DRIVE BY DESIGN
models in the 5 Series. The car offers a driving experience that allowed us to shake off our carbon footprint under 60 kilometres per hour on our trip from Munich to Lake Como. We might’ve ramped up our speed to 160 kilometres per hour on the autobahn to test the ECO PRO mode that makes use of kinetic energy already generated while the combustion engine is off, but no-one was keen to test the mood and vigilence of the notoriously fierce German and Italian traffic cops who confiscate driver’s licences on the turn. So we played. Dr Eckhard Steinmeier, head of BMW ConnectedDrive, had spent the best part of an hour explaining how we could transform our iPhones into a remote for some of the services in our cars. Apart from gliding almost silently from Innsbruck through the South Tyrolean landscape, we audio-streamed our favourite music. ConnectedDrive could also turn the car into an office, weather station, park you accurately in a tight bay, and in an accident − when air bags were deployed and you were unconscious − trigger an automatic call to a BMW call centre. The car ends up being a large smartphone with wheels. Cool doesn’t even begin to cover it. (Not all functions may be available in SA.) You expect this of BMW though. Zaha Hadid’s Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck on
The Bergisel ski-jump project started out with closing eight lanes of major freeway traffic between the town and the site of the old jump in order to safely blow up the existing station one Sunday morning at low-peak times. Construction crew had to work through temperatures of -16°C to get it all done. A year later, Innsbruck’s latest icon pierced the sky in time for the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games. The next time you watch a televised Winter Olympics set here, spare a thought for the athlete who dives off what amounts to a skyscraper, with their body perfectly aligned to their skis, and plummets almost vertically down the ramp. Martin Nagiller, a 32-yearold veteran who trained for seven years for this version of sports insanity, has done it 3 000 times and for us, courtesy of Malojer’s company sponsorship, made it 3 001 and 3 002 on the summer astroturf in spectacular style. Perfect form was evident everywhere on the EuroStyle Tour. We’d never dare do that jump and live to write it up, but there was no getting out of a breath-snatching, almost vertical climb to a point 1 500m above the small town of Lana in South Tyrol, Italy, for a night’s sleep. Vigilius Mountain Resort, with a 200-kilometre view of the surrounding Dolomites, took form and function to exquisite lengths. Hotel owner Ulrich Ladurner comes
The Ladurner-Thun combination resulted in a design that had an uncanny link to the Riva 1920 Kauri. The design that inspired Laderner was based on the form of a giant fallen tree with the long slatted lines of larch forming powerful horizontal lines that not only broke the sunlight, but warmed up to insulate the building. Behind the larch lay triple-glazed glass with interior material – stone floors and clay – sourced from as near to the site as possible. From a short distance away, the lodge is barely visible on the skyline. Eco-standards are high here, with the clay internal walls of the suites not only aesthetically pleasing and warm in colour to the eye, but able to absorb internal heating and retain it. In winter, the mercury drops to 20 below and the swimming pool remains at 27°C heated by a local fuel source. Felled wood collected by local residents supplies a steady stream of eco-material. Wood softly buffed with a layer of natural oil dominates the interior, while soft furnishing and leather-covered armchairs are a monochrome ox-blood red that teases the brain into thinking ‘warm’. That night, celebrated chef Mauro Buffo (who’s worked at Ferran Adriá’s El Bulli) dishes up his version of South Tyrolean cuisine and later we indulge in sleep that only high altitude and this level of luxury and natural splendour can bring.
PHOTOGRAPHY: SUPPLIED
We indulge in sleep that only high altitude and this level of luxury and natural splendour can bring.
the German-Italian border was unexpected however. The town is all medieval lanes and quaint hostelries, yet the ski station is like a landed spaceship of several thousand curved, glacier-coloured glass sections made in China, where they built a factory for the project. Even Europe sub-contracts when they stand to save half the bill. Master of construction Georg Malojer was the successful contractor, although reading between his rather dry, controlled Austrian lines, you sense a project from hell – heart-stopping timing, Chinese notso-accurate final product, and one landowner who refused to let the Nordpark Cable Railway that linked the four ski stations to pass over his land so demanded a tunnel, adding a hideous extra cost to the project. €54 million euros later, Innsbruck had a design icon.
from money (the family fortune was founded on a drugstore business and producing specialised gluten-free products for the European market). He loves regatta sailing and flying himself around the Alps, but when he stood before the shabby and neglected Vigiljoch Mountain Hotel, it combined his desire to do something different with his life and the challenge – or folly – of turning the 1912 establishment into an eco-luxury lodge set among the Alpine larch. Several firms pitched for the project, most of them with conventional designs – bar awardwinning architect Matteo Thun, who believes that architecture means designing the soul of the place. ‘This implies an aesthetic, economic and technological sustainability. It means to create a synthesis of the existing, the purpose and the area.’
Concorso d’Eleganza, held in the parkland of Villa d’Este and Villa Erba on Lake Como, is splendour of another kind. The competition is Ascot with wheels, a fabulous beauty pageant of 52 hand-picked ‘contestants’ from around the world that included stately dames such as a Ferrari 250 Europa (1954), a Lamborghini LP 400 Countach (1975) and a stunner of a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (1922). They’re all entered into the competition by their owners, who restore them to mint condition – some in a staggering 4 000 hours of work. But it’s not only the coachwork that counts. It’s the car’s history that racks up the points. There’s a BMW 507 (1958) roadster, just like the one Elvis gave to Ursula Andress (whom he called Ooshie); a roadster that cost an outrageous $13 000 US at the time; a Ferrari
ISSUE 16 P R I V A T E E D I T I O N 7 1