of a reconstruction of an era that sought its salvation in the architecture and handcraft of the Middle Ages. (…)
Romana Ring
Ground floor planCross section with Garage