Thousands of Mirrors and a Park Full of Sky: Inside Austria's New VISTA Science Experience Centre
A circular, glass-walled building studded with thousands of ceiling mirrors has opened on the campus of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg, outside Vienna. The VISTA Science Experience Centre, designed by Dutch architecture practice Studio Maks with engineering firm Bollinger + Grohmann, is a public visitor centre meant to throw open the research institute's work to anyone who walks in. Dezeen
The building sits in a park at the heart of the ISTA campus. Its ground floor is given over almost entirely to a large café and shop, enclosed in full-height glass walls and shaded by the undulating, mirrored eaves of the roof above. Thousands of mirrored tiles line the underside of that ceiling, designed to catch the greens of the surrounding park and the blues of the sky and pull them into the interior.
A circular stairwell at the centre of the building draws daylight down into a basement level, where the main exhibition area sits alongside an auditorium and lab and workshop spaces for hands-on learning. A sunken patio and curved staircase on the southern edge provide an outdoor route down to that lower level and bring extra natural light into the lab area. The whole interior runs a largely monochrome palette — white walls, black ceilings, pale oak furniture.
Studio Maks founder Marieke Kums told Dezeen that the roof had originally been conceived as a translucent structure, but pandemic-era disruptions made that solution unfeasible, leading to the mirrored design instead. The building spans roughly 1,500 square metres, according to ISTA's own announcement when construction began. ISTA
The project has already earned industry recognition: the centre received the Österreichischer Metallbaupreis 2026, an Austrian metal construction award, credited to Bollinger + Grohmann. LinkedIn / Bollinger + Grohmann
VISTA is the science outreach arm of ISTA — the institute's vehicle for sharing its research with the public through exhibitions, events and hands-on programmes. A Science Festival is scheduled for the first weekend of October to celebrate the centre's opening. ISTA
The building's design solves a specific problem with a simple gesture: a research institute that can feel closed off gets a ground floor that is almost entirely transparent, and a roof that turns the surrounding landscape into part of the decoration. Whether visitors come for the coffee, the mirrors or the science, the architecture makes sure they notice all three.
