TIG 74
The Vienna International Garden Show 1974 , WIG 74 for short, was a garden show on the grounds of today's Oberlaa Kurpark in the 10th Viennese district of Favoriten .
history
After the great success with the “Vienna International Garden Show 1964” ( WIG 64 ) in the Donaupark in the 22nd district of Vienna, the Vienna City Council wanted another international garden show to be held in Vienna. The neglected former brick works on the southeast slope of the Laaer Berg served partly as a dung-dumping area, partly it was a nature reserve . The area around the film pond served as a location for monumental films from the silent era . Thousands of extras were recruited from the densely populated residential areas of Favoritens and Simmering. The three-hour film " Sodom and Gomorrah ", shot in 1920/21, and the film " The Slave Queen " made here in 1924 were the most opulent productions. This use and brick production ended in the 1930s. The area became a wilderness. This offered the opportunity to build a new large green area here. The complex was rounded off by the purchase of gardening grounds and vineyards . It was the ideal location for the project and the associated construction of a large park.
The project also served to expand Vienna's forest and meadow belt towards the southeast and it was combined with the expansion of the Vienna thermal baths . The Oberlaaer Schwefelquellen has had a spa since 1969 . The Frankfurt garden architect Erich Hanke won an internationally advertised competition in which 87 applicants from 19 countries took part . However, as a result, working groups of landscape architects from different countries were formed. The best designs from all projects were combined in the planning and implementation. The routing adapted to the sloping terrain is characteristic.
The “Vienna International Garden Show 1974” (WIG 74) opened on April 18, 1974 and closed its doors on October 14, 1974. With 2.6 million visitors, it was, just like its predecessor in the Donaupark, a considerable public success. The press response was in part extremely critical. The well-known sculptor Fritz Wotruba fundamentally questioned the elaborate design of a green space on the outskirts of the city. The garden show was only able to reach its visitor number of 2.6 million (3 million were targeted) through generous discount campaigns. Well-known architects such as Gustav Peichl and Roland Rainer would have preferred a greening of the city center and criticized the 600 million schillings in taxpayers' money that the show cost, Rainer missed a simple football field.
Leading politicians contradicted this criticism: Mayor Leopold Gratz noted in his opening speech that the gardens would not be allowed in the city center and only the rubbish dumps on the periphery, and Chancellor Bruno Kreisky called the facility a “Schönbrunn of the 20th century”.
The "consciously modern" designed parts of the park became obsolete the fastest. A monorail running in the park turned out to be a bad investment and had to be dismantled after a few years, an adjoining amusement park showed itself to be in deficit from the start. As in the case of the Danube Park, the rest of the park furniture also proved to be of limited viability. At the end of 1974 the area of the garden show was finally converted into a public park, which is very popular. Vienna did not host any other international garden shows, however, and the trend in the following years tended to move away from the maintenance (and cost) intensive show green to natural design, as in the Wienerberg recreation area .
literature
- Ulrike Krippner, Lilli Lička: Viennese International Garden Shows 1964 and 1974 - Departure into Postmodernism? . In: Die Gartenkunst 19 (2/2007), pp. 381–398.
Web links
- To the history of the garden show
- WIG Expo 1974 Vienna. Bureau International des Expositions, accessed February 21, 2018 .
- For the fortieth anniversary - richly illustrated (PDF file) ( Memento from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- The Arbeiter-Zeitung at the opening of the show
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Nüchtern: Viva Wig! In: Falter No. 37/2008 : "The paths are the goal, and even if they are cleanly paved, they are created while walking: a straight route through the park is not only impossible, it would also be diametrically opposed to the spirit of the complex."
- ^ H. Mathys: Pro and contra WIG 74 . In: Bund Schweizer Landschaftsarchitekten (ed.): Anthos: Journal for landscape architecture . tape 13 , no. 2 , 1974, p. 33–35 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-134453 (German, French, English).
- ↑ Panorama . ORF 2, July 5, 2015