Industrial monument preservation in Austria- A survey - Denkmalpflege

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The oil crisis of 1973 that brought the western hemisphere to a standstill and demonstrated the vulnerability of a globally networked economy also produced the idea of “limits to growth”. Academic involvement with the phenomena of industrial history and industrial sociology became a focal point of a new student generation; social history in the form of “grass-roots history” addressed the industrial working class threatened with extinction, while economic history aimed at disentangling the world-wide network of industrial capitalism, the history of technology attempted to come to terms with the rapid scientific and technical progress of industrial production, and environmental history hoped to explain the global changes to our biosphere through industrialisation as a consequence of human life and business activity. Without doubt the most decisive impulse for a new beginning was given to industrial monument preservation in Austria as a result of the establishment of industrial archaeology, whose aim was the systematic research of the industrial heritage. The specialist world’s attention was caught by the First International Congress on the Preservation of Industrial Monuments held in Ironbridge in 1973, an event that spread the fame of industrial archaeology far beyond the borders of Great Britain. The very conference venue, the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, was an incitement to imitation. The euphoria that overcame the specialist world following the Ironbridge Congress also produced a wave of museum foundations. The aim of all these institutions was to preserve historical production centres in situ, where the visitors would be confronted with the world of work of the industrial age. In Austria, the institutions and display mines already established were joined by a number of museums of this new type. Examples are the Mining Museum and Display Mine founded in Hüttenberg / Carinthia in 1978, the Petroleum Museum opened in Neusiedl an der Zaya / Lower Austria in 1980 and the Coal Mining Museum inaugurated in Fohnsdorf / Styria in 1983. The north of the country was dominated by textile production, as witnessed by the numerous weaving works and dye works converted into small museums, brought together for visitors in the form of tourist routes such as the Textile Road in Lower Austria and the so called Weaving Road in Upper Austria. The variety of institutions of this kind, combined with all kinds of services for tourists, have become increasingly popular over the years, with the result that industrial tourism was able to develop into an admittedly small but indeed attractive and prosperous segment of the tourist industry. The intensive discussion of industrial culture was also reflected in the topics of numerous provincial exhibitions. Their objectives were regarded as being the fields of cultural and educational policies, but they were also based on aspects of monument preservation or scientific research, and always pursued the promotion of tourism and the regional economy. The topics of “mining” or “the industrial world of work” became extremely popular amongst the public, rewarding the organisers with record visitor numbers time after time. In Steyr / Upper Austria, the “Work/man/machine” Provincial Exhibition hit cultural policy headlines in 1987 by attracting over 380,000 visitors. Its topic was the history of the industrial world of work, the venue a disused factory on the Wehrgraben, the former main artery of industry in Steyr. When the enterprise went bankrupt in 1981, the site ceased to function as a production Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege | Lehrstuhl für Denkmalpflege und Bauen im Bestand Seite 4 | 7
facility. Finally, a museum association acquired part of the factory in 1985 with the intention of adapting and reorganising it to create the “Museum of the Industrial World of Work”. The Carinthian Provincial Exhibition entitled “Grubenhunt und Ofensau” held in Hüttenberg in 1995 was combined with a spectacular new building on the site of the Heft iron works. An attempt was made in Carinthia to overcome the lasting shock triggered by the cessation of iron ore mining at the end of the 1970s by means of a review of the “good old days”. The smelting works, located in a valley basin on a loop of the Mosinzer Stream, had been closed as long ago as 1908, and the entire facility had been placed under monument protection in 1983. For the exhibition, it was decided to use an architectural project created by Günther Domenig. By breaking away from its previous objectives and methods, which were almost exclusively determined by art history, monument preservation broadened its scientific basis. Following the international trend, the Federal Office for Monument Preservation decided in 1976 to fill the post of Official for Technical Monuments that had been vacant since 1949, and, just as in the neighbouring countries, a start was made on the stocktaking of the industrial heritage. Soon, urgent questions arose as to what and to how. What technical monuments must be preserved? How can such facilities together with their mechanical equipment be appropriately preserved, conserved or restructured to create an object for display? Monument preservation here entered new terrain in order to satisfy requirements that had previously been unknown. In the process, a variety of strategies developed for preserving the industrial heritage. The most favourable alternative from the point of view of monument preservation is to secure and restore while largely maintaining the original function. The Linz works of the Austrian Tobacco Company can be cited as an instance of the exemplary maintenance of an industrial monument. The development of the Linz factory into a major modern enterprise was regarded as the crowning moment of the reconstruction of the Austrian tobacco industry during the First Republic. Peter Behrens and Alexander Popp applyied rationalist rules strictly and almost literally to create a production facility that was described by the architectural historian Leonardo Benevolo as “without doubt the best that was constructed on German soil after 1933.” Although the tobacco factory was adapted on several occasions following its construction as new production machines were integrated, nevertheless it underwent neither a serious change to its original function nor to its external appearance. As a rule, however, industrial monument preservation is faced with empty factories and devastated industrial shells. The preservation of such facilities can often only be ensured by means of an economically acceptable new utilisation. Revitalisation has hitherto proven to be the most successful instrument in the preservation of industrial monuments, even if this continuing learning process about the handling of historical buildings has occasionally led to the irrevocable loss of both the identity and the substance of many a monument. For instance, the conversion of the Granary on the Vienna Handelskai into a luxury hotel is regarded as one such failure. The huge Granary building including the roof was built in the form of a reinforced concrete framed structure, a design system that is reflected in the façade with its grid of vertical supports and horizontal beams. The Granary remained in operation essentially unchanged Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege | Lehrstuhl für Denkmalpflege und Bauen im Bestand Seite 5 | 7
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Industrial monument preservation in Austria- A survey - Denkmalpflege

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