Industrial monument preservation in Austria- A survey - Denkmalpflege

until 1982. Ultimately, it was the high cost of demolishing the building, which had already been
condemned, that led to a new utilisation.
Conversion into a luxury hotel admittedly meant the survival of the dominant appearance on the
banks of the Danube, but additional buildings, the choice of material, surface finishing and detailed
implementation have robbed the protected Granary of its identity. The value of the building as an
industrial monument was sacrificed to the requirements of the new use.
That a new utilisation is indeed possible while retaining the appearance is shown for instance by the
redesign of the New Tobacco Factory in Krems-Stein / Lower Austria. The factory was constructed
in 1922 according to plans by the architect Paul Hoppe and remained essentially unchanged both
inside and outside. The reinforced concrete framed structure is characterised by the formal language
of a “third baroque”, and its huge dimensions make it an essential element of the urban silhouette.
The closure of the production facilities in the second half of the 1980s led the local council to make
use of the empty premises for the purposes of the Provincial Scientific Academy. The grid-like
ground plan made conversion easier. Following completion of the project in 1995, the main
building with its 15,000 m² floor space has become home to 32 department and seminar units of
what is now known as the Danube University.
The Himmelreich & Zwicker cloth factory at Linz / Upper Austria was long threatened by
demolition, and its rescue was an amazing success. The integration of a church and parish centre in
the premises of the former cotton spinning mill proved to be a spectacular and convincing reuse of
the industrial monument. The factory was constructed in 1908 as a cotton spinning mill. After it was
closed down, entrepreneurs from Brno and Krnov acquired the site and converted it into a cloth
factory in 1934 to 1938. In the 1950s and 1960s, the company, which processed sheep’s wool from
Australia and South America, experienced a second heyday. When the factory was closed in 1980,
the property underwent frequent changes of ownership, soon becoming an object of speculation. In
1986, a citizen’s action group succeeded in saving the cloth factory from the threat of demolition. It
was only with considerable difficulty that local politicians and monument preservers were only
prevented by a further act of barbarism – similar to the demolition of the Linz Woolen Factory three
decades earlier.
Stubborn negotiations finally led to the renovation and adaptation of the cloth factory in the late
1990s according to plans by the “Linz Architect Group”, who had been the winners of a
competition for the revitalisation of the cloth factory in 1991. The integration of the church in the
former factory is a convincing and without doubt one of the most remarkable new utilisations in the
whole of Austria.
It was also possible to prevent the ruin of the aero-mechanical laboratory of the Chair for Aerial
Navigation and Automobiles at Vienna University of Technology. The Chair was established in
1909 under the direction of Professor Richard Koller. The construction of the laboratory in 1911/12
was made possible by a generous donation from the industrialist Arthur Krupp.
The free-standing pavilion in the form of a basilica is broken down into three sections: the threestorey
central building is flanked by two one-storey wings each consisting of two rooms. Fully
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