Bad Gastein, up in the Alps, used to be one of the most fashionable spa towns in Europe. Around 1900 the kings and kaisers of the German-speaking monarchies came every year, and the hotels, classical and Art Nouveau, were packed so tightly above the gorge that one critic saw the whole point of the place in that contrast: metropolitan architecture dropped into a half-wild mountain landscape.
Then the town went quiet. Garstenauer built the Felsenbad pool in 1968, and that was enough for local politicians to trust him with something bigger. Work on the congress centre began in 1970. Against the tall hotels he set a long horizontal concrete mass. It has been one of the most argued-over buildings in Austria ever since.
