Reading tower

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The reading tower was a planned building in Vienna . Manfred Ortner and Laurids Ortner , the architects of the Vienna MuseumsQuartier, planned a narrow skyscraper, initially 67 and then 57 m high , as the architectural landmark of this large-scale cultural building project, but was not implemented after years of heated debates due to persistent opposition. Initially, a media tower was also planned, which was never realized.

On the history of the construction project

Manfred and Laurids Ortner's award-winning design for a kind of Viennese Center Pompidou in the area of ​​the old court stables (later the trade fair palace ) initially met with very positive media coverage as a result of a two-stage architectural competition at the end of April 1990 . However, the reading tower, intended as a "sign to the outside" and a signal of modernity, aroused increasing resistance, a skyscraper initially made of glass and at the same time transparently presented on a very narrow, almost elliptical floor plan. The reading tower should have stood directly behind the Fischer von Erlach wing as a modern counterpoint to the Gottfried Semper museum buildings and the imperial forum , which remained unfinished .

A citizens' initiative collected thousands of signatures and found support, among others, from the prominent lateral thinker Günther Nenning . The powerful, popular concern of the always open-minded Kronenzeitung Hans Dichand made itself the mouthpiece of those who did not want to tolerate high-rise buildings in the immediate vicinity of Vienna's Ringstrasse . At the same time, the Ortner brothers were involved in a similarly controversial project near the city center, the Wien Mitte high-rise project , which made the confrontation a fundamental one. An international appeal for protest signed by well-known art historians , such as Sir Ernst Gombrich and Ieoh Ming Pei , was not well received by the media, but was against the Ortner concept and its reading tower in May 1993. In the end, much to the regret of the architects, the building of the reading tower was abandoned at the instigation of the Viennese city politicians Ursula Pasterk and Helmut Zilk in October 1994.

On March 29, 1995, the decision was made to build the MuseumsQuartier without the intended reading tower. It remained an undeveloped Vienna . Other architects also questioned the functionality of the narrow structure with its ten double storeys and its “salons”, which are spatially limited by the necessary infrastructure (stairs, lifts, wet rooms).

International media coverage (selection)

  • Paul Hofmann : Vienna Debates Its New Look. The New York Times , September 12, 1993, accessed April 27, 2009 (American): “Meanwhile new controversy is brewing over another architectural megaproject. The Federal Government and the city of Vienna are planning to build a vast museum district adjacent to the former Imperial Stables (Hofstallungen), a 270-year-old complex squatting behind the Museums of Fine Arts and Natural History on the Ringstrasse. Whatever the outcome, tourists will benefit.
    Lately, the Imperial Stables were used by the Vienna International Trade Fair, but they are to serve cultural purposes. A Museum of Modern Art, a large auditorium, a library tower and other structures will be added. One of the new buildings will house the vast collection of works by the expressionist Egon Schiele and other modern artists that the government recently purchased from Dr. Rudolf Leopold, a wealthy physician. The projected museum district is also to provide plenty of new space for a wealth of material at present kept in storerooms "
  • Christian Ankowitsch : Miserable and watered down . In: The time . No. 47 , November 18, 1994 ( zeit.de [accessed on April 29, 2009]): “The Ortners now arranged their elegant building volumes according to the axes and the edge of the city: on the left (viewed from the facade) the cubic one with a splayed glass envelope overlaid modern museum (it takes up the axis of the Kaiserforum, so it faces the facade); in the Semperschen central axis the event hall (inclined); on the right the box of the art gallery, oriented diagonally towards the 7th district; and in the middle a 67 meter high, translucent, campanile-like tower with an elliptical floor plan, the reading and information center (inclined) - intended to break the imperial-symmetrical overall system and as a counterweight to the (unbreakable) World War II flak tower in the 7th district. All of this protruding beautifully over the facade (what a sacrilege!) "
  • Hanno Rauterberg : The wild art mix . In: The time . No. 4 , January 18, 2001 ( zeit.de [accessed on April 28, 2009]): “As expected, the Museum Quarter became the venue for a culture war. The Kronen-Zeitung began with a smear campaign against the architects Ortner and Ortner, which had emerged as the winner of a competition in 1990 with a radical renovation plan. The listed baroque facades were to be spared, but behind them many of the old wing structures were to be torn down and replaced by glass and steel towers. The architects wanted to counter the ensemble of the monarchical city with a self-confident symbol of the present. Not only the tabloids, but also the ÖVP and FPÖ fought these plans until there was nothing left of them in the end. The intellectuals in Vienna in particular saw this as a bitter defeat and attacked Ortner and Ortner because they were ready to give in and submitted a new draft "
  • Rainer Haubrich : Now all that's missing is the tower. Die Welt , February 2, 2001, accessed on April 28, 2009 : "It's a pity, above all, about the slender library tower that should tower over the quarter like a campanile between the main entrance and the museum of modern art."
  • Ulrike Knöfel: Hip behind the horse stable . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 2001 ( online - June 25, 2001 ). Quote: "Nevertheless, Austria's press nagged almost every day about the 'monster museums': the only landmark of the quarter, a reading tower, had to be cut by the architects first, then killed"
  • Alastair Gordon: In Old Austria, The Shock Of the New. The New York Times, May 30, 2002, accessed on April 27, 2009 (American): “One point of contention is the city's new $ 125 million arts complex, the MuseumsQuartier, which houses museums and a performing arts center. After considerable public debate, the blockish forms of two new museum buildings by Laurids and Manfred Ortner were lowered so as not to disrupt the historic skyline and to stand innocuously behind the Baroque facade of the former Imperial Stables "
  • Herbert Muschamp: ARCHITECTURE REVIEW; Checking In To Escapism. The New York Times, November 1, 2002, accessed on April 27, 2009 (American): "[...] Ortner and Ortner, subsequently designed the Museum Quarter in Vienna"

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Architecture against Envy ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Wiener Zeitung accessed 2 May 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wienerzeitung.at
  2. ↑ cf. the Wiener Tagespresse from April 28 and 29, 1990, Die Presse 5./6. May 1990, Profil (Journal) May 7, 1990
  3. ↑ See the entire Vienna daily press of September 14, 1990, especially Arbeiter-Zeitung , Kronenzeitung, Kurier
  4. ↑ cf. Profile 17th July 1990
  5. ↑ cf. Der Standard May 6, 1993. Gombrich called the project a "hangover idea".
  6. ↑ cf. Kronenzeitung October 12, 1994
  7. ^ Felix Czeike (Ed.): Historisches Lexikon Wien . Volume 5, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-218-00547-7 , p. 758.

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