Spittelau District Heating Plant
- Company:
- Waagner Biro steel and glass, Zeman & Co
- Client:
- FWW GmbH
- Investor, Builder:
- FWW GmbH
- Country, City:
- Vienna, Austria
- Object category:
- Infrastructure, Industrial steel construction
- Material:
- steel, Roof, facade
- Services:
- Maintenance, refurbishment, Assembly, Engineering, operation
- Completion:
- 2008
Having been originally opposed to the idea, eco-architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser was ultimately convinced, mainly due to the persistence of Helmut Zilk, then Mayor of Vienna, that the centralised garbage-incinerating plant would make Vienna’s air cleaner as it used modern emission-purification technology to heat over 60,000 homes which would have otherwise emitted substantially more pollution. ...
Following his involvement, the imagination of the artist, Hundertwasser, coupled with the willingness of both architect and owner to follow this imagination, transformed the once contested Spittelau District Heating Plant into one of Vienna’s most recognisable Landmarks.
Its irregularity and surprising combinations of shapes and colours characterise the familiar outer appearance. Waagner Biro steel and glass designed and built the exterior façade on the tower, which are the enamelled and trapezoidal sheets that give the tower its distinctive and unmissable look which characterises it to this day.