New Town Hall (Linz)

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The New Town Hall in Urfahr on the Danube with the towers of Lentia 2000 in the background

The New Town Hall in Linz's Urfahr district was opened in 1985 and houses the municipal offices (formerly spread across the city) and the city ​​archive . The building dominates the district, the forecourt and foyer alone comprise 1720 m², the open spaces (such as terraces) a total of around 10,000 m². The architects were Rupert Falkner and Anton Fürtler .

location

The complex is located in the Urfahr district (Hauptstrasse 1-5) directly on the Danube . The old town hall , which is still the seat of the mayor and the municipal council , and the main square are a five-minute walk away (across the Nibelungen Bridge ).

Story and concept

Old development of the area in 1951

As early as 1975, renovation work began on the future building site in Alt-Urfahr West, with several buildings, including the former Nikolaikirche , being demolished. In 1977 the Linz City Council finally decided to build a new central administration building and to advertise an architecture competition for it. The Viennese team of architects Rupert Falkner and Anton Fürtler was selected from among 26 submitted designs. The complex with its numerous roof terraces was designed as a "walkable hill" and is reminiscent of a Mesopotamian ziggurat . Due to its enormous size and unconventional architecture, however, it was controversial from the start. Today the building is considered an example of a so-called “megastructure” in the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s. These were self-contained “architectural landscapes” that united large and small structures and could be used in a variety of ways; other examples in Austria are the Vienna General Hospital and the UNO-City . Construction work began on March 16, 1980, the topping-out ceremony took place on October 13, 1983 , and the building was opened on September 27, 1985 - surprisingly a year earlier than planned and with lower construction costs - to be opened.

Publicly usable rooms

The New Town Hall has a 495 m² ballroom with a capacity of 589 people; there are also seminar rooms on the first floor with a total of 221 m² and space for 150 people (in rows of chairs). An additional exhibition room measures 81 m².

Nikolaikapelle memorial room

Nikolaikapelle

Somewhat separated from the New Town Hall, southwest of the Danube bank, there has been the “Nikolaikapelle Memorial Room” since 1985, with which the Nikolaikirche has been remembered. It is a square granite building with a stepped copper roof. Inside there is an installation by Hans Hoffmann-Ybbs and memorabilia from Alt-Urfahr.

Web links

Commons : Neues Rathaus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c New Town Hall of the City of Linz. Archive of the City of Linz, accessed on July 13, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Norbert Kriechbaum: On the prehistory of the Urfahr parish . In: Archive of the City of Linz (ed.): Historical Yearbook of the City of Linz 2001 . Linz 2003, p. 385 ( online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at). .
  3. ↑ Linz has a megastructure ( Memento from December 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Article by Lorenz Potocnik in spotsZ. Edition 6. 2007, p. 18, accessed on December 11, 2014.
  4. ↑ Rudolf Lehr: State Chronicle of Upper Austria. Verlag Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 2008, p. 474.
  5. ↑ State Chronicle of Upper Austria, p. 483.
  6. ↑ New Town Hall. In: linz.at, accessed on November 14, 2009.
  7. ↑ linz.at: Memorial Room Nikolaikapelle. Retrieved February 14, 2017.

Coordinates: 48 ° 18 ′ 35.7 ″  N , 14 ° 16 ′ 57.6 ″  E