ÖTSCHER:REICH - The Alps and us
Lower Austri State Exhibition 2015
ÖTSCHER:REICH - The Alps and us
Lower Austria State Exhibition 2015Frankenfels-Laubenbachmühle
Neubruck, Töpperschloss
Wienerbruck, Ötscher-Basis Nature Park Center
April 25 to November 1, 2015
280,648 visitors
Content team:
Werner Bätzing
Ernst Bruckmüller
Beat Gugger
Gerhard Proksch
In cooperation with Martina Affenzeller, Renate Woditschka, Konrad Zirm - zunder zwo
Architecture Frankenfels-Laubenbachmühle:
Architekt Zieser Ziviltechniker GmbH
Exhibition architecture Frankenfels-Laubenbachmühle:
Johann Moser, Sanja Utech, Heike Dralle - BWM Architekten und Partner ZT GmbH
Exhibition architecture Neubruck:
Gerhard Abel, Oliver Cmyral - Planet Architects ZT GmbH
Graphics:
Gerhard Bauer, Vera Kühn, Elsa Bachmeyer, Nadine Melchior - Perndl + Co Design GmbH
An international team of dedicated scientists and exhibition designers succeeded in initiating a development initiative via the Lower Austrian provincial exhibition “ÖTSCHER:REICH - Die Alpen und wir” (ÖTSCHER:REICH - The Alps and us) and bringing it closer to as many guests as possible. The team included the Alpine researcher and geographer Prof. em. Dr. Werner Bätzing, the economic historian Prof. em. Dr. Ernst Bruckmüller, himself from Mostviertel, and the exhibition organizers Beat Gugger and Gerhard Proksch. Together, Gugger and Proksch traveled the region intensively and laid the foundations for this provincial exhibition in many conversations, hikes and inn rounds with the locals.
The exhibition thus moved away from its position as a six-month highlight and became the focus of a new kind of development process, in which a “peripheral region of the Alps” was to become a “central area for an independent economic and living culture”. The region's own ideas and perspectives for the future became part of the “national exhibition”.
“Only through the local people can we see what is specific, special and unique about the ÖTSCHER:REICH,” says Beat Gugger. The result was a national exhibition that focused on stories, in which objects represented partial references to history and ultimately enticed viewers to link what they saw with their own personal experiences. Many visitors immediately put the slogan “Don't forget your hiking boots”, which accompanied every exhibition, into practice - not as a medium of longing, but as an initiator of personal enrichment of experience.
Today we can take stock. In the course of the Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2015, a regional movement was created with two exhibition venues, the Ötscher-Basis Nature Park Center in Wienerbruck, 15 ÖTSCHER:REICH stations, 174 regional partners, 26 cultural mediators, 83 nature mediators, two new circular hiking trails and the newly built Mariazellerbahn, which was once the first electrified mountain railroad in Europe.
Provincial Governor Erwin Pröll: “All in all, it can be said that the region has made full use of the opportunity of the Provincial Exhibition with the enormous economic upturn and long-term sustainable use!”