Ring tower

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Ring tower
Ring tower
The Ringturm seen from the Danube Canal
Basic data
Place: Inner city
Construction time : 1953-1955
Opening: 1955
Renovation: 1996
Status : Built
Architectural style : Post-war modernity
Architect : Erich Boltenstern
Technical specifications
Height : 73 m
Height to the top: 93 m
Height to the roof: 73 m
Top floor: 71 m
Floors : 23 (including 3 basements)
Usable area : 12,000 m²
Height comparison
Vienna : 34. ( list )
address
City: Vienna

The Ringturm is a striking high-rise building in a prominent location in Vienna , where the headquarters of the Vienna Insurance Group is located. It was built from 1953 to 1955 according to plans by Erich Boltenstern on Schottenring within Vienna's Ringstrasse and is located at the Schottenring stop of Wiener Linien . The 73 meter (93 meter high including the weather light column) high Ringturm was considered an innovative project for the reconstruction of the city, a symbol of the emerging capital economy of the western occupation zones and "raised index finger in the direction of the backward, Russian-occupied zone on the other side of the Danube Canal" . Initially, the idea was to build a skyscraper on both sides of the Schottenring - “a gateway to the future, so to speak”. After 1955, however, the idea of ​​building a second tower was rejected.

The building that previously stood on this property was the only one in the entire Schottenring that was destroyed in the Second World War. The Ringturm, with its 23 floors and its 20 meter high weather lighthouse, is the second tallest building on Vienna's Ringstrasse. Only St. Stephen's Cathedral , built in Gothic style, is higher . A total of 12,000 square meters of usable space is available in the high-rise office building. The facade and parts of the Ringturm were renovated in 1996.

Events

Since 1998 the exhibition series “Architecture in the Ringturm” about architecture from Austria and Central and Eastern Europe has been shown in the entrance area with free entry. The ORF broadcasts Lebenskünstler with Helmut Zilk and cabaret in the tower were recorded in the Ringturm .

Surname

In a competition, a name was sought for the then very modern high-rise office building. The name “Ringturm” was chosen from 6,502 entries. There were proposals such as City House, Gutwill House, House of Mutuality, Hoch-Eck, New High-Rise, Sonnblick-House, Insurance High-Rise, Vindobona-House or Weitblick-House of the creative population of the post-war period . One of the senders with the name “Ringturm” was rewarded with an honorary fee of 2,000 schillings .

Weather lighthouse

Weather lighthouse, seen from the Ringstrasse

On the roof is the 20 meter high weather lighthouse, which shows the weather trend for the coming day with 117 lights (39 each white, red and green) in differently colored and partly moving or flashing light signals. This light column is directly connected to the ZAMG (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics) on the Hohe Warte in Vienna. At the top it also has 2 red air traffic control lights

Meaning of the signals:

  • ascending red = rising temperature
  • red descending = temperature falling
  • green ascending = weather situation is getting better
  • green descending = weather situation is getting worse
  • green constant = weather conditions remain the same
  • Flashing red = warning of thunderstorms or storms
  • Flashing white = snow or black ice

Ring tower cladding

Since 2006, the Ringturm has been transformed into an “art tower” every year, by wrapping the building facade with printed sheets in summer. The wrapping consists of 30 printed vertical mesh panels around 3 meters wide and 63 or 36 meters long; the resulting area is around 4,000 square meters.

The previous art projects:

  • 2006: Don Giovanni by Christian Ludwig Attersee (on the occasion of the Mozart year)
  • 2007: Tower of Life by Robert Hammerstiel
  • 2008: Tower in Blossom by Hubert Schmalix ( Still Life with Flowers)
  • 2011: Family sense of Xenia Hausner
  • 2012: Society of the Hungarian artist László Fehér
  • 2013: Bonding of the Slovakian artist Dorota Sadovská
  • 2014: Veil of Agnes by Arnulf Rainer June 16 to September 17 - for the first time with an accompanying exhibition June 16 to July 11, 2014
  • 2015: Summer joys of the Croatian artist Tanja Deman
  • 2016: Carefree by the Czech artist Ivan Exner
  • 2017: Vision by the Serbian artist Mihael Milunovic
  • 2018: I saw this by Gottfried Helnwein
  • 2019: Future dreams of the Bulgarian artist Daniela Kostova
  • In 2020, the covering was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic .

  • Wrapping 2008

  • Wrapping 2013

  • Wrapping 2014

  • Wrapping 2015

  • Wrapping 2016

  • Wrapping 2017

  • Wrapping 2018

  • Wrapping 2019

Ringturm, in the background the Millennium Tower

literature

  • The ring tower. The office building of Wiener Städtische Versicherung. Vienna 1955.
  • Adolph Stiller: The Ringturm. 5 decades of building history for a high-rise building. Verlag Anton Pustet, Salzburg 1998, ISBN 3-7025-0382-X .
  • Wiener Städtische Versicherung (ed.): 50 years of the Ringturm. From Austria to a united Europe: company headquarters - people - history. Echomedia, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-901761-50-0 .

Web links

Commons : Ringturm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 50 years of the Ringturm, Vienna 2005, p. 58.
  2. ^ WEB lexicon dasrotewien
  3. ↑ From day to day: The new high-rise is called - "Ringturm" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 13, 1955, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  4. ↑ Ringturm wrapping (PDF; 69 kB) at www.vig.com, accessed on August 7, 2013.
  5. ↑ The Ringturm, a cult building, is veiled. ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lookover.at
  6. ↑ wien.orf.at: Ringturm wrapped in “society”. May 8, 2012, accessed December 5, 2012 .
  7. ↑ http://wien.orf.at/news/stories/2647167/ "Veil of Agnes" envelops Ringturm, ORF.at of June 16, 2014.
  8. ↑ orf.at - Ringturm is wrapped up "worry-free" . Article dated May 23, 2015, accessed May 23, 2016.
  9. ↑ derStandard.at: Tenth wrapping of the Vienna Ringturm offers "far-sightedness" . Article dated May 15, 2017, accessed May 15, 2017.
  10. ↑ orf.at: Helnwein covers the Ringturm . Article dated May 16, 2018, accessed May 16, 2018.
  11. ↑ orf.at: Children's astronaut covers the ring tower . Article dated May 10, 2019, accessed May 10, 2019.
  12. ↑ Wiener Ringturm celebrates its 65th birthday. June 12, 2020, accessed June 17, 2020 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 1 ″  N , 16 ° 22 ′ 13 ″  E