VISTA Exerience Center
Year: 2019 - 2025
Location: Maria Gugging / Klosterneuburg, Austria
Type: Visitor Center
Client: Lower Austria Government
Collaborator(s): Bollinger + Grohmann ZT GmbH, In Plan Ingenieure GmbH, Architektur Consult Ziviltechniker GmbH, FireX Greßlehner
Ingenieurbüro Nöbl, Sauter Mess- und
Regeltechnik GmbH
Design team:: Marieke Kums, Marlene Scheuringer
(project architect), Mikel Marin, Gautam Tanwar, Amelie Mantovani, Marina Bruno,
Hey-mi Lee
Awards: Open internation competition 1s prize, Metallbaupreis AT 2026
Emerging lightly from the park landscape of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) near Vienna, VISTA is a new visitor and science center by Dutch Studio MAKS and international engineering and design practice Bollinger + Grohmann that brings research, landscape, and public life together under one reflective roof.
ISTA is a young research institution established to promote interdisciplinary research in the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science, thereby strengthening Austria’s scientific community. In 2018, an international competition was launched for a visitor center that would make the institute’s research accessible to a broader public—an essential element in its ambition to connect science and society.
Studio MAKS and Bollinger + Grohmann won the competition with the idea of Hanami, or a picnic in the park: an open and welcoming place for encounter, gathering, and exchange for people of all ages. The building makes ISTA’s core values—openness, curiosity, and exchange—spatially tangible and serves as an accessible link between science and society.
The new science center is located within an existing park landscape. To minimize its physical impact on the site, the majority of the program is accommodated below ground. At park level, VISTA presents itself as a light pavilion with a transparent façade and a mirrored roof. The reflective roof surfaces capture the surrounding greenery and historic campus buildings, allowing architecture and landscape to visually merge and giving the pavilion a subtle presence within the park.
Light is a central element of the design. It is reflected, filtered, and drawn deep into the building, generating a rich sequence of spatial and atmospheric experiences that change throughout the day and across the seasons.
VISTA’s ground floor houses the reception, exhibition space, and café, forming an open and welcoming environment for social gathering, scientific learning, and exchange. Below ground, the Science Center, seminar rooms, and workshop spaces are arranged around a sunken courtyard that brings natural daylight deep into the building while creating a calm and sheltered setting. Here, science is not only presented but actively experienced. Through hands-on learning, experimentation, and play, visitors—particularly children and young people—are encouraged to engage with research, discovery, and innovation.
Accessibility lies at the heart of the design. Rather than having a clearly defined front or back, the building can be approached from all sides and is fully integrated into the campus pathway network. Transparency, visual connections, and spatial clarity provide intuitive orientation. The transition between exterior and interior is deliberately conceived as seamless, creating a welcoming environment while maintaining a continuous connection to the surrounding landscape.
To minimize its environmental impact, the client and design team set ambitious goals for ecological performance and energy autonomy. These ambitions are translated into a building that meets the KlimaAktiv Gold standard, Austria’s highest ecological building standard. The landscape design extends this sustainable approach: permeable pathways and planting merge seamlessly, embedding the building within its natural setting while enhancing biodiversity, water management, and outdoor comfort.
Cafe terras
Plan GF
Welcome area with cafe
VISTA Cafe with entrance to exhibition areas below
Seminar room
Main exhibition space
Plan B1
Main exhibition area
Workshop