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ÖBB Headquarters Vienna, Austria

ÖBB Corporate Headquarters project, Vienna – design by Zechner & Zechner

12 Oct 2012

ÖBB HQ Vienna

Groundbreaking ceremony for the new ÖBB Corporate headquarter in Vienna

ÖBB corporate headquarters has started construction close to the new Vienna main station.

Groundbreaking Ceremony for ÖBB Corporate Headquarters

The foundation stone of the new ÖBB corporate headquarters has been laid in Vienna. The 88m high-rise office building is being constructed from plans by the Vienna architects Zechner & Zechner ZT GmbH, who were selected as the winner of an EU-wide competition in 2009. As part of bringing together company sites, the building, which is located right by Vienna Central Station, will now allow several ÖBB companies to work at the same location. The construction is being carried out by a consortium of HABAU, ÖSTU-STETTIN and BAI, which will complete the building by August 2014.

The building consists of a five-story base section with a high-rise structure above that is divided into two different sections of different heights (88m and 67 meters). The base section includes spaces for public use, as well as for retail, services, food and drink, police and social services. A staff restaurant and conference centre will also be located there. Modern flexible offices for up to 1,700 ÖBB employees are located on the upper floors (5th to 23rd floor).

The building, which is located in the south plaza of Vienna Central Station, has a flowing s-shaped floorplan in response to the station shopping mall. The selected building depth and configuration of the internal core allow the maximum flexibility of office layout (groups, cells, combination offices, business clubs). The building is equipped with a double facade and is provided with district heating and district cooling, allowing for very low energy requirements thanks to concrete core activation and the ability to reuse waste heat that this provides. A ‘gold’ certificate from ÖGNI is a guarantee of the achievement of sustainability criteria.

17 Dec 2009

ÖBB Corporate Headquarters, Vienna

Zechner & Zechner win EU-wide architectural planning competition

The ÖBB has decided to build their corporate headquarters in the immediate vicinity of the planned new Vienna main station. Zechner & Zechner emerged as winners from the two-stage, EU-wide architectural planning competition. The structure will be constructed by the engineers Thomas Lorenz, the planning for the building’s technical systems will be undertaken by Moser & Partner.

The aim of the competition was to find an outstanding planning concept for the corporate headquarters, which was to provide optimal working and communication conditions for the approx. 1,600 employees from various different ÖBB companies. On the lower floors of the building complex, central facilities and some external uses round out the office site’s features.
The awarding body was keen to achieve an office and space concept that represented the state-of-the-art and complied with the following planning principles: the corporate headquarters should be efficient in its energy, space and construction costs, and in the environmental impact of materials used, also in its conservation of resources and their longevity, as well as sustainable because of flexibility of use and adaptability to various second and further users.

The international jury, including the architects Marcel Meili, Albert Wimmer, Marta Schreieck and Silja Tillner, as well as representatives of the City of Vienna and the ÖBB group, judged the project from Zechner & Zechner to be the best solution.

The preliminary plan envisages an 88m high tower as the frontage structure for the new district south of the planned main station. An S-shaped curve of the building and the recess at the site’s northern border opens the structure to the forecourt. The dynamically curved main form and the smooth rounded surface are reminiscent of modern high-speed trains.

The depth chosen and the configuration of the core allows maximum flexibility of the various office organisation options (groupings, cells, combination offices, business club). This allows the different organisational options to be realised, both within the building and on an individual floor, as a mixed office. The strategy of reversible offices has proven to be the optimal concept in terms of investment because of its high flexibility, which makes it easily adaptable to individual user’s requirements.

Zechner & Zechner have designed a sustainable “slim building” with low primary energy consumption and limited use of domestic engineering, while at the same time having a healthy and comfortable climate. Passive systems, such as thermal storage via component activation, regulatable external sun blinds, natural ventilation, heat dissipation via automatic ventilation, the redirection of light to optimise natural illumination and reduce energy consumption for lighting and natural humidification with islands of plants are used to achieve this.

Heating and cooling is primarily via the pumping of air and water. Solar-powered cooling supports the office level cooling. Community heating and cooling are used to cover peaks in demand.

Further planning will incorporate resource usage and generation of waste, as well as construction related costs over the entire life cycle of the structure, in order to comply with environmental and economic requirements. This will be documented via the obtaining of the appropriate certification of sustainability.

ÖBB Corporate Headquarters images / information from Zechner & Zechner ZT GmbH

Zechner & Zechner

Offices

Location: ÖBB Corporate Headquarters, Vienna