Gasometer (Vienna) – Wikipedia

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The gasometer In Vienna-Simmering there are four former gas containers from 1896. They were revitalized in an extensive renovation from 1999 to 2001 and now have an entertainment center, several apartments, a student home and an event hall. The gasometers were part of the Gaswerk Simmering , to compensate for supply fluctuations in the Vienna gas network. They were technically designed as a low -pressure memory for the city gas obtained from coal. In addition to the Gaswerk Leopoldau, the Gaswerk Simmering was one of two urban gas plants around the turn of the century. Originally there were 6 gas containers. One of them was a so-called screw gas container.

The buildings have always been considered the landmark of the 11th Viennese municipal district of Simmering, since they can be seen from afar due to their size. The Simmering gas plant with the gasometers was in operation from 1899 to 1975. Since the revitalization, tourists from all parts of the world and architectural experts have also been among the visitors to the Gasometers.

Due to the decades -long large -scale gas plant operation, underground loads were found through phenols, hydrocarbons and cyanide on the area and several parts of the site in 1996 were found as an old load W18 recorded in the State of the Environment of the Federal Environment Agency. [3]

The cylindrical bell gas containers, each with 90,000 cubic meters of gas volume that were in a water basin, were surrounded with a brick facade. The bell gasometers measure around 70 meters from the road level to the tip and about 60 meters in diameter. A fifth, which was adopted by the local council in autumn 1908 and subsequently added, was carried out as a telescopic gas container; With a capacity of 150,000 m³, it was the largest gasometer in Simmering. [4] He was south of the four preserved buildings on a site used as a sports field. [5] In 1945 a bomb hit was badly damaged and put back into operation on September 30, 1947, [6] the building was demolished in 1981. [7]

The construction of the gasometers in Vienna’s eleventh district of Simmering took place from 1896 to 1899 as part of the construction of the Simmering gas plant. The manufacturer of the boiler constructions was the company F. A. Neuman from Eschweiler. The Gaswerk Simmering was built on the so -called Bürgerspitalsgrund – also called large hospital meadow – on which there were gardening and fields until then, as well as the ignition staution factory of the liberal district chairman of Simmering, Georg Krepp. On March 15, 1897, the construction of the central stove house began, which included 1620 retorts for coal gasification. 250 kg of coal per day could be implemented per day and 432,000 m³ of city gas per day. [8] The ceremonial opening of the gas works including consecration of all objects by Auxiliary Bishop Johann Baptist Schneider (1840–1905) [9] took place on October 31, 1899, at midnight that day the work started operating and illuminated the lanterns on the ring road for the first time using gas. [ten]

Before this time, the supply was carried out by the Imperial Continental Gas Association (ICGA) based in England. After the contracts between the ICGA and the city of Vienna ran, the city decided to establish its own municipal gas supply. At the time of construction, the gas plant was the largest of its kind in all of Europe.

On January 7, 1904, the daily gas supply exceeded 500,000 m³ for the first time. While the gas generated was initially used exclusively for lighting purposes, from 1910 the use in private households (gas flocks, heating devices) expanded. The construction of a fifth gas tank started in 1908 (commissioning autumn 1909). In 1911 there was a takeover of the supply areas of the two remaining private gas institutions. In 1912/13, the growing need required the transition to the mechanical loading of the stoves with coal. In 1914, a coke preparation system with a capacity of 60 tons per hour went into operation. After the end of the First World War, the expansion continued. The focus was on an investment to obtain sulfur, the construction of a new boiler house and the expansion of the central generator system. 1926–1928 five BBC steam turbine blower were built. The new composite system, which was put into operation in 1935, was either heated with generator or city gas. After a new coke break and sorting system was built in 1939 and the existing chamber stove system was expanded in 1940–43, the generation of water gas had to be stopped on December 20, 1943 due to war.

Due to its impairment of war, the Gaswerk Simmering and the gas containers in 1944/45 were the target of attacks of allied bombers. On July 16, a first major attack on the gas plant took place. Around 1200 rod bombs fell on the factory premises. On October 17, 1944, explosive bombs fell again on December 11, 1944. The containers were also heavily hit in both attacks. Due to the first natural gas cover from the Marchfeld on December 30, 1944, the production failures through the attacks were partially compensated for. On April 9, 1945, the Red Army occupied the work on the train of the fight for Vienna. From May 20, 1945, gas could be released for the first time. It took until 1948 before normal operation was completely manufactured again. During the 1950s there were extensive further expansion rides. The switch to natural gas supply with their storage in underground containers made the old gas containers superfluous, which is why they were shut down on May 11, 1966. The city gas has been detoxified since 1967. From 1968, the Simmering gas plant moved from the Soviet Union with its gas containers. On December 17, 1968, the new screw container with a capacity of 300,000 cubic meters, the largest of its kind, was put into operation.

In 1978 the brick containers were listed as industrial monuments, and considerations began in the 80s about another use. The free -standing gas container V was closed on October 14, 1980. 1980–1982 the gas container 5 was canceled. In 1985 the gas container 2. 1986 also took off that of gas containers 1, 3 and 4; The screw container 6, which was also removed in 1986, was dismantled in 1987. At the same time, a new central warehouse of the gas works was set up in Simmering. The history of gas production and storage at the Simmering location came to an end. One of the containers was restored in 1988. In 1988 the gasometers served as an exhibition space for the exhibition “100 years of social democracy”, then also for some rave and techno events due to their architectural style, which created a special sound.

Original use [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Seen stove house from the north. The area is used in 2012 as a company premises by the Vienna Energie Gasnetz.
The even empty interior of a gasometer before the start of the apartments approx. 1998
Inside the boiler house

In the gasometers, the city gas, which was obtained from the dry dinums of hard coal and subsequent gas linen in the wash house, was saved in the gasometers, before it was released into the gas network for consumption. The city gas is also referred to as coal gas, Kokerigas or luminous gas, as it was first used for road lighting using gas lanterns on the public roads. It was only from 1910 that the use for cooking and heating in private houses established itself.

In addition to the gasometers for gas storage, the Simmering gas plant consisted of the oven house for carbon gasification, the largest building in the system with 18 centrally arranged, 35 m high fireplaces, and then buildings for carbon gas cleaning with tar separation, ammonia washing system and naphthalin washing system as well as various operating and administration buildings. In 180 stoves accommodated in the oven house served to produce the raw gas with nine inclined retirements and a freestanding cockaniper system. In the cooling house, the separation of tar and ammonia from the raw gas took place, for transporting the city gas in the line network, twelve -driven exhignors driven by steam engines and set up in the gas hood house. The coal gas production was operated by 1966, then the gap production until the end of the gas plant in 1975.

After the changeover of city gas to natural gas in the mid -1970s – the city gas was poisonous due to its high proportion of carbon monoxide – the gasometers were closed in 1984. Natural gas is stored in underground gas bearings or in spherical gas containers under high pressure at significantly smaller volume than is possible in the large voluminous telescopic gas containers. Since 1981, the Gasometers and other parts of the building have been under monument protection since 1981 such as former administration buildings and the water tower, which is originally stuck in front of the demolished stove house.

Revitalization after decommissioning as a gas tank [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The municipality of Vienna as the owner of the municipal gas workshop was committed to conversion and revitalizing the listed buildings. In a time of ideas, there were exhibitions in the huge and freed from their technical installations, such as the hundred year exhibition of the SPÖ. Museums, for example through the Technical Museum of Vienna, were in discussion, there were also gazometer raves, and film recordings for the James Bond film The touch of death took place. The name also comes from this time Gazometer that stood for the raves within the gasometer. Due to the cylindrical shape, the music within the gasometer was noticeable with a special echo effect, which caused a wide awareness in the rangers scene. The musician Falco used both the interior and the outside view of the gasometers for recordings of his music video for coming home (Jeanny Part II).

Search for overall usage concept [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

In 1995 competitions to find ideas for conversion took place. There were elaborated concepts for use as hotel and exhibition grounds (architect Manfred Wehdorn) for the planned but then canceled world exhibition in Vienna and Budapest. Most recently, it was decided to implement mixed use with living, working and entertainment consisting of the apartments, a student dormitory, offices, the shopping center and the cinema.

Comrading start on the gasometers [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The four architects Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelb (L) Au (Wolf D. Prix), Manfred Wehdorn and Wilhelm Holzbauer each developed the redesign for one of the gasometers, which was realized from 1999 to 2001. The innards of the gasometer were removed during the revitalization – only the brick outside wall and the roof structure remained. The SEG, the GPA and the Gesiba, which partly sold the approximately 600 apartments as condominiums and sometimes rent as cooperative apartments.

The construction costs were 2.4 billion shillings, the equivalent of around 174 million euros. The City of Vienna contributed 310 million Schilling (22.5 million euros) in the form of residential development agents.

On September 30, 2001, the ceremonial opening with the mayor present took place. The residents moved in from May 2001.

The gasometers are shaped by a special village character. On 220,000 m², they are as an independent city in the city. Due to the high identification of the approximately 1500 residents of the gasometers with its living space, the formation of a large shared apartment was formed, which both virtually in one Gasometer Community as well as real as a club and living community neighborhood. Numerous diploma theses and dissertations in the field of psychology, spatial planning and architecture as well as journalism devoted themselves to this phenomenon.

The nearby Praterau can be reached via the “gas workshop”.

use [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Through all four gasometers to the “E” extension, a 450 meter long shopping center with a total of around 70 business premises (retail, catering instinct) extended, which runs over three floors in Gasometer A and only one or two in the others Take floors. There are underground garages in the underground floors below the shopping center. All four gasometers are open at the top and get their old silhouette through the old roof structure. They only have “wind slide sheets”.

Through a “skywalk” (glass bridge) that is connected to the main corridor between the gasometers “and” D “and crosses the Guglgasse, you can get into a building called EntertainmentCenter or originally” Pleasuredomas “. There is a cinema with 12 halls, which of the Kima Cinemas Vienna as well as the Hueber family and used by the Megaplex cinema group after the originally intended operator is used Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation went into bankruptcy. The entire public shopping and entertainment section of the complex once called itself “G-Town”, later “Gasometer City”, now appears under the name “Music City”.

The “shield” in front of “Gasometer B” as a trademark for the new gasometers

Since the shopping center, designed for 50,000 people, only have 1,500 Gasometer residents and are in the vicinity of other shopping centers on Simmeringer and Landstraßer Hauptstraße, business in the gasometers has been fighting for customers since the opening. At the end of 2007, all business premises were emptied in the extension “E” and about a third of the business areas in the gasometers “A” to “D”. A lack of real estate revenue from the Gasometer building together with incorrect calculations during the Zaha-Hadid building on the Danube Canal were essential causes of the bankruptcy of the developer SEG.
According to a 2011 accounting report, the general rent of the business areas was generated only 50% between 2007 to 2009. [11]

After long -term plans for the realignment, the classic shopping center concept was abandoned in 2012, the retail surfaces were significantly reduced and all concentrated in the Gasometer A in the same year. There are now around 30 shops on three floors. In March 2011, eleven percent of the areas were still to be awarded. The concept of the other former area of ​​the shopping center is now focused on music. Accordingly, the logo and advertising appearance of the complex from “Gasometer City” to “Music City” were changed. [twelfth] [13] [14] Gasometer B was rebuilt until spring 2013. Tenants are now the Electronic Music Academy (EMA), the Jam Music Lab and the Pop Academy Vienna. In autumn 2014, the Performing Center Austria expanded to the Gasometer Music City. On 2500 m², dance and 7 music studios opened in the Gassometer C. [15] In 2010, a music shop opened in Gasometer D on 3,500 square meters and takes almost the entire retail space here.

Gasometer A [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The French architect Jean Nouvel designed the housing structure in this gasometer in a ring in 9 individual buildings in 2001, which are at the endowment wall. In the 8 living days, which only start at a height of around 25 meters, there are around 120 apartments that are divided into two blocks. Between the 9 individual buildings there are columns in the width of about an apartment that make the listed gasometer facade visible with its high windows. This also makes a high use of sunlight, including the glass fronts of the apartments and the mirrored other walls.

Among the apartments are three office floors, three business floors of the shopping center and an underground car park. The subway stop adjacent to the “A” gasometer is located directly in front of the main entrance to the shopping center. Furthermore, there are offices in the second to fourth floor, which were previously owned by CEE Immobilien Development AG.

Gasometer B [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

“Gasometer B” was planned by the Viennese architect duo Coop Himmelb (L) Au. It is easily recognizable from the outside because it has a tied-like extension-an 18-story residential building. The former gas container and the extension contain a total of 254 apartments. According to Wolf D. Prix, the “sign” is “the sign of the new content of the gasometers. If the sign would not be there, you would not even know that something new was created there. ”Also, that the event hall is housed in the gasometer you designed, is no coincidence because Coop Himmelb (L) Au“ always used for mixed Building has pleaded, ”continued Prix.

The 1400 m² event hall holds 4,200 people and is of particular importance for Vienna, since the Wiener Stadthalle and the other event places with a maximum of 1,500 visitors (Halle Oberlaa) have gaped a large gap and music groups that the town hall has not so far, with a maximum of 1,500 visitors (Halle Oberlaa). were able to fill, were too expensive for most smaller venues.

The apartments inside the gasometer nestle in the form of a complete circle to the walls of the gasometer and leave only a 20 meter diameter in the middle. The windows of the individual floors in the tower are lined up close together.

Studentenheim [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The lowest four to five floors of the living area in the “B” gasometer occupies a student home. There are 247 home places on the total usable area of ​​5850 m², which are housed in 73 different apartments (up to 115 m² apartments with 199 single rooms and 24 double rooms). There are numerous common rooms such as club room, community kitchen, fitness room, sauna area, rehearsal room and laundry room. The dormitory is operated by the housing association for private employees of the GPA. In autumn 2006, an expansion of the student home in the immediate vicinity of the Gasometers and a Protestant private high school and retirement home was opened.

Gasometer C [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The Viennese architect Manfred Wehdorn, who aims at “simplicity” and yet maximum living comfort, converted the “C” gasometer. The 92 apartments with a white facade distributed on 6 floors are graded upwards, which enables a stronger tanning of the lower floors. The apartments begin at a height of around 32 meters above the street level. Between the residential floors and the shopping center, the office or the place of business of the mobile phone provider was on three floors by 2014 Hutchison three Austria .

There is a large glass dome in the courtyard, which allows the “Main Mall” underneath and gives it sunlight. An approximately four meter wide strip of green pulls around the dome, on which trees were planted. The terraces and arcades that are planted with flower beds and trees were created with the inner courtyard graded upwards. Wehdorn wanted to realize the “green” concept of an arboretum here.

There is a public parking garage under the central walk of the former shopping center.

Gasometer D [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The “D” gasometer designed by Wilhelm Holzbauer is the only gasometer, but is still not a central courtyard, but is still the only one in which each of the 119 apartments has a small green area or at least a loggia. The residential tower in the center of the gasometer has the basic shape of a circle with three rectangular “poor”. There are three equally large green areas between these three equally large “poor”. The reason for this form is also “that people do not look at each other in the apartments, or that everyone has to look into the same farm”, as Holzbauer mentions.

Among the apartments that start at a height of 31 meters above Guglgasse, the Magistrate department 8, the Vienna City and State Archives, is located on three above ground and three depot. The shopping areas can only be found here in a foothill, since the central walk of the shopping center between the gasometers “C” and “D” is turned to the left in the “E” added.

Location plan Gaswerk Simmering, around 1910; South of the four gasometers preserved in the facade can be recognized by the fifth gasometer, demolished in 1981.
  • Austrian Builders Prize 2001
  • The new “G-Town” or “Gasometer City” was advertised with great intensity in the electronic and the print media, for example by numerous multi-sided special inserts in newspapers. [16] Nevertheless, critical speeches occurred from the start. [17] To date, the problem of sustainable upgrading the residential area in an atmosphere that is still industrially and commercially shaped seems unresolved. The fate of the ailing shopping center, which is too large, is uncertain despite now realignment to the “Music City”. Compared to the conversion, as it took to the Panometer Dresden and Panometer Leipzig, the completely loss of all four of the huge dome rooms must also be stated. [18]
  • Detailed literature list
  • Josef Dollinger: The Viennese city gas works . Vienna Städtische Gaswerke Eigenverlag, Vienna 1938.
  • 50 years of urban large gas works Vienna-Simmering . Vienna Städtische Gaswerke Eigenverlag, Vienna 1949.
  • Robert Medek: 85 years of urban Gaswerk Vienna-Simmering. Municipal gas supply since 1899 . Wiener Stadtwerke-Gaswerke Eigenverlag, Vienna 1984.
  • Alexander Sadlek, Thomas Guss: 100 years of Vienna. 1899-1999 . Wiengas, Vienna 1999.
  1. ↑ a b c d It is f g h Data refer to the four bell gas containers.
  2. ↑ a b c Data refer to the telescopic gas container.
  3. ↑ Altlast W18: Gaswerk Simmering. Accessed on September 17, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Community matters. The urban gas works. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , Morgenblatt, No. 62/1909 (XXI. Born), March 3, 1909, p. 7 (column 3) f. (Online at Anno). Template: Anno/Maintenance/AZE
  5. ↑ City vienna: Generalstadtplan 1912 .
  6. ↑ Vienna’s largest Simmeringer Gasometer. In:  Wiener Zeitung , No. 228/1947 (CCXL. Born), October 1, 1947, p. 3, column 3 (online at Anno). Template: Anno/Maintenance/Wrz
  7. ↑ Gaswerk Simmering 1901 / 1910 / 1933. Accessed on September 17, 2012 .
  8. ↑ 1899 the first gas from Simmering. (No longer available online) archived from Original am December 1, 2012 ; accessed on September 17, 2012 . Info: The archive link has been used automatically and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. @first @2 Template: Webachiv/Iabot/www.wiener-gasometer.at
  9. ↑ The new light. To the inauguration of the Viennese city gas works. In:  November world leaflet , No. 250/1899 (XXVI year), November 1, 1899, p. 25 ff. (Unpaginated) (online at Anno). Template: Anno/Maintenance/NWB
  10. ↑ The opening of the urban gas works. In:  New free press , Morgenblatt, No. 12642, November 1, 1899, p. 7, column 1 (online at Anno). Template: Anno/Maintenance/NFP
  11. ↑ Silvia Jelincic: Mismanagement in the gasometer . March 1, 2012, accessed April 24, 2022.
  12. ↑ Bettina Fernsebner-Kokert: Specialists instead of shopping center . February 22, 2012, accessed April 24, 2022.
  13. ↑ New tones from the gasometer: vocals instead of shopping . 19. April 2013, 24. April 2022.
  14. ↑ Gerhard Krause: Music City is created from the gasometers. December 28, 2013, accessed April 24, 2022.
  15. ↑ Sensationell – PCA Seven meets PCA Eleven! March 26, 2014, accessed April 24, 2022.
  16. ↑ See the ten -year review of Reinhard Seiß in the Wiener Zeitung of August 25, 2011 ( Online-Version )
  17. ↑ Recorded, for example, at Dieter Klein, Martin Kupf, Robert Schediwy: Loss of cityscape Vienna , Vienna 2004 especially p. 69f, 302, 305, 318, 321, 323
  18. ↑ See Horst Christoph, news magazine “Profile” of March 31, 2007 (review of the book by Reinhard Seiß: Who builds Vienna , available online)

48.185 16.4194444444444 Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 6 ″ N , 16 ° 25 ′ 10 ″ O