Mountain tourism spreads its wings with this repurposed cable-car station in the Dolomites

They say necessity breeds innovation, and unfortunately for Alpine Europe, the reality of climate change has necessitated blue-sky thinking. A case in point: this adapted cable-car station in the Italian Dolomites, near the Austrian border. Up Mount Helm in Sesto, a Unesco-anointed area shaped by ski tourism, the 40-year-old building was outdated and defunct. Yet designed to withstand extreme conditions, it clearly had potential for a new purpose. Rather than put the mountainside through a costly and dirty demolition, officials in the Drei Zinnen region resolved to upcycle.

With a vision for transforming the facility into a cultural heritage space, they turned to Ulla Hell of the architecture studio Plasma, known for its innovative approach to environmental structures. Hell devised a regeneration project firmly embedded in the rock and connected to the surrounding topography, combining architectural experimentation with contextual respect. She reused utilitarian brick and demolished concrete and built a new soffit with salvaged sheet. Smaller roof extensions were removed to make way for a publicly accessible landscaped roof. Within this framework is a permanent exhibition dedicated to Reinhold Messner, the Italian climber, explorer and author who hails from South Tyrol.

Reinhold Messner Haus, a converted cable car station above Sesto, Italy. Photography: © Florian Jaenicke.

Here at 2,000m above sea level, the concrete monolith now called Reinhold Messner Haus resembles a mountain outcropping, albeit smoother and with all the scratches and nicks of decades in service. Visitors reach it on the Helmjet gondola from Sesto or the Ubungslift from Versciaco, and access the public space through a new tunnel carved into the concrete. They swiftly descend into a voluminous hall repurposed from the old counterweight shaft with 17-metre ceilings and sweeping 180-degree Dolomite views.

The path continues past disused pulleys, cables and gears in vivid colours, like ingredients in a kinetic artwork. In and out of old workshops, storerooms and a small cinema, visitors take in anecdotes from Messner’s legacy and reflect on themes of sustainability, slow travel, silence, risk and mountain exploration. The exhibition opens to a wide glazed façade beneath a trapezoidal opening in the roof, originally conceived for the arrival of the lift cabins. This viewing platform juts into the landscape: the icing on this sweet Alpine scene.

The immersive experience proposes a new avenue for tourism in South Tyrol: mindful, slower and lower in environmental impact. Like Messner’s vision, it goes beyond mountaineering to embrace a balance between human presence and nature, memory and transformation. In this context, upcycling is not merely a construction strategy but a way of extending the life of the site while preserving its essence.