DAM IMPRESSIVE

PROJECT
Airport construction
2.2010 // The ALPINE Company Magazine
DAM IMPRESSIVE
The Tsankov Kamak challenge
LIVING SPACES
Intercultural
management
RESOURCES
Water

Dam at Tsankov Kamak power station / BG
PAGE 14

2.2010
Andreas Eder
ALPINE Head of Marketing
Editorial
Dear Readers,
how to be impressed by a wall?
Easy! Drive to an airport. Any will do – provided it has flights to Sofia in Bulgaria, because
that’s where you have to go. Once you’re there, drive by car south-east for about two and a
half hours, and there you’ll see it: the wall that will impress you. Perhaps you will be able to
stand on top of it, depending on how good your connections are or how charming you can
be. You will, however, not fail to be impressed either way by a piece of construction which
you would barely expect in such a place. A place? It’s not even a place – a point in the middle
of nowhere in the south of the country. Bulgarian backcountry of the finest sort. It’s literally
in the sticks – and it is there that we have built this incredible wall. In fact it’s a dam. An
amazingly impressive dam. Under the hardest conditions we have created an architectural
behemoth; a megaproject which has rightly earned front-page status. Even reading a few
pages about it in this magazine will have your jaw dropping. And if you’re so hard-boiled that
it doesn’t, then you can always make your way to the airport. Just make sure it has flights to
Sofia.
You can also confine your amazement to the comfort of your office or home. Simply keep paging
through the latest edition of INSIDE. Only, it may not be worth closing your mouth at all
until you’ve put INSIDE down again, since we have so much fascinating content for you. In our
portrait of Vienna we take a tour of the Austrian capital. Few places can boast such a harmonious
blend of contrasts. Vienna’s famous attractions are simply irresistible.
As a global company we are always dealing with contrasts, since our everyday work requires
us to work productively with a diverse range of cultures. We are active in more than thirty
countries, which means we have to bring together a broad range of differences and viewpoints.
These may be big or small things, trifles or key issues – what is always inspiring is the incredible
potential which that diversity reveals. It’s often that which is the most impressive thing of
all in fact.
On the pages that follow you can read about water’s impressive properties – and about the
earth, the sun and the wind and how they will provide us with energy in the future. Or the
outer skins of buildings and the way they transform, the importance of exercise in our daily
routines, and the economic benefits of sustainability. And, and, and. In fact we were quite
impressed by how much we managed to get into a 52-page magazine. But read on and you’ll
see for yourself.
03

INTERVIEW
MARKET
PROJECT
COMPANY
LIVING SPACES
TECHNOLOGY
CITY PORTRAIT
INNOVATION
RESOURCES
ENVIRONMENT
//
CONTENT
06 I was looking for challenges, not a comfortable life
10 Do good
14 Dam impressive
19 Insights
20 Mandatory freestyle
22 Gateway to heaven
26 Tank up, don’t burn out
29 Expats // Pinglu
30 Right in the net
32 When icebergs collide
35 Insights
36 Hot stuff
38 Faster, higher, further
40 Vienna – yesterday, today, tomorrow
43 Insights
44 Second skin
46 Water resource
48 Power without end
50 Constructive // On right angles and left hands
50 Imprint
The ALPINE Company Magazine
Issue 3 / October 2010
You can find more information at
INSIDE.alpINE.at Ü

TOP TOPICS
TSANKOV KAMAK
Dam impressive
The building of Tsankov Kamak Hydroelectric Power Station in Bulgaria’s
Rhodope Mountains is a model project providing not only eco-friendly
energy, but also jobs and expertise in a structurally weak region. But it also
involved a whole series of unusual and unexpected challenges.
14
AIRPORT CONSTRUCTION
Gateway to heaven
The airport of the 21st Century is in constant change. Its design, function
and construction must adapt to new technologies and demands. The
Airport Cities of the future will have to handle even more passengers and
even more luggage. Demands on the planning, building and construction
of airports are growing.
22
INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT
When icebergs collide
In international projects, cultural worlds often meet whose values,
customs and fundamental assumptions are very different. Successful
cooperation demands some basic knowledge about the culture and
business conventions in the countries concerned – but it also requires
a basic willingness to be open to others.
32
CITY PORTRAIT
Vienna
Few cities can boast such a living past as Vienna. Each year millions of
visitors stream into the Austrian capital to sample its richly historical
atmosphere. But Vienna also has a modern side, and a lively artistic and
architectural scene. It is these contrasts which make the city so worth
living in and so loveable.
40
RESOURCES
Water
Our planet is a planet of water. Yet only around 1% of the world’s
water can be used by humans. Uneven distribution, climate change
and exploding populations are set to make water a scarce commodity
in the years to come. China is particularly hard hit.
46
05

06 // INTERVIEW

»I was lookIng for
challenges, not a
comfortable lIfe.«
INTERVIEW Peter Preindl has been the CEO of ALPINE Bau GmbH since 2009.
Born in the Tyrol, he learned the building trade from scratch, loves a challenge and
appreciates decisive people.
// clAudIA lAgler
You once said that the legendary
Tyrolean governor Eduard
Wallnöfer was one of your role
models. Why is that?
It was the way people loved him
and the way he could capture his
audience. Once I saw him while
I was at a holiday internship on
a power station construction site
in Sellrain-Silz. He came late to a
ground-breaking ceremony, got
out of his car, and began by greeting
the three riflemen who were
waiting there. He knew who his
people were.
What can be learned from Eduard
Wallnöfer?
He was certainly one of the last
patriarchs in Austrian politics. He
was highly assertive, shrewd and
very focused.
Character traits that are still useful
today?
I think so, yes. Nowadays many
decisions are made in committees
and boards, and our systems rarely
allow such strong individual personalities
any more. But I think that
even today some situations demand
fast decisions and people who can
take responsibility for them and
stand behind them.
Even at the risk of making
mistakes?
Mistakes are allowed, but should
not be repeated. Without the
freedom to make mistakes, there
can be no progress. You can’t just
rubber-stamp everything all of
the time, especially in the building
business. We often find that it is not
at all simple to find decisive staff,
especially abroad.
Is that related to methods of
training?
The dual training system used
in the skilled trades in Austria is
outstanding. This system creates
expert workers. It promotes strong
foremen and site managers who
understand their trade and who do
everything to ensure that their sites
run well.
Do you believe that there is what
you might call an Austrian way
of doing things in the building
industry?
Yes. We combine a high degree of
tradesmen’s expertise with leadership
qualities. It is not enough just
to manage a building site. As the
person responsible, I also have to
know the practical ins and outs of
the trade. We Austrians are capable
of that.
07

08 // INTERVIEW
»Mistakes are allowed,
but should not be repeated.«
What are the challenges that face
you and your staff on construction
sites abroad?
The first thing is the language. Not
everyone can speak Czech, Slovakian
or Polish, so we need interpreters
whenever we travel around.
Then there are the differences in
mentality and culture. Sometimes
you have to accept that one and one
don’t make two. Procedures can
be different, and things sometimes
take a bit longer.
How did you enter the building
trade?
Even when I was a boy I liked
playing in the sandpit. As a youth
I helped relatives to build a house.
After I had finished my studies, I
fought against my parents’ recommended
career course; they wanted
me to get a secure job as a public official.
That would have been inconceivable
for me. I was looking for
challenges, not a comfortable life.
What fascinates me about building
is that everything you do creates
something. We are not administrators,
we cause things to happen.
Are you a lone warrior or more of
a team player?
I’m a team player, and in our industry
you can only succeed as part
of a team. In spite of this, important
decisions cannot be socialised, in
the end someone has to take responsibility
and make them.
What do you believe a good boss
should be capable of?
A good boss must take responsibility
and be a role model. As a leader,
you need charisma if you’re going
to enthuse and motivate people.
There is nothing worse than a superior
who no longer has their staff
behind them. You need credibility
and enough honesty to be able to
bring up subjects which are sometimes
not altogether pleasant.
How would you describe your
leadership style?
Friendly and decisive.
Do you encourage female engineers
within your area of responsibility?
Yes. Women work very well in the
building industry. Recently I was
at a building site in Serbia where
a woman showed exceptional
leadership of a team of 40 Serbian
workers and three foremen. When
women are around, men lose their
self-pity.
To what extent has ALPINE merged
with its Spanish parent company in
recent years?
We are working very well together.
By joining FCC, ALPINE has evolved
from a medium-sized building firm
into a European building corporation.
We are now in a position to
pre-qualify for almost any international
large-scale project. We no
longer have to search for partners
since we have everything we need
within the Group. ALPINE has
therefore moved into the international
league.
At ALPINE you are responsible for
environmental technology. What
are the biggest challenges in that
field?
We are active in areas which are
very closely linked to the building
industry: the rehabilitation of
inherited waste, the building of
disposal sites, and the recycling of
building waste. Our aim is to take
things considered as waste and turn
them into valuable raw materials
again. This is not just a matter of
protecting the environment, it is
also economically interesting. After
all, the disposal of waste materials
costs a lot of money nowadays.
Which projects in the environmental
field are you currently busy
with?
At Vienna’s Südbahnhof (Southern
Station) we are recycling 100,000
cubic meters of building waste. We
are breaking the material down,
refining it, and utilising it as fill
material.

What new markets have caught
your eye?
At ALPINE we are currently bidding
for a large-scale project in Copenhagen
involving the construction
of a ring underground line with 14
stations and an order value of two
billion euros. For us, this would
mean an entry into the Scandinavian
market. This metro system is a
fascinating underground project for
which ALPINE can provide all of the
services itself.
How many hours do you actually
work in a day?
When I’m travelling I’m available
around the clock. I tend to get up
early, and I am quite accustomed
to meeting my staff at 7.30 in the
morning. Building sites have to
start promptly, and I must set an
example.
And how do you recuperate from
all that?
Peter PreIndl
I keep my weekends free as much as
possible and spend that time with
my family. My two children have
already left home, which has given
us new freedom.
Freedom to pursue your hobbies?
Yes; I like to ski in the Tyrolean
mountains. I also spend a lot of time
reading and taking photographs.
What book is currently lying on
your bedside table?
Some engineering literature which,
of course, I only get around to
reading on the weekends. But I also
like an entertaining read. Recently I
started rereading Zero Eight Fifteen
by Hans Hellmut Kirst, a hefty book
which fascinated me in my youth.
Do you miss the Tyrolean
mountains when you are in Vienna?
My life has centred around Vienna
for 36 years now, I am something
of an adoptive citizen. But I do miss
the mountains sometimes, as well
as the mentality of the Tyroleans,
who are very straightforward
people.
Your favourite holiday destination?
That’s easy: the Tyrol. The Unterinntal
around Kundl and Lienz,
where I went to school. In the Tyrol
I nurture my roots. I travel so much
for my work that I’m quite happy
not to go anywhere else on holiday.
I try to relax, and that’s easiest in
the place I call home.
And finally for the famous island
question. What three things would
you take with you?
My family, a good book and no
mobile phone.
Thank you for your time! //
was born in Innsbruck in 1956. He studied cultural engineering and water management, receiving his doctorate in 1982. Before
joining ALPINE Bau GmbH in 1999 he gathered professional experience at Neuen Reformbau GmbH as well as Era Bau GmbH.
He has been a member of the Management at ALPINE Bau GmbH since 2006 and its CEO since 2009. His areas of responsibility
include civil engineering in eastern Austria, as well as markets in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe. Preindl is the
president of the Austrian Society for Concrete and Construction Technology. He comes from the Tyrol region, and is married
with two grown-up children.
09

10 // MARKET
DO GOOD
… AND TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT! This may be an oft-repeated public-relations principle,
but it is increasingly clear that social responsibility is more than just a PR strategy. CSR is a highly
promising management approach.
// MelAnIe Müller
W
hat with the financial
crisis and the imminent
threat of environmental
catastrophe, the call for corporations
to assume social responsibility
is becoming ever louder. In July
2010 the United Nations aimed severe
accusations at leading businesses.
According to a recent UN
survey, the 3,000 biggest companies
are responsible for annual environmental
damage amounting to
two billion euros. ‘The world’s natural
capital is being annihilated on a
grand scale,’ warned Achim Steiner,
UN Environment chief, in an interview
with Süddeutsche Zeitung
(12.07.2010).
However, people’s interpretations
of what corporate social responsibility
actually means in times
of crisis vary dramatically. While
some still firmly believe that the
most valuable contribution a company
can make is to maximise its
profits, others are now convinced
that companies must also take direct
responsibility for the environment
and the society in which
they operate. After all, it is a lack of
responsibility and greed for a fast
buck that causes crises and scandals
in the first place.
CSR aS a deCiSion-making
faCtoR
If leading thinkers and the latest
surveys are to be believed, then an
unstoppable paradigm shift is under
way in business. Shareholder
value is being replaced by stakeholder
value (see Shortcuts). Consumers
and investors are becoming

Just distribution
of resources
Society
Environment
Intergenerational
justice
Source: respACT – Austrian business council
for sustainable development
Sustainable products
and services
increasingly aware of their power,
and are demanding responsible,
sustainable and ethical conduct
from companies. According to a
consumer research survey in Austria
in 2010, these kind of expectations
are having a growing influence
on buying and investment
decisions. ‘CSR is already an important
decision-making factor for one in
two people when considering future
financial and insurance products,’
claims Ursula Swoboda, director of
Financial Market Research at GfK
Austria. This means that the question
will soon no longer be whether
you are willing to take responsibility,
but whether you are up to doing
so.
So the term corporate social responsibility
(CSR) is gaining ground
again. While CSR struggled in recent
years with credibility issues,
accused as it was of being simply a
PR tool for image-polishing, people
are now talking about ‘New CSR’.
The strategy of leaving CSR to the
marketing department (‘Old CSR’)
can now be considered a failed one.
The public has seen behind the fa-
Leadership & planning
Fair trade
cade, and is demanding genuine
commitment and adherence to real
standards, instead of occasional donations
and isolated charitable projects.
For CSR to work, it has to be
strategically integrated and exemplified
at the top of the company.
At an age when a single Twitter is
enough to destroy an image it took
decades to build, lip service alone is
nothing short of dangerous.
gReen WinneRS
In the end the concept of corporate
social responsibility has actually
profited from the crisis. What people
used to doubt has now become
clear: CSR pays off. This has been
demonstrated by surveys such as
‘Green Winners’ by A.T. Kearney,
which demonstrated that sustainable
companies achieved considerably
better performance (growth)
during the crisis year of 2008 than
their rivals. On the stock market,
people tend to believe them to be
more capable of surmounting a crisis
and producing long-term success.
CSR activities are therefore
little to do with philanthropy, and
Corporate culture
Employees
Market
SHORTCUTS
CSR corporate social responsibility
(csr) is a technical term for the
responsibility companies take for the
societies in which they operate. what
it refers to is the commitment which
businesses make voluntarily towards
sustainable development, i.e. over and
above legal requirements. It refers to a
development which ‘meets the needs
of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs.’ (Un world commission
on environment and development,
1987). csr is to be understood
as a managerial concept which makes
social and ecological responsibility
part of a company’s strategy alongside
economic aims.
ShAREhOLDER/STAKEhOLDER
VALUE the question of which
demands a company must primarily
satisfy has been the subject of intensifying
discussion since the globalisation
of the capital markets. there are two
different approaches: shareholder
value is based on value-oriented
company leadership, and concentrates
on the interests of the shareholders.
the aim is to maximise the financial
earnings of a company. the stakeholder
approach assigns an additional
social responsibility to companies, and
encompasses all of those who have an
interest in that company’s activities
(stakeholders). the aim is to ensure the
long-term existence of the company.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE
IMPORTANCE OF CSR FOR
STRATEGIC GOALS OVER THE
COURSE OF THE PAST YEAR
A survey of 224 managers worldwide
60 % // has become more important
34 % // still about the same
06 % // less important
Source: IBM Institute for Business Value 2009 CSR survey.
11

12 // MARKT MARKET
fCC
The Spanish group of companies Fcc (Fomento de
construcciones y contratas, S.A) to whose subsidiary
Fcc construcción AlPIne belongs, promotes a
corporate culture of social responsibility, and cSr
represents an important component of its corporate
strategy.
Since 2005 it has been publishing an annual cSr
report which fulfils the stipulations of the global
reporting Initiative, and which contains information
relating to business, society and the environment.
every two years the supervisory board approves a cSr
Masterplan, which lays out the strategic direction for
all areas of the group. Fcc construcción also publishes
alternating sustainability reports and environmental
bulletins at www.fccco.es
Fcc is listed in internationally recognised sustainabili-
ty indices (dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSe4good
Index), supports the un’s caring for climate Initiative,
and considers itself bound to the principles of the un
global compact.
Its strategic focuses are currently on the themes
of corporate governance and corporate citizenship,
human resources, environmental protection and
technology management.
much more an important component
of a functional corporate success
strategy.
Commitment to CSR pays off, believes
Lisa Weber of respACT – austrian
business council for sustainable
development, Austria’s leading
corporate platform for CSR and sustainable
development. ‘By employing
strategic CSR, companies don’t
just make an important contribution
towards society and the environment,
they minimise their risks, increase
employee motivation, strengthen customer
loyalty and trust, boost their
innovation potential, and by doing all
these things, give themselves a competitive
edge in the market.’ This creates
value for the society and for the
company.
Pre-ecOnOMIc
eFFecTS
Image gain with positive
effect on:
— Customer loyalty
— Customer trust
— Employee motivation
— Employee loyalty
— Employee acquisition
Increase of innovation
potential
Reduced risk
making SuCCeSS meaSuRable
Typically, however, CSR activities
lead, in the short term, to visible
expenditure, while the effects and
pay-offs can be difficult to evaluate
and may only manifest in the
medium and long term. Benefits for
a company’s image, customer loyalty,
staff loyalty and so on can be
hard to articulate or express in figures.
Is it possible at all to quantify
the successes of corporate social
responsibility? Lisa Weber believes
it is – although different aspects
require different measures:
‘It is relatively simple when it comes
to employee satisfaction. The more a
company takes care of the well-being
of its employees (promotion of health,
work–life balance, creativity and autonomy),
the greater the satisfaction
– and therefore the more willing employees
are to perform and to commit.
The company is also perceived as an
attractive employer. Energy and heating
savings are also easy to calculate.
What is more difficult to measure,
however, is the kind of success
derived from responsible conduct with
stakeholders.’ Some of the results of
sustainability indices visualise the
success of csr activities.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF CSR
ecOnOMIc
eFFecTS
Increase of share price /
corporate value
Increased turnover and/or
stabilisation of sales
Reduced costs
Improved return on investment
successful CSR only show over the
long term.
‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t
manage it.’ With this quote from
economist Peter Drucker, Karl Resel
highlights the importance of evaluating
CSR projects. As manager of
the Sustainability Group at denkstatt
GmbH, he advises companies
on all sorts of issues relating to economic,
ecological and social sustainability,
while making the benefits
of CSR tangible for his clients.
‘When it comes to cutting costs, we
bring everything down to a common
denominator: euros. What is revealed
is that simple measures can often pay
for themselves within just one or two
years.’ Of course, other activities
with results such as a reduction in
absenteeism or a strengthening in
brand trust cannot necessarily be
translated into monetary terms.
This is where sustainability indices
play an important role. ‘Sustainability
indices make the term sustainability
tangible, clarify targets, and
demonstrate progress and change.
Alongside traditional financial indices
they help to articulate other factors

which are crucial for business success
and social benefit.’ Indices like these
can illustrate factors such as absenteeism
and personnel fluctuation
in the human resources sector, accident
frequency and preventative
measures in the safety sector, and
waste, water and CO2 emissions in
the resource efficiency sector.
CaSh baCk
For a construction company like
ALPINE, aside from CSR activities
in the area of human resources, the
themes of resource management
and recycling also play an important
role. ‘Basically we try to recycle
as much as possible,’ reports Jürgen
Goritschnig, laboratory director
at the Bautechnische Prüf- und
Versuchsanstalt GmbH, and at
ALPINE Technology Management
in Kärnten and Salzburg. ‘If we
can recycle the material produced
on a construction site, then we don’t
just protect natural resources, our
company also profits economically.
In the ideal scenario we reuse
building materials on the same site,
after inspecting them carefully. In
other cases we process the material
at interim depots and take it to other
building sites later on.’ The fact that
natural resources are not unlimited
and not always available makes
recycling enormously important for
the future. ‘Materials created in the
building process are like cash back,’
points out Goritschnig. ‘In this field
we certainly hope to develop technologically.
Unfortunately the statutory
preconditions for this are often not
there, and the deluge of ordinances
and guidelines relating to recycling
can often be more of a hindrance
than a help.’ Günter Gretzmacher,
managing director of Ökotechna
Entsorgungs- und Umwelttechnik
GmbH and president of the
Austrian Recycling Association,
adds: ‘Unfortunately builders and
clients often refuse to use recycled
materials such as concrete granulate,
asphalt and brick, and that is often
still on account of mistrust or a lack of
knowledge – despite the fact that these
materials represent a fully competitive
and cost-saving alternative to natural
materials. Things will certainly
develop in this direction. By 2020, all
EU member states will have to recycle
70% of their mineral building waste.’
But it is not just on the building site
that money is being saved. ALPINE
also intends to do business more
sustainably and more efficiently
in the office from now on. As part
of the Ecoprofit scheme (a module
of Vienna’s EcoBusinessPlan),
two pilot offices have already
successfully implemented activities
that save environmental costs and
resources. As a result, ALPINE
was awarded the Ecoprofit Label
in March 2010. Now the aim is to
implement this best practice in all
ALPINE locations. ‘Whether and
to what extent these activities have
succeeded we will not see until the
beginning of 2011,’ states Chris
Muri, director of Quality Management
at ALPINE. ‘We are, however,
expecting significant reductions in
costs as a result of our activities in the
field of energy, paper usage and waste
disposal.’
resource management and recycling
save money and increase efficiency.
CSR activities therefore not only
contribute to a company’s intangible
value, they also lead to significant
expenditure cuts, and – seen
in the long term – to an increase in
profits. These two things together
strengthen the company for the future
and make it crisis-proof. Surely
that is reason enough to think
up new, sustainable ways of doing
things. //
PROACTIVE INVOLVEMENT
WITH STAKEHOLDER
GROUPS
Survey of 224 managers worldwide
63 % // employees
55 % // investors
55 % // business partners
54 % // state
51 % // consumers
50 % // society
44 % // NGOs
Source: IBM Institute for Business Value 2009 CSR survey
13

14 //
PROJECT
AM IMP

RESSIVE
POWER PLAY The Tsankov Kamak hydroelectric power station is a true megaproject.
But what is also remarkable is the story behind how it was built.
// MIcHAel KrIeSS
15

16 //
PROJECT
T
The drive from Bulgaria’s
capital into the Rhodope
Mountains, which border
Greece to the south, is not particularly
remarkable, at least not for the
four drivers who, in rotating shifts,
ply this 200-kilometre route twice
a day in each direction. In Sabi’s
case, for the past five years – meaning,
as he acknowledges with a
proud look, that he has clocked up
more than a million kilometres on
this road alone.
driving from sofia into
the rhodopes is like
travelling back in time.
For a Western-European visitor,
however, the drive feels like travelling
back in time. In Sofia, bleak
prefabricated apartment blocks
reminiscent of communist times
conjure up a forgotten age. Once
out on the impeccable motorway,
rickety old jalopies and enormous
clouds of exhaust are flashbacks to
View from the heights, taken from the cable crane.
decades gone by. In the villages,
which become more and more frequent
as you approach the mountains,
horse-drawn carts add a degree
of melancholy to roads whose
state of disrepair recently drew
demonstrators from the provinces
to the Bulgarian capital to march
before parliament. Between the villages
it is the countryside which
slows visitors down: part wild,
part cultivated by farmers whose
tools fill museums in the West. And
then of course there are the people
themselves, crouching beside skew
wooden houses, tending potatoes
in their gardens, stacking firewood
by every wall, fixing cars. It is a
journey which instils in the foreign
visitor a curiously mixed sensation:
the reassuring gentleness of rural
life combined with sympathy for
the lack of prospects facing many
people, something which to us can
seem like hopelessness.
500-million-euRo PRoJeCt
With its 7.5 million inhabitants,
Bulgaria is a European problem
child. In the summer of 2009 its
new government was forced to
place a total stop on public sector
projects. The coffers were empty,
new loans too expensive. ‘Suddenly
they were saying that no more invoices
would be paid,’ recalls Christian
Schild, project manager of the
Tsankov Kamak power station,
smiling as he always does when
problems come up. It is a composed
smile, a smile which seems
to say: ‘When you have seen a lot of
things in life, then nothing amazes
you much.’ Born in Austria’s Burgenland
region, it is not for nothing
that he is in charge of what is
now a 500-million-euro project.
In the end they did pay, and building
work resumed on the Tsankov
Kamak power station.
So was that just one problem among
many faced by Christian Schild and
the experts working on the site?
Precisely.
When the contracts were signed in
2003, it was clear this was to become
a showcase project: clean hy-

Power is not yet on at the transformer station, but it is
in the turbine building where the final machinery is being
installed.
droelectric energy with the positive
side effect of jobs in a structurally
weak region; energy which could
cover peaks in demand in Bulgaria
or be exported elsewhere for good
money. Back then, none of the people
involved could possibly imagine
what was awaiting Christian Schild
and his team on the way to the project’s
completion.
making the imPoSSible
PoSSible
The fact that nobody has built an
arch dam in Europe for decades was
not a problem. Nor was creating
the infrastructure for a construction
site in inaccessible parts of the
Vacha River valley, even if building
a 12-kilometre new road along
spectacularly steep valley sides was
anything but easy (the old road will
soon disappear beneath the water
as it rises, not that anyone will miss
its frightening potholes). Logistical
feats such as dealing with six million
cubic metres of excavated soil
and two million cubic metres of fill,
mixing 850,000 cubic metres of
concrete and placing 100,000 anchors
with a total combined length
of almost 400 kilometres – these
things were little more than ambitious
aims for Christian Schild and
his 60 Austrian colleagues. Even the
fact that most of the 1,200 Bulgarian
workers employed at peak periods
had to be trained beforehand
was surmountable – although many
engineers consider this a hard thing
to do. At the end of the day it meant
a transfer of knowledge that would
remain as an additional benefit to
the region after completion.
But what really pushed everyone
to the limit was a situation which
Christian Schild describes in, for
him, extreme terms: ‘Enormous
geological difficulties on account of
fast-changing geological conditions.’
What that meant in practice was
that the rock practically crumbled
in the workers’ hands.
the hillS aRen’t Calling;
theY’Re falling
Frequent landslides and rockfalls
made building the ‘New Road’
something of a Sisyphean challenge.
Again and again, embankments
would slip away, taking
whole sections of road with them,
and more and more access roads
had to be built into the difficult terrain.
During the long winter, construction
vehicles had to deal not
only with steep gradients, but also
with mud which was at times metres
deep.
But for a man like Stefan Zippusch
none of this was cause for despair,
even if the veteran road-building
foreman had to admit: ‘This is an
impossible place to build a road.’ As
soon as you drive along this roadbuilding
masterpiece, which is still
only partially tarred, you can see
why. Dozens of brown patches eating
into the otherwise green landscape
– some as big as football fields
– tell of the landslides the engineer
had to contend with. Asked why
this particular route was chosen for
the road, Christian Schild smiles
once again. ‘We would have liked to
have conducted further geological investigations
before choosing a route,’
he says diplomatically, politely referring
to the lack of planning as a
‘difference in mentality.’
a bathtub made of
SWiSS CheeSe
It was this difference in mentality
which also frustrated Kurt Bondi.
Another Corinthian with decades of
experience, it was he who headed
the construction of the reservoir
in the Gashnya Valley. There
too, the ground, which will soon
hold more than 110 million cubic
metres of water, exhibits properties
that are anything but ideal. To sum
up Bondi’s cautious description of
the uncertainties involved, his task
was akin to cutting a watertight
bath tub out of a giant Swiss cheese.
The 70,000-cubic-metre basin being
built to channel the accumulated
water through a 537-metrelong
pressure tunnel to the turbines
in the generator building is, in fact,
precisely that: a gigantic trough. It
is there that most of the 83,000 cubic
metres of geomembrane are being
laid. In addition, that is, to lin-
17
Where there is now a building site it will soon look like this, a little further downstream.
Difficult geological
conditions
and a lack of
trained workers
on location made
the project a
challenging one.

18 // PROJECT
Final touches to the
‘New Road’.
Extending for
200 km, the
Rhodope
Mountains form a
barrier between
Bulgaria and
Greece. This
ancient, forested
mountain range
was formed
around 350
million years ago,
making it one of
the oldest in
Europe. The Alps,
by comparison,
are a mere 35 million
years old.
The concrete-lined Gashnya Valley, which will soon contain
110 million cubic metres of water.
ing the valley with shotcrete – just
in case.
diZZY heightS of ConCRete
All things considered, the main element
of the construction project
was almost child’s play. Work was
able to continue almost around the
clock on the 130.5-metre-high arch
dam, with its 457-metre crest and
535,000 cubic metres of concrete.
A very special machine, however,
was required for this work. The
cable crane which helped the dam
to grow at such speed first had to
be brought to the Rhodopes – no
easy task given its massive dimensions.
Able to lift up to 26 tons, it is
used not only to convey the concrete
quickly and precisely at dizzying
heights, but also to lift heavy
equipment to the places where it
is needed. The cable crane ceases
work only twice a day, and that
only briefly, when the responsible
master engineer checks all of the
rollers on his inspection rounds.
But all of these challenges became
a thing of the past in summer 2010.
The water has been mounting up
since June, and most of the work
is finished. Only one person is still
under pressure. ‘Now, of course, we
have to make sure that all of the machinery
is disposed of as efficiently
as possible,’ says Franz Fussi, sitting
before faxed lists of spare-parts
prices. Hailing from Styria, there is
something of the used-car sales-
man about him, especially when,
with shining eyes, he waxes lyrical
on the exceptional condition of his
diggers, trucks and other equipment
– once his mechanics have
finished with them. After that they
will be relocated to other construction
sites, given back to their owners,
or sold off. Considering the fact
that the machinery alone is worth
around 16 million euros, it is incredible
– almost moving – how
Fussi still picks up on every single
potential saving, however small.
You quickly realise why companies
everywhere call him in. He is worth
the money.
CoRinthian noodleS and
RoaSt-ChiCken Salad
Like most of the other expats, Fussi
is not troubled by homesickness,
despite the fact that the work for
him is far from finished. All of them
enjoy the option of two weeks’
home leave after every six weeks’
work on the building project. All
of them, that is, except the project
managers, who are indispensible
for all but the odd weekend.
There are however compensations.
The container village where they
reside may be a thousand miles
from home, but there is always the
Corinthian cook at hand to rustle
up some of the food they love and
miss.
Peter Gfrerer, however, rarely
gets the chance to enjoy Corinthi-
fACTS & fIGURES
catchment area: 1,214 sq km
Annual inflow: 650 million cu. m
Average inflow: 69.5 cu. m/s
useable inflow: 580 million cu. m
reservoir area: 3.27 sq km
Total volume: 111 million cu. m
Top water level: 685 m
useful volume: 41 million cu. m
Minimum operating level: 670 m
nominal power output: 2 × 40 MW
Minimum water level: 648 m
electricity generated: 185 gWh/a
Max. drop height: 136 m
generator type: Francis turbine
an noodles or Backhendlsalat, an
Austrian chicken dish. Head of the
Bulgaria office and director of the
hydroelectric power station–construction
department, he leads a
high-mileage life commuting between
Tsankov Kamak, Sofia, his
home region of Corinthia, and his
current residence in Germany. He
happily foregoes home cooking just
so long as he knows that everything
is being taken care of on the largescale
projects for which he is responsible.
Looking at the dam from
a distance on this peaceful summer’s
day in 2010, his eyes speak
of relief. ‘Now I know there’s nothing
we cannot build,’ he says. //

inSightS
99 PAGE
36
Our planet is hot stuff. 99% of the Earth’s
volume is hotter than 1,000°C. With inhospitable
temperatures of 5,000–6,000°C
at its core, the journey to the centre of the
Earth is surely destined to remain forever a
dream. At a depth of only one kilometre, the
earth has a temperature of 35–40°C almost
everywhere.
M I S S I N G D I G I T
Vienna’s underground train network consists of Lines U1, U2, U3, U4 and U6.
Line U5, however, does not exist. It was often planned, but for a variety of reasons
kept getting postponed and was never built. There have, however, been new plans
for a Line 5 since 2004, although it is not yet clear when they are to be enacted, and
whether Vienna’s missing metro line will ever actually be completed.
PAGE 38
emigrate?
PAGE 32shake
In theory, citizens of the
European Union can live and
work wherever they want
within Europe. But not many
people actually do this. A mere
8% of Austrians could envisage
taking a job in another EU country.
This puts them at the bottom
of the list in the EU. The most
flexible are the Danes (51%), the
Estonians (38%) and the Swedes
(37%). The Germans, at 11%, are
still below the EU average of 17%.
(Source: Eurobarometer)
PAGE 40
PAGE 44
LOTUS
EFFECT
The fact that Lotus petals always remain
completely clean despite growing in sludge
has occupied scientists since the 1970s.
Water runs off the petals in droplets,
taking dirt particles with it. This selfcleaning
effect has been closely investigated
over the years and applied to a wide
range of projects such as self-cleaning
exterior paint, dirt-repellent textiles and
swimsuits that don’t get wet.
WATER & WINE
The Unstrut is a copious, 192-km-long tributary of the river Saale, running from
west to east. The Saale-Unstrut region is famous for its wines, and looks back
on a 1,000-year-old wine-growing tradition. Its northerly position and low
rainfall predestine it for white grape varieties such as Müller-Thurgau, white
Burgundy and Sylvaner.
PAGE 48
it
A Japanese electronics company has developed batteries
that can be recharged by shaking. The Vibration Energy
Cell, as the prototype has been called, has already
appeared at trade fairs and has been developed in the
standard sizes of AA and AAA. Conceivable uses include
any equipment with low energy consumption, such as
remote-control units. As well as reducing waste, these
batteries should hopefully encourage couch potatoes to
move a little more often.

20 // PROJECT
mandatory
freestyle
The artwork entitled ‘Mae West’
by American artist Rita McBride has
found a home on the newly designed
Effnerplatz in Munich. ALPINE
built the foundations for it.
THE ART Of BUILDING From bison
on the wall to videos projected onto
construction hoarding – art and building
have always been closely interlinked.
Yet art in architecture means more than
simply promoting art for its own sake –
it can help to expand our perception of
buildings.
// MArInA POllHAMMer
// MelAnIe Müller

The bookcase by Claudia Märzendorfer in the Linz Wissensturm Building-site intervention by Richard Hoeck in Innsbruck
S
tatutes in many European countries and elsewhere
in the world promoting art in and on
buildings originated in the early 20th century
when, in the 1920s, the art market suffered a serious
crisis. Patrons and artists alike were impoverished,
and the state stepped in as an important funder of art.
In Vienna and Munich, 1–2% of the total amount spent
on public buildings was put aside for artistic commissions.
In the post-war years, as residential construction
boomed, this funding, known as Kunst am Bau (art
in buildings), helped give cities a new face and helped
give people work as well.
Today, Kunst am Bau usually means that a certain proportion
of expenditure on public buildings – usually
around 1% – is spent on artworks. The aim is to create
cultural added value. And many an extraordinary artistic
feat has come about amid the divergent forces of architectural
imperatives and artistic creativity.
These artworks are enormously varied, ranging from
sculptures in public squares and paintings on facades
and walls, to pictures and projections in and out
of doors. The German Federal Ministry of Transport,
Building and Urban Development has issued guidelines
about Kunst am Bau, in which it is stated: ‘Kunst am Bau
should take into consideration all types of fine art; no particular
art form should be favoured.’ In this sense, the artworks
can extend beyond the building itself, sometimes
onto a neighbouring piece of land, or into the area surrounding
the building project.
Artists and artworks are usually chosen by means of
international and local contests. The building of the
Linz Wissensturm, for which ALPINE was responsible,
also involved such a competition, for which there were
more than 70 entries. In the end three artistic projects
were implemented.
ColouR, foRm and imagination
The facade of the 70-metre-high elevator tower was
patterned with transparent, colourful letters according
to a design by Robert Schuster. These symbolise the basic
building blocks of a complex, ever-changing world
of language and communication.
A bookcase divides the foyer area and was designed by
Claudia Märzendorfer. In it, 432 black and white hand-
bound books are stacked in a particular sequence,
forming an encrypted text.
The artistic intervention entitled ‘Thirst for Knowledge’
was designed by Norbert Hinterberger and installed in
the washrooms, where 15 of the taps are labelled with
a variety of symbols in place of the usual red and blue
markings, transforming the usually mundane activity
of washing your hands into an associative intellectual
game.
neCeSSaRilY Without uSe
It is well known that art is evaluated in the eye of the
beholder, and for this reason Kunst am Bau often triggers
heated debate – especially since it involves public
funds. To some this amounts to a natural obligation,
while others consider it a total waste of money. But the
fact is that art in architecture attracts attention. Buildings
are extended by another dimension which goes
beyond pure utilitarianism. For example: people who
would otherwise have no access to art are confronted
by it.
Pooling ReSouRCeS foR aRt
The 1% rule is no longer applied quite so fastidiously.
In Austria a pooling arrangement has become increasingly
common. In several of the country’s states, there
are now project-independent funds which serve to finance
artworks and projects in the public sphere. The
Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft (BIG, Federal Property
Association), which builds and manages most Austrian
public-sector buildings, implements between two and
four Kunst am Bau projects each year, using sometimes
more and sometimes less than 1% of the total building
outlay. The aim is to stimulate dialogue between artists
and architects, art and everyday life, people and spaces.
Kunst am Bau aims to encourage contemplation, in
passing or in stillness. //
21
kunst am bau
gives buildings
a particular
character
Wissensturm
Linz is a library
and educational
centre consisting
of a 63-metrehigh
elliptical
tower structure
with 15 storeys,
a three-storey
base structure,
and one basement
level. Built
between 2005
and 2007.

22 // PROJECT
gATeWAy
T O
HeAven
AIRPORT CONSTRUCTION The needs which airports have to meet are growing
and changing all of the time. Rising passenger volumes and new technologies necessitate
high-performance Airport Cities.
// MArIOn HIerzenBerger

A
ir transport remains a growth industry. In
spite of rising fuel prices, stricter security
monitoring and a global recession which has
hit the aviation industry hard since 2008, air travel remains
a major aspect of our mass culture and has become
the standard way of travelling further than 600
kilometres.
According to the air-safety organisation Eurocontrol,
around 26,000 flights pass daily through European airspace,
and as many as 33,000 in peak periods. A total
of 11.5 million flights are forecast in Europe for the year
2016, which represents an increase of 22% over 2009.
While airports used to be terminal points for people
and goods, the airport of the 21st century has become
a major gateway to other countries and continents,
the ultimate portal to all parts of the world. It is also a
‘town within a town’ which includes business parks,
hotel complexes, shopping centres, leisure facilities –
and even churches.
aiRPoRt boom toWn
At all of the big hubs around the world, but especially
in Asia, Airport Cities are sprouting up as economically
booming entities with their own infrastructure. Airport
expert John D. Kasarda, who has been involved for
decades in the commercial development of air traffic,
believes Europe has some catching up to do. If it is to
remain competitive, Kasarda believes Europe, too, will
need to embrace the Airport City model.
Under pressure from increasing mobility and competition,
the function, design and structure of airports are
changing. More flights means more passengers, a trend
which must be observed when planning, building and
operating an airport. At the same time the exponen-
5 SeC. // lIghtIng
tial development of new technologies demands flexible
systems and buildings capable of coping with them.
Under pressure from increasing
mobility and competition,
the function, design and structure
of airports are changing.
ChiP in PaCk
Light signals are often affixed along the centre and sides of runways
to provide improved orientation. These coloured lamps help pilots to judge
their altitude, direction and horizontal displacement, and also to land
safely in bad visibility.
One of the tasks crying out for a solution is how to handle
growing mountains of luggage quickly, cost-effectively
and reliably. According to estimates, misdirected
luggage causes the aviation industry annual costs of 3.3
billion US dollars. Each year 42 million passengers are
affected.
At Aalberg airport in Denmark they recently installed
a luggage-handling system based on RFID technology,
which stores sorting information. Luggage is identified
using radio frequency, but this does not change the
usual check-in procedure in any way. What it does do
is improve the handling process. Lisbon airport also reports
positively on its RFID-based handling system, in
operation since 2008. According to the airport operators
the average duration of a suitcase transfer can be
cut from 30 to 10 minutes, and the number of luggagehandling
errors reduced by 50%.
a neW geneRation of aiRPoRtS
How can growing passenger flows be managed safely
despite rigid border and security controls? What is an
23
De-icing facility
at Frankfurt Airport

24 // PROJECT
Air-traffic
areas can only
be closed
briefly,
otherwise air
traffic will
be disrupted.
intelligent guidance system? How can you connect an
airport efficiently to other transport systems? What
criteria must contemporary design fulfil? Those are just
some of the questions confronting airport planners, architects
and operators today.
Berlin is expanding its Schönefeld Airport, which is to
become BBI Airport (Berlin-Brandenburg International)
– and which gives us an idea of what the new generation
of airports will look like: functional, modern
industrial architecture, and excellent transport connections
for business travellers, tourists and businesses.
An initial capacity of up to 27 million passengers is
planned for 2012. And, depending on how things progress,
the airport can be expanded to accommodate up
to 45 million passengers. This will enable it to respond
flexibly to varying passenger volumes in the coming
years.
the PReStigiouS teRminal PieR buildingS
Those responsible for building the terminal piers are
drawing on ALPINE’S expertise. In July 2008, ARGE
Bögl/ALPINE, which is part-owned by ALPINE Bau
Deutschland AG, was awarded the contract for building
the shells of the two 350-metre-long north and south
piers. They were erected within the space of a year,
The vast building site at Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport.
from April 2009 to April 2010. The whole BBI project is
due for completion in June 2012.
Apart from the ‘speedy scheduling’, explains Daniel
Gürtler, the construction manager responsible for the
project, it was above all the ‘logistical coordination on
a large-scale building site which presented so many challenges.
The construction of the north and south piers involved
numerous prefabricated steel-reinforced concrete
sections made from class-4 face concrete, as well as a series
of other materials, all of which had to meet the highest
standards.’
eXPeRtS in aiRPoRt ConStRuCtion
New developments in air transport have necessitated
new investments in building infrastructure. Take the
Airbus A380, for example. With a length of 72.3 metres
and a wingspan of 79.8, it is the world’s biggest passenger
aircraft, but it can’t just land at any old airport.
Because of its size, this megajet requires a larger parking
area and additional passenger boarding bridges to
enable swift dispatch.
Years of accumulated experience in the construction of
airports pays off when you have to keep pace with developments
like these. Like Berlin, Frankfurt Airport
fACTS & fIGURES
CONSTRUCTION Of
NORTH AND SOUTH PIERS,
BERLIN-BRANDENBURG
INTERNATIONAL PASSENGER
TERMINAL
Total area of entire terminal complex:
approx. 280,000 sq m
Total area of north and south piers:
each approx. 40,000 sq m
Total interior volume of north and
south piers: 155,000 cu. m
Total height: 14 m
concrete: 28,000 cu. m
Steel: 4,800 t
casing: 140,000 m2
reinforcements: 4,800 t.
Facade: 15,000 sq m
logistics can be especially com-
plex when a building site is the
size of 2,000 football fields – especially
since air traffic is ongoing at
neighbouring Schönefeld Airport.
Ü www.berlin-airport.de

234 orders
are currently
pending for the Airbus
A380.
also turned to ALPINE for help last year; they built a
de-icing facility on the existing airport premises in a
record time of just six months, despite aggravated conditions
caused by access-authorisation restrictions.
neW deVeloPmentS booSt effiCienCY
ALPINE has been building and renovating the runways
at Vienna’s Schwechat Airport for decades. It also tests
new products such as ‘six-hour concrete’ on test sections
and areas of the airport. This specialised concrete
is used for repairing and maintaining air-traffic surfaces
such as taxiways and parking areas.
Normally speaking, concrete requires 28 days to harden.
This is unthinkable in airport construction, where
operating areas can only be closed for short periods
without disrupting air traffic. ‘Specialised concrete
with an accelerated hardening time reaches its final hardness
in six hours, which dramatically reduces construction
time,’ explains Gunter Spitzhütl, the divisional director
of Road Building East. ‘But because six-hour concrete
is much more expensive, and because it can be handled for
just a few minutes before setting, it is only used for smaller
areas.’
the lateSt geneRation of tRanSPoRt
SYStemS
ALPINE-ENERGIE specialises in providing intelligent
traffic systems for airport complexes, such as the lighting
installed on taxiways and runways. At Zeltweg
Military Airport, a lighting system was installed, and
taxiways and parts of the runway were renovated, all
during ongoing air-traffic operations.
Langenlebarn Airfield was also given a new lighting
system. ‘Projects like these demand precision work, since
even the smallest construction error can have fatal consequences,’
points out project director Andreas Krappinger.
SuPeRJumbo a380
The Airbus A380, which is the world’s biggest passenger aircraft, made its
maiden voyage on 27 April 2005. The secret of the A380’s success is its low
weight in proportion to its size: 535 up to a maximum of 853 passengers can
be carried by the aircraft, which weighs a maximum of 560 tons.
To enable this megajet with its 79.5-metre wingspan to land at international
airports, the infrastructure at many of them has had to be upgraded.
In April 2004 Munich became the first european airport to gain approval for
handling the A380-type aircraft. The world’s first scheduled route operated
using the A380 was established in 2007 between Singapore and Sydney
by Singapore Airlines, who also ran the first flights to europe, between
Singapore and london. Five airlines currently use the Airbus A380:
Singapore Airlines, emirates, Qantas, lufthansa and Air France. A total of
30 of these giant airliners are currently in use around the world.
an intelligently planned
airport city can provide an
economic boost to its host city
as well as the whole region.
ChallengeS foR the futuRe
According to Johanna Schlaak of the Centre for Metropolitan
Studies (CMS) at Berlin Technical University,
ensuring that it is not just individual players who profit
from the economic developments at airports and in the
region in general, and ensuring that airports do not become
rivals to town centres, demands ‘global planning
concepts combined with the involvement of local and regional
authorities and interests.’
Anyone involved in the planning, building and expansion
of airports must enter territory surrounded by divergent
interests in business, politics and the local population.
Deregulation and competition face off against
monitoring regulations, environmental stipulations,
and calls for bans on night flights and the reduction of
noise. Forward-looking and feasible overall solutions
are what is required, not just technical innovations. //
25

26 // COMPANY
TANK UP,
DON’T BURN
OUT
KEEP MOVING Sport makes you healthy, happy and stress-resistant. People
who exercise before or after work can reap enormous rewards, both professionally
and in their private lives.
// MelAnIe Müller
Exercise
increases your
ability to adapt
physically and
psychologically
to life’s
challenges.
ho isn’t in awe of them:
the people who get up an
W hour before us to swim
laps of the pool while we toss and
turn in our cosy beds. The people
who, after work, lace up their
trainers to jog in the twilight while
we pull slippers onto our tired feet
and put them up in front of the
telly. We may wave sympathetically
out of the car window as we
overtake drenched cyclists struggling
home from work – but as they
fill their six-pack stomachs with a
second piece of cake at lunch, and
we abstain politely, then we envy
them. Exercise fanatics.
SPoRt aS StReSS-killeR
Envy is not a bad thing if it means
you become active yourself, because
regular exercise brings with
it a whole series of positive effects.
Sport not only keeps you physically
healthy and slim, it also makes you
more stress-resistant, balanced and
happy. This is confirmed by countless
studies. Stamina sports in par-
ticular (running, cycling, swimming,
hiking and so on) lift your
mood and stabilise your psyche in
the long term. There are many reasons
for this. One of them is that
our body produces more ‘happy
hormones’ (endorphins) when exercising,
and breaks down stress
hormones like adrenaline and cortisol
faster and more easily. Exercise
also takes our mind off irritations
and threatening deadlines at
the office, while successfully massaging
our egos.
aVoiding and alleViating
buRnout
Physical activity has proved especially
effective in the prevention
and treatment of depression and
burnout. ‘Sports and exercise can be
compared with a “broad-spectrum
antibiotic” against burnout and as a
preventative and rehabilitative therapy,’
explains university professor
Andrea Paletta, a researcher in
the field at the University of Graz’s
Sports Science Institute. ‘Exercise’s
general physical and psychological
balancing and distractive effect is not
its only preventative benefit. Studies
also show a strengthening of the organism’s
adaptability to physical and
psychological stress situations.’ If you
already suffer from a burnout then
exercise can help you to recover
your vitality, sleep better and relax,
and to rebuild your self-confidence.
It helps you to know your limits,
recognise stress more quickly, and
defend against it. Furthermore, exercise
in groups helps replace despondency
and isolation with a
positive social experience.
teamS not loneRS
An increasing number of companies
are organising sporting activities
for their employees in order to bind
teams together more closely, and
in order to prevent burnouts from
happening in the first place. AL-
PINE is one such company. ‘Activities
of this kind are very useful and can
have a very positive effect on the teams
involved,’ says Michael Pichler,

director of the Recruiting and Personnel
Development Department at
ALPINE – ‘provided, that is, they are
competently organised and sufficiently
deliberated.’
One man who assists ALPINE professionally
with its management
training events is Dr Bernd Hufnagl
of Benefit mobile training und Fitnessberatungs
GmbH. As a physician
with many years of experience
in the field of health management,
he knows how much companies
can benefit from exercise if they
motivate their employees to take it
up. ‘There’s an indirect suggestive effect
which has direct benefits – “We’re
looking after you as our employee,
your health is important to us!” And of
course, the prevention of typical risk
factors caused by a lack of exercise
and stress is crucial.’ Data surveys
by benefit GmbH have also shown
that employees’ ability to perform
and recover can be significantly
improved by this kind of activity.
‘With more equilibrium and physical
fitness, everyone can increase their
personal potential.’
leaRning fRom SPoRt
Sports can also help you to get on
better in your career. It isn’t for
nothing that managers attend seminars
and talks given by top sportspeople.
It’s so that they can glean
tips from the pros. The parallels between
the worlds of sport and business
are many. In both, success
demands talent, but also dedicated
training, mental strength and intelligent
tactics. Successful athletes
develop strategies for remotivating
themselves, formulating clear
objectives, dealing with risks and
coping better with defeats. Managers
can profit from all of this.
Helga Hengge, the first German
woman to conquer Everest, often
delivers talks to managers. She
sees large areas of common ground
shared by mountaineering and
business. ‘A strong team, trust in
your own abilities, stamina, the courage
to take small steps, willpower, endurance,
willingness to take risks and
critical self-evaluation – all of these
help you to get through difficult moments
on the mountain, but also in
life. If despite all of the difficulties you
don’t lose heart, you will always give
your best.’
So put down your pudding spoon,
set your alarm clock and get rid of
those slippers. Or, as Arthur Schopenhauer
once said: ‘The essence of
life is in movement.’ //
5 tips
POST-WOrK WOrKOuT
1
2
3
4
5
find like-minded people and arrange a time and
place to meet – that makes it more difficult to skip
evening training sessions.
go to sports straight from work. If you take an
interim stop on your couch at home, you’re bound
to not go.
set up a rhythm which will gradually become part
of your day. If you get straight out of bed and into
your trainers, sooner or later it will become second
nature.
find a form of exercise you really enjoy. that way
it won’t be such a chore and it will be easier to
summon up the enthusiasm you need.
set yourself clear objectives and keep a record
of your successes. Progress will motivate you
enormously.
27

28 // COMPANY
// AlPIne eMPlOyeeS And
THeIr SPOrTS
Johann doRneR // Group leader, Road Building East
Triathlon (swimming, cycling, running), mountain biking, skiing
I train in the evening between one and three times each week, and when preparing for a race I also go for a run in
the morning. Sometimes I take a break for a few weeks, but sometimes I train for as much as 20 hours a week –
depending on the time of year and the season. // Sport has taught me that you can achieve many things in life.
If you set yourself realistic objectives and believe in them firmly, then your subconscious will make these objectives
into reality.
AIM: I’ve already achieved it: finishing an Ironman. I managed it in under ten hours last year at Klagenfurt.
Ruth WalCh // Assistant, Tyrol branch
Running, mountaineering and trekking, swimming, skiing, tobogganing in winter
When I’m preparing for a race (e.g. half-marathon) I run four times a week for around 3.5–5 hours. At other times
I run for about one hour, two to three times a week, simply because I enjoy exercise. Mountain hikes are mostly
whole-day affairs on the weekend. // I simply need to exercise out of doors, it’s a part of me which I cannot do
without. Regular exercise and outdoor enjoyment is a release of energy which does me good.
AIM: I have been attracted to deserts for several years. It all began with two short trekking tours (Sinai Peninsula,
Morocco), then later I traversed the Taklamakan Desert in western China on foot. My greatest wish would be to
cross the Gobi Desert.
thomaS falleR // Budget & Cost Control manager
Diving, cycling, skiing, tennis
You don’t need to train regularly to dive, but it does demand physical fitness. At the moment I take two or three
days off every month to dive (9–10 dives). Because I am stationed in Singapore, Asia’s best diving areas are within
easy reach. I have completed around 600 dives in total, the deepest of which finished at 65 m. // Diving makes me
happier and calmer. It increases my stress-resistance level, because under water you have to deal with stressful
situations. You also have to learn to consciously relax, because relaxing means you need less air and you remain in
charge of situations.
AIM: My biggest sporting aim is to swim with a great white shark and to dive to more than 100 metres.
PeteR gfReReR // Branch manager for Bulgaria, director of Hydroelectric Power Station Con.
Running
Around 10 km, three or four times a week // You can run anywhere, even abroad; all you need is a pair of trainers.
// It makes me more resilient, more relaxed and calmer. It has also helped me to overcome my weaker side. I have
prepared myself for a marathon four times now, which demands considerable discipline and time management skills.
The mental attitude required for long-distance running helps me to deal with long-term projects; you learn to cope
better with the highs and lows, and you realise that it will eventually come to an end.
AIM: This I have already achieved with the marathons I have completed.
tobiaS SChRamm // Office-based technical support, ALPINE BeMo Tunnelling
Mountain biking, jogging, spinning, skiing, Nordic skiing, mountaineering
One to four times a week // Sport is an absolute necessity for me. With sport you can achieve mental balance and
detachment from the external demands of the day. As well as physical fitness, it also helps regulate your physiological
state. // I am also convinced that sport can influence team building at work. Team spirit among colleagues can be
boosted considerably by joint outings such as company runs, mountain walks and cycle tours, toboggan nights, ski
days and so on.
AIM: Training for a particular aim is a short-term matter. To me it is more important to maintain a good fitness level
over the long term.
kaRin göSChl // Salzburg Call Centre
Cycling, skiing, walking, yoga
As often as time allows // I cycle to work, for instance (around 30 minutes). On the way I take in my surroundings
and it makes me feel awake and fresh, and after work it helps me relax. On the weekends in the warm months of the
year I like to hike and enjoy the countryside in the mountains. In the winter I go on day ski tours in Salzburger Land
and Bavaria. // Regular yoga, at home and in classes, keeps me feeling balanced.
AIM: My aim is to stay fit and full of energy.

eXPats // PInglu
city:intro region:facts
Pinglu is a small Chinese town in the northern Chinese province of
Shanxi. It is near to the larger cities of Shuozhou (approx. 1.5 million
inhabitants) and Datong (approx. 1.4 million inhabitants). The region
boasts enormous coal deposits.
expat:info
AUGUSTIN PIChLER
53 years old // married // two children // trained
as a butcher // attended building-site management
school at Schlüchtern in Germany, graduated in
1981 // working at ALPINE since 1997
expat:life
SO fAR YOU HAVE WORKED IN AUSTRIA, GERMANY, THE USA,
SOUTH KOREA, CHINA, BULGARIA AND GREECE. DID YOU
INTEND TO LEAD SUCH A ‘MOVING’ LIfESTYLE, OR DID IT SIMPLY
HAPPEN THAT WAY? I never actually planned my foreign stays to be
so long, it just turned out that way. I would be training people somewhere
– and two or three months suddenly became two or three years. But
when you’re in a place for that long you can build something up and make
things comfortable for yourself. WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT
WORKING ABROAD? I really enjoy working with all sorts of different
people and passing on what I know. It makes my working day varied, never
boring. WHICH PLACE HAVE YOU LIKED BEST SO fAR?
AND WHERE WERE THE DIffERENCES IN MENTALITY THE
GREATEST? I like it best in the USA. Colorado is beautiful, and after
work we could go skiing. The time I spent in Hawaii was also very enjoyable.
But then again, it is of course exciting to see how much China has
changed over the last 15 years. I’ve built up a very clear picture of how the
country is developing while in China. But it is also there that the mentality
is most different from ours. Individuals dislike taking full responsibility for
decisions. Sometimes things are decided on jointly – but by the next day
everything has changed. It is certainly very different from the straightforward
Austrian way of doing things. HOW DO YOU COMMUNICATE
WITH THE WORKERS? In China I have two or three interpreters with
whom I have been working for more than 10 years. We’ve built up trust to-
Area: 156,800 sq km
Inhabitants: 32,970,000
Population density: 211 people/sq km
Capital: Taiyuan
Demographics: Han (99.68%), Hui, Manchu,
Mongol and Miao
Climate: cold and dry, annual average in the north 5°C,
in the south 15°C
Economy: the Hanging Temple of Hunyuan //
the Yungang Grottoes in Datong // the city of Pingyao
alpine:project
As part of the Shanxi Wanjiazhai Yellow River
Diversion Project, ALPINE is currently working on
a 25.7-km-long water-diversion tunnel in Pinglu,
China. Part of a complex water-transfer project, the
Pinglu Tunnel will enable water to be diverted from
the Yellow River into water-short regions. The
enormous length of the tunnel, coupled with the
unusual properties of the ground, are the greatest
challenges confronting the ALPINE team.
More information about the project: see page 46
gether, they understand my every look and what they have to translate. They have kind of ‘grown up’ with us, they know all of our
procedures and now they’re more like foremen than translators. HOW WELL DO YOU GET TO KNOW A COUNTRY WHEN YOU
WORK THERE? I certainly do like to take a look at the country wherever I am, and I visit the most important sites. In China, for example,
I took an ALPINE group on a long trip along the Silk Road to Mongolia. It really was quite impressive. DO YOUR fAMILY ACCOM-
PANY YOU TO YOUR DIffERENT POSTINGS? Before the children went to school they were always with me. They grew up trilingual
and can speak German, English and Korean. But now the family stays in Austria and only comes to visit me during the holidays. We
tend to be in touch a lot using Skype, so we see each other every day like that. HAS ALL THE EXPERIENCE Of WORKING WITH
DIffERENT NATIONALITIES BENEfITED YOU PERSONALLY, AS WELL? HAS IT MADE YOU CALMER AND MORE
TOLERANT? That, of course, varies from one day to the next! But yes, you do become calmer. And it’s not very easy to upset me,
otherwise I wouldn’t be able to stand this job for very long.

30 // COMPANY
RIGHT IN
THE
NET
INTERNET-BASED PROJECT PLATfORMS International
construction projects are now inconceivable without perfect networking
via the Internet. Virtual project spaces are turning the building
industry upside down, just as CAD did 25 years ago. We take a look
behind the scenes at a technology which has to operate 365 days a year.
// Jörg geIger
hen the opening match
of the European Football
W Championship kicks off
in Warsaw on 8 June 2012 there will
be 55,000 people in the stadium
and millions of people watching the
game live on television in around
200 countries. Ensuring that everything
runs perfectly on the big
day is a consortium made up of
ALPINE-PBG and the Polish building
company Hydrobudowa, who
together are responsible for constructing
the new national stadium
in Warsaw. It’s a big challenge: in
just two years they are to build one
of the world’s most advanced football
stadiums for a sum of 300 million
euros. But just as modern as the
stadium itself is the way the con-
struction project is being managed,
using the Internet-based project
platform ‘think project!’. Although
it may sound complicated, for those
involved it simplified many things.
There are no lengthy software installations
to confront, nor any specialised
hardware. Users are given a
link which they open in a browser;
Internet Explorer or Firefox is
all you need to access the virtual
project spaces. The platform is accessible
24 hours a day since it runs
on a high-performance computer
centre. But what does an Internetbased
project platform involve exactly?
And how does it perform?
Here’s the match report:
1:0 — inteRnational team
Computer technology is today as
much a natural part of construction
projects as diggers, helmets and
concrete. But IT infrastructure is
especially important for large-scale
international projects like the football
stadium in Warsaw, and it is in
such megaprojects where this kind
of technology really comes into
its own. The project platform goes
one nil up with its international
scope alone. Its multilingual interface
comes straight into play from
the first whistle. ‘It doesn’t matter
whether you’re an engineer from Austria
or Poland, each can operate the
interface in his or her own native language,’
explains Thomas Ensinger,

WARSAW NATIONAL STADIUM
SPECTATOR CAPACITY: 55,000
SITE AREA: 400,000 SQ M
CONSTRUCTION PERIOD: 2009–2011
engineer at ALPINE and expert in
Internet-based project platforms.
2:0 — foRmation
Internet-based project platforms
score yet again because of their
structure. People involved in the
project no longer have to exchange
and compare emails and documents;
instead, all of the documents
land up in a single pool,
since all of the project’s data, plans,
material lists, correspondence with
clients and other relevant data are
managed centrally on the platform.
Even pictures and printed documents,
such as letters from the authorities,
can be scanned in and
electronically stored. ‘It certainly
saves a lot of storage space,’ explains
Ensinger. ‘We used to have to email a
plan to 30 recipients, whereas today
we simply upload it onto the project
platform and everyone helps themselves
to the single copy.’ One pleasant
side-effect is an integral textbased
search function similar to
Google, which helps you locate any
documents you need.
3:0 — diSCiPline
The next shot is played with particular
style. A project platform encourages
disciplined work. A wellthought-out
project structure is a
prerequisite which first needed defining.
But after that, nobody needs
to worry about authorisation any
more. From the first day on there
is a clear organisational structure
which encompasses all of the project
members across all the different
companies. User-defined management
rules are stored in the system,
which ensures they are adhered to.
This allows projects to be organised
and managed more effectively. The
platform offers ways of systemising
the thousands of documents
involved so that you retain an overview.
For instance, numerical codes
can be assigned to documents, thus
enabling the plans of particular
sections to be clearly identified. A
history function allows older versions
of a document to be opened,
while the standard view continues
to display the latest version.
4:0 — fitneSS
Like cup competitions, the building
industry has its own particular
set of rules. A project platform
takes that into account and enables
established processes to be depicted
with precision. There are predesigned
modules for this which
companies like ALPINE use for their
projects. Yet unlike the buildings
themselves, the structure of the
platform is never set in stone. New
modules can be added at any time,
and existing ones can be extended
or replaced. This allows specialists
like Ensinger to optimise processes
wherever needed, to standardise
working procedures and, at the end
of the day, to save time and money.
4:1 — SPeed
For the Internet-based projectplanning
system to work properly,
a fast Internet connection is
required by everyone involved,
something which needs to be taken
into consideration from day one.
Thomas Ensinger explains: ‘We work
with Telekom to identify the ideal locations
for our project offices so that
we have the fastest data transfer rates.
If the Internet access is of the standard
we’re used to, then we can work
worldwide. It doesn’t make any difference
whether team members are
in Salzburg, Warsaw or – as they are
now – in Singapore.’
5:1 — tight defenCe
One very important aspect is data
privacy. Who is allowed to read and
edit what data? This problem can
be solved very easily using an Internet-based
platform. Instead of
managing complex access rights,
the confidentiality level is set within
the correspondence itself. The
simple principle is that the sender
and recipient of a message are the
only ones who can access it and any
associated information or files. Nobody
sees what they are not supposed
to see. Users can, however,
make all of the information available
to all of the project members
if they want, although even then
there is the option of restricting
particular documents so that they
are only accessible to the sender
and recipient.
neXt Round
Internet-based project platforms
like think project! always come
out winners. Some of the hot new
trends which we will see in the
coming rounds are mobile access to
the project space – with a Blackberry,
for instance. On top of that,
an increasing number of standards
will be organised using forms,
such as management applications,
change management and so on. //
Ü www.thinkproject.at
31

32 // LIVING SPACES
When
icebergs
INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT Why our cultural background prevents
an impartial view of all things foreign – and what active integration can do
for companies and employees.
// clAudIA rIedMAnn
W
hy did the team’s performance
drop when the
bonus system was introduced?
Why was the building
not finished by the agreed deadline?
And why does a colleague always
say ‘Yes, of course’ when he or
she actually means ‘No’? Whether
working abroad or together with
colleagues from other countries,
we have to be aware that values and
preconceptions differ from one culture
to the next.
in foReign ClimeS
One person who experiences this
on a daily basis is Herbert Oberneder.
A construction manager from
Germany, since January 2009 he
has worked on the large-scale
ALPINE construction site for the
Petrom S.A. complex in Bucharest.
It is a challenging undertaking:
‘The different attitudes came
out right at the beginning. Hierarchies
are pronounced in Romania.
At the beginning we found it difficult
because the workers there would
only ever accept instructions from the
very top.’ Today things are different
– because since then they have
done things like playing football together,
and they have learnt from
each other. The company’s inter-
collide
nal training scheme, called ‘Bauen
im Ausland’ or Building Abroad,
which Oberneder and 11 of his colleagues
attended, helped a lot. It is
a six-month course which prepares
building and project managers for
international projects.
‘Experienced project managers gave
us a lot of food for thought, which
helps now when unusual situations
arise,’ says his colleague Michael
Günther, who for almost two years
had been the chief site manager
building a bridge over the Danube
near Beška in Serbia. In one instance
the earthworks had not been
done properly. Because nobody felt
responsible, nobody was interested
in finding a speedy solution. ‘What
you have to realise is that a lot of
things here are communicated at the
gut level, and that Serbians are proud
people. You have to get the workers focused
on a solution which benefits the
project, but without them or you losing
face. That requires creative ideas,’
says Günther.
CultuRal iCebeRgS
According to surveys, two thirds of
global collaborations and many foreign
postings are terminated prematurely.
In one of its surveys, the
consultancy Deloitte names three
primary reasons for this: integration
difficulties for families (93%)
and for expatriates (70%), and
business problems (73%). But what
is it that makes intercultural understanding
so difficult? One theoretical
explanation is put forward
by the Iceberg Model, according to
which only 10–20% of a culture is
visible above the surface of the water
– things like language, food and
drink, and music. A much greater
proportion remains hidden beneath
the surface, things like beliefs, attitudes
and customs. It is these differences
which usually cause us so
much trouble when dealing with
others.
Many of the things we take for
granted in our own cultural sphere
are not necessarily so self-evident
in other countries. Austrians
and Germans, for example, like to
communicate via email, whereas
their colleagues in eastern- and
southern-European countries tend
to reach first for the telephone. ‘A
Slovak might well disregard a very angry
email from a German colleague
because he does not see it as the escalation
of a conflict,’ explains Peter
Majerčík, consultant at ICUnet.
AG. This German-based company

LANGUAGE
MUSIC
SYMBOLS
Integration means accepting people
from other cultures, respecting them,
and helping them to develop and
unfold. foreign cultures are an enrichment
and opportunity for companies.
has an office in Vienna and prepares
around 4,500 specialists and managers
for international cooperation
each year.
ReCiPe foR SuCCeSS?
theRe iSn’t one!
BEhAVIOUR
GREETINGS
ART
hEROES
BELIEFS
SPORT
How should I plan my time? How
should I keep the right distance?
How should I respond to conflicts?
Questions like these are part of
potential analyses and intercultural
training. ‘Our task is to make people
sensitive to the issues. The first step is
for them to recognise themselves and
become aware of their leadership style
and the way they are with other
colleagues,’ says Majerčík. He also
conveys basic knowledge about the
other country and its business
conventions. According to Deloitte,
FOOD AND DRINK
TRADITION
VALUES
ARChITECTURE
CONVENTIONS RELIGION
ATTITUDES
PhILOSOPhIES
UPBRINGING
72% of German companies provide
intercultural training for the staff
they send to other countries – and
63% do the same for their business
partners. Often what they need is
practical help with visas, finding
accommodation and moving house.
What is also important is to support
workers in the host country, and to
re-integrate them when they
return, since many returnees feel
out of place when they come back.
‘There’s no one recipe for success
when you’re dealing with a foreign
culture. What is important is to give
people the tools.’ This is according to
Christian Neumann of ALPINE
BeMo Tunnelling GmbH. He uses
his almost 40 years of experience to
manage tunnel projects in the
United Kingdom and the USA, and
Top of iceberg:
ARTEFACTS
The first things
we perceive
about a foreign
culture
Bottom of iceberg:
MENTEFACTS
What we do not
perceive: the
cultural motives
which explain why
things are the way
they are.
» SMALLTALK«
VASILIKI
PAPAECONOMOU
25 years old // structural
engineer // AlPIne trainee since
September 2009 // currently
works at: large-scale building site
for a shopping centre in vienna
You’re in a foreign country, a
woman on a building site – don’t
you feel doubly out of place?
That’s nothing unusual for me. In
Greece there are many female civil
engineers and you see a lot of
women on building sites, as well. In
Austria, however, I’m always being
asked why I chose this profession.
33
What do you particularly like –
and what do you miss?
As a trainee I can snoop around in
the most important areas, which is
great! I love the team spirit and the
organisation – tasks here are clearly
defined. But I miss the sun, the sea,
the food and the mentality of the
Greeks. Every day is full of surprises
there.
What do you consider to be
the key to working in another
country?
Anyone who goes abroad has to be
open to its people and its culture.
you also have to adapt to the way
people work in your host country.
After all, things aren’t suddenly
going to change just because
somebody comes along from
outside.

34 // LIVING SPACES
only some of the
values, conventions and
basic assumptions which
go to make up the cultural
identity of an individual
can be seen.
in demand // the ReaSonS
behind the ChildRen’S leaRning
Club
Several times a week, the 1. Simmeringer Sportclub
in vienna offers a learning club for children, supported
by AlPIne. The children, aged between six and
14, do their homework, prepare for tests and get extra
help or german lessons where needed. Obmann Mirko
Sraihans explains: ‘The learning club consists of a team
of 11, working with around 200 children and young
teenagers, of which 90% are from immigrant
families. We wanted to help these children to learn
german, which is where the idea for the learning club
came from. These children now do consistently
better in school, which makes us very proud!’
to facilitate the global transfer of
expertise. ‘In the USA, where
individualism and masculine
behaviour are very much at the fore,
using the New Austrian Tunnelling
Method is bound to lead to conflict.
This is because, in the tunnel itself,
decisions must be made fast but by
team consensus,’ explains Neumann.
In order to recognise potential
conflicts at an early stage he
recommends models such as the
one proposed by Hofstede, which
visualises cultural differences using
five ‘cultural dimensions’ such as
individualism/collectivism and
femininity/masculinity.
ReSPeCt iS the keY
Petrom City in Bucharest A team on location
Multinational corporations are well
advised to invest in intercultural
understanding. It saves money,
reduces risk in foreign projects and
international collaborations, and
helps business ventures to succeed.
But working successfully with
people from different cultures also
requires that the atmosphere inside
the company is right. Only in a
corporate culture characterised by
respect and mutual appreciation
will employees’ different abilities
and talents flourish. People need to
be treated as partners regardless of
gender, age, origin and religion.
Integration means understanding
diversity as an opportunity, and
promoting it. In order to strengthen
professional and personal exchange
between employees from different
countries, ALPINE offers internal
trainee schemes. Its activities also
include language courses, intercultural
training, and support for
integration initiatives such as the
learning club for children from
immigrant families organised by
Vienna’s 1. SC Simmering football
club. There is one essential
ingredient to promoting understanding
between peoples, and that
is a willingness to accommodate
others. You don’t need to look far
afield to recognise that. Intercultural
understanding begins in your
own family … //

inSightS
PAGE 30
REGIONAL
SPORTS
Swinging is an established
sport in Estonia, where it is
known as KIIKING. Performance
is measured by the
height of the swing with
which you manage at least
one complete rollover. The
world record of 7.02 m is
held by Andrus Aasamäe.
One of Turkey’s national
sports is OIL WRESTLING,
in which the wrestlers smear
themselves from head
to toe with olive oil in order
to make it more difficult for
their opponents to apply
holds and locks.
In Finland there is an
annual WORLD WOMAN-
CARRYING CHAMPION-
SHIP at which the men
must carry their female
co-contestants as quickly
as possible across a
250-metre-long obstacle
course.
PAGE 40
VIRTUAL WATER
Virtual water refers to the water which is needed to produce different products.
The idea is to reveal water consumption levels, such as the amount of water
required to rear an animal.
1 rose — 5 litres of water
1 cup of coffee — 140 litres of water
1 kg rice — 3,000-5,000 litres of water
1 pair of jeans — 6,000 litres of water
1 kg beef — 16,000 litres of water (80 bathtubs)
23 mm
PAGE 36
The ideal length of grass
depends on the sport being played
on it. On the pitch in the Allianz
Arena in Munich, the grass has a
length of 23 mm. The ideal length
of a blade of grass at Wimbledon is
8 mm. Grass on the golf course at
St Andrews is a mere 4 mm long.
Generally speaking, the smaller
the ball the shorter the grass.
AuSTrIAn cOFFee-
HOuSe SPecIAlITIeS
PAGE 20
PAGE 46
Sunken village
MOKKA: Mocha – black coffee similar to espresso
KLEINER BRAUNER: A single mocha with milk or coffee cream in a small cup
GROSSER BRAUNER: Double mocha with coffee cream in a big cup
KLEINER SCHWARzER/KLEINER MOKKA: Single mocha in a small cup
GROSSER SCHWARzER/GROSSER MOKKA: Double mocha in a big cup
VERLäNGERTER: A mocha prepared using double the amount of water
EINSPäNNER: Large mocha in a glass with a handle, served with whipped cream
WIENER MELANGE: Mocha with foamed milk in a big cup
KAPUzINER: Black coffee with a shot of liquid whipping cream
HäfERLKAffEE: Filter coffee in an Austrian mug, served with plenty of milk
MARIA THERESIA: Mocha with a shot of orange liqueur
KAISERMELANGE: Mocha served with egg yolk, and also honey and brandy/Cognac
PHARISäER: Black coffee with whipped cream and rum
fIAKER: Large mocha in a glass served with lots of sugar and a shot of Slivovitz or rum
EISKAffEE WIENER ART: Coffee ice-cream made from egg yolks, cream and coffee with whipped cream
MAzAGRAN: Cold, sweetened coffee with crushed ice and brandy/Cognac
The mfi award for ‘Art in Buildings’ has existed
since 2002, carries a prize of €50,000, and is awarded
every two years. This renowned award aims
to draw attention to the importance of art in
buildings. In 2009 it was awarded to Timm Ulrich’s
architectural structure ‘Sunken Village’, a work which
was created in conjunction with the building of the
Allianz Arena in Munich.

36 // TECHNOLOGY
Geothermal
energy is not
actually
renewable, but
the heat within
our planet will
remain for
millions of years
to come without
being exhausted.
HOT
STUFF
RENEWABLE ENERGY Everyone is talking about sustainability, one exciting
aspect of which is geothermal energy. It holds enormous potential and will be available
for millions of years to come.
// MIcHAelA HOceK
I
f we were to live just a
few metres beneath the
earth’s surface, we would
be without our favourite subject of
small talk. No heatwaves to moan
about. No cold spells to freeze the
fingers. Down there, a constant
10–12 degrees Celsius prevails. Not
exactly a kind environment for humans,
but these are ideal conditions
for heating up tubes containing
a brine solution (water–glycol
mixture). The product of this process
is geothermal energy and it is
extracted using a heat exchanger.
The principle works along the lines
of a reverse refrigerator and allows
buildings to regulate their own climate
– either heating or cooling,
depending on weather conditions.
Potential beneath ouR feet
The amount of geothermal energy
in world supply is still very small,
but it is rapidly gaining in significance.
In Iceland’s Reykjavik, for
instance, around 90% of all houses
are connected to a geothermal hotwater
system. According to geolo-
gists, heat from the earth could
replace up to three conventional
thermal power plants in Austria.
In his 2007 thesis, Thomas Zell argues
that 1.2% of Germany’s total
surface area is technically useable
and available (i.e. undeveloped,
not a water-protection area and so
on). So, there is enough potential
beneath our feet to make it worth
exploiting. Efficient thermal-heat
pumps emit about three quarters of
the energy they capture; the rest is
used to run them. Owning a working
system means being independent
of fluctuating oil and gas prices
and politically motivated gas bottlenecks
– an advantageous position
indeed.
Clean futuRe
‘Old but reliable’ takes on a whole
new meaning when it comes to geothermal
energy. Although it originated
five billion years ago, it will
still be there for later generations,
practically without limit. Although
it doesn’t renew itself, the residual
heat released during the earth’s
formation is sufficient to make our
living and work environments resource-
and climate-friendly for
millions of years to come. The range
of applications for clean energy is
extremely diverse. Projects completed
to date range from family
houses and entire settlements, to
heating transport surfaces like runways
and railway tracks. Sometimes
chance comes into play, as
well. If people had not drilled for oil
in the Austrian municipality of Bad
Waltersdorf, geothermal energy
may not have taken off so soon in
Austria. Instead of black gold, a hot
spring gushed forth with which the
community has heated its schools,
thermal baths and tourist facilities
to this day.
lateSt teChnologY
In recent years, ALPINE-ENERGIE
has strengthened its commitment
to geothermal probe field drilling,
alongside its photovoltaic and
wind-farm divisions. Advanced
equipment is used and advice is
given on performance and legal pa-

ameters in order to identify the
ideal solution for each project. The
Geothermal Division has been operative
since January 2008, serving
private, commercial and industrial
sectors in new-building and refurbishment
projects. After establishing
requirements, soil constitution
and a heat-source concept, completion
of the geothermal installation
can get underway. The end result
is an effective system, from the
tip of the probe all the way to the
power outlets in the building.
thRiftY timeS
Reducing energy costs has become
an ever-present concern.
Whether in the media, the boardroom
or at home, saving is certainly
in fashion, especially given
the all-pervasive economic crisis.
Pair saving with environmental
gain and you’ve hit the jackpot, as
Wirtschaftsbetrieb Mainz did with
its sewage treatment plant. The
probe field there has been in operation
since late 2009 – after just
CREDENTIALS
eight weeks of construction. The
newly constructed administrative
building required 33 bore holes at
a depth of 150 metres each, with a
total of 1,580 metres of connecting
lines between probes and distributor
shaft. These impressive figures
only hint at the geological challenge
that is the Mainz basin – a challenge
tackled with enthusiasm by
ALPINE-ENERGIE from the ground
to the installations room. //
The Styrian
thermal-spring
region, the
Upper- and
Lower-Austrian
Molasse Basin
and the Vienna
Basin are all particularly
well
suited geologically
to the harnessing
of geothermal
energy.
ALPINE-ENERGIE’s expertise encompasses the most diverse applications, and it
is driving sustainability on a variety of levels and dimensions, including efficient
time management and regulatory know-how.
TECHNICAL COLLEGE IN SAXONY-ANHALT The newly built canteen and
auditorium reduce annual energy costs by half.
MAINz SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT The new administrative building
was built in eight weeks despite challenging geological conditions.
LINDLAR ACADEMY Lang AG’s new training facility was equipped with a
total of 8,815 metres of probes.
BETzENWEILER MULTIPURPOSE HALL This large-scale project benefits
the municipality thanks to optimised running costs for energy.
37

38 // TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY ARGE Unstruttalbrücke, which is part-owned by ALPINE, is building what
is about to become Germany’s second-longest railway bridge between Erfurt and Leipzig.
A project of superlatives – not least because of its 770-ton formwork carriage, which has
enabled exceptional progress.
// MelAnIe Müller
E
fASTER
HIGHER
fURTHER
ndless fields of arable land, lush fruit orchards,
but also steep limestone slopes and
a difficult Buntsandstein foundation. Steffen
Lohmann’s mission in the Unstruttal valley, which
he has to accomplish by mid 2012, ‘is set in the middle
of extraordinary countryside,’ says the ALPINE project
manager, who is on-site every day. And in many
other ways the bridge-building project in Karsdorf, a
community in the Burgenlandkreis region of southern
Saxony-Anhalt, is anything but ordinary: ‘With a total
length of 2.67 km, we are building the second-longest railway
bridge in Germany for Deutsche Bahn,’ says Lohmann.
ARGE Unstruttalbrücke (a joint venture between
ALPINE Deutschland and Berger Bau) is to build this
two-track prestressed-concrete box-girder bridge,
which will form an integral part of the new, 123-kmlong
VDE 8.2 Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle line.
The design (see right, ‘Prestressed-concrete box-girder
bridge’) was chosen because of the enormous length
and width of the bridge. The distance between each
pillar is 58 metres. Prestressed concrete is now standard
for large span widths, and the cavity running along
inside the bridge also has structural advantages.
a foReSt of PillaRS
In total, 41 pillars will keep the Unstruttal bridge
standing tall. In order to give the slim bridge additional
stability, additional arches are incorporated along the
45-metre-high array of pillars: ‘The four arches, which
jut out sideways beyond the normal pillars, stabilise the
bridge lengthways and sideways,’ explains Lohmann,
‘so it won’t start to shake in a crosswind.’ Again, there
are enormous spans involved: each reinforced concrete
arch stretches over 100 metres. At present the team is
right on track: 35 pillars are in place and the third of
four arches is almost complete.

adVanCed SuPPoRt foR long bRidgeS
So how on earth does a 45-metre-high, 2.67-km-long
bridge get built? The work could be done with a support
structure built from the ground up. ‘However, this
solution is only viable for bridges up to 250 metres long.
That type of scaffold would have to be taken down and reassembled
continually,’ points out Rene Kirsch, ALPINE’s
appointed construction manager. For bridges this long
you need a formwork carriage. ‘This is a structure that
allows the pre-assembled formwork of a deck section to be
moved forward step by step. Then that section of the bridge
can be built there on-site,’ says Kirsch. In this case it is a
71-metre-long, 770-ton structure which makes its way
bit by bit – that is, section by section – through the
valley.
a total of 46 deck
sections are
gradually assembled.
The formwork carriage was supplied by the specialist
Norwegian company Strukturas AS. They were able to
adapt the product to the requirements of the construction
project. The carriage was then purchased by AL-
PINE – a rented formwork carriage would never have
stood up to the challenge. The formwork carriage arrived
unassembled, neatly packed into its 20 containers.
‘After six weeks we had managed to put the steel puzzle
together,’ recounts Lohmann with a laugh. They then
hauled the beast into place using cranes.
PReStReSSed ConCRete boX-giRdeR bRidge
PRaCtiCe makeS PeRfeCt
With this construction method the bridge deck is not a slab or beam but
rather a hollow box (see cross section). This design is used particularly for
long spans and curved routes. It is characterised by considerable flexural
and torsional rigidity, which makes it particularly stable and allows for a slim
bridge profile.
The formwork carriage helps progress enormously. By
constantly repeating the same operation, the team is
steadily becoming more efficient. ‘With every section of
concreting we are confronted with the same lengths, loads
and requirements,’ says Kirsch. ‘A routine is developed. In
the beginning we needed three weeks to complete each deck
section, now we can do it in 14 days.’ After completing a
58-metre section the experts move the formwork carriage
one stretch along. This hydraulic process moves at
a speed of ten metres per hour. Rollers are used in order
to minimise resistance and damage. According to
Kirsch, ‘the material wear would be too great using conventional
Teflon plates.’
Section by section this gigantic bridge makes its way
from west to east, extending a spectacular arc across
the Unstrut valley. Passengers will be able to appreciate
the view from up high from 2015 onwards, after the
entire new VDE 8.2 Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle line has been
completed. //
39
Through a
process of
repetition, the
formwork
carriage allows
for greater
efficiency.

.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow
40
Vienna
//
CITY PORTRAIT
OLD & NEW Royal capital of the Habsburgs, centre of the Imperial and Royal
Monarchy, and birthplace of Jugendstil – in no other city is the past so alive as it
is in Vienna, the city on the Danube. Yet behind the historical facade the city is
vibrant, new things come about, traditional is transformed into contemporary,
and new life is breathed into the bygone.
// rOSI dOrudI
v
ienna knows four past tenses:
the imperfect, the past,
the past perfect and the
golden age,’ stated Hans Weigel, one
of Vienna’s legendary coffee-house
authors. Indeed, with its twothousand-year
history, in which
the city was foremost a centre of
power, Vienna has lost none of its
historic ambience – and the Viennese
like to make the most of it.
What could be lovelier than strolling
through the imposing grounds
of Schönbrunn Palace, which witnessed
the beginning of its golden
age under Maria Theresa and
reached its heyday under the celebrated
‘Sisi’, Empress Elisabeth.
Nowadays the locals come here to
jog or stroll, surrounded by crowds
of tourists amid the starkly symmetrical
baroque garden, then
make their way up the slope to the
Gloriette where they sweeten their
view of the castle and the city with
a Melange coffee and a warm apple
strudel.

Vienna is a city to discover on foot.
The old town teems with baroque
architectural masterpieces. Palaces,
churches, fountains and monuments
from the period are to be
found at almost every turn. You
can feel transported back in time as
you stroll down a narrow cobbled
side street, whose walls echo with
the clatter of the horse-drawn carriages
that elicit the imperial past
for tourists. There are picturesque
views wherever the eye settles –
idyllic courtyards, fantastic fountains,
dreamlike piazzas. Vienna is
truly an open-air museum of cultural
history.
»Vienna has many
landmarks and all
viennese people
consider themselves
as such.«
Karl Kraus
The city’s most important landmark
and reference point, the Stephansdom
or St Stephen’s Cathedral,
towers over the medieval city. Its
giant bell, the Pummerin, was cast
from smelted cannonballs left behind
after the Turkish siege. Traditionally
the bell sounds in the new
year. Adolf Loos, the Austrian architect
and theoretician of the Viennese
Modern Age professed the
cathedral to have ‘the most beautiful
inner space’ and ‘the most solemn
church interior’ in the world.
Others would claim the honour
of Vienna’s finest interior for the
American Bar, designed by Loos in
1908. It measures 4.4 × 6 × 4.1 metres
inside, and is given its turnof-the-century
flair by carefully
placed mirrors, mahogany, leather,
onyx and marble. Loos’s creation
makes drinking in a bar a social
pastime for daydreamers and night
revellers alike. Even the drinks become
works of art on the opaque,
back-lit glass tables.
»To the age its art,
to art its freedom’.«
INCREDIBLE VIENNA
The public conveniences on Graben Street proudly bear
the title of oldest underground lavatory in the
world. Built in 1905, it now has protected status and is
the last remaining Jugendstil lavatory in Vienna.
Vienna has several ski lifts; the most famous, at the
Hohe Wand Wiese slope, is 380 metres long. The first
parallel-slalom event in skiing history was held there in
1967, and in 1968, a Ski World Cup race.
The current colour of the most loved of Viennese
palaces is known as ‘Schönbrunn Yellow’. However,
when it was built, Schönbrunn Palace was actually pink.
This motto (‘der Zeit ihre Kunst – der
Pop singer Falco got his own street in the 22nd district
Kunst ihre Freiheit’) is displayed in
in 2009: falcogasse is 250 metres long and is actually
golden letters beneath the dome of
a pedestrian street.
the Vienna Secession, and to this
very day Vienna’s citizens have
A small herd of Pinzgauer mountain goats lives on
clung to it. A swinger’s club in the
the grassy ash and slag mounds of the Florisdorf waste
Secession, naked choreography at
depot. In the 1990s, when the city was seeking to refute
the Tanzquartier, and a rear-end
the dangers of the dump, they came across a vet looking
big enough to walk through in the
for a place to keep the endangered animals. Their popula-
MuseumsQuartier – Vienna’s art
tion has since stabilised thanks to their new home on the
scene is alive and well, always en-
rubbish heaps of Vienna.
suring lively debate. The MuseumsQuartier
itself was the cause of
Source: Kurioses Wien by Harald Havas, Metroverlag 2010
heated discussion in its time, yet
the controversy has since abated
and the MQ has become an indispensable
institution. It’s not
just museum-goers who visit: the ALPINE PROJECTS
60,000-square-metre cultural area
also functions as an urban space, a Maimonides Centre +++ hoch 2 Plus 2 building +++
shopping centre and a leisure area. Kornhäusl Villa restoration +++ Vienna Central
Designer shops and galleries sit side Station +++ Molkereistrasse student residence
by side with cultural offices and
(Passivhaus-certified) +++ Wilhelmkaserne resi-
trendy pubs.
dential development +++ U2 underground extension
(Messe/Donauspital) +++ Freudenau harbour
It is thanks to the MQ that the dis- gate +++ Praterstern railway station flying roof
tricts of Mariahilf (6th district) and
<
The Vienna MQ
41

42 // CITY PORTRAIT
1,687,271
inhabitants
41,487 ha
area
136.5 km
length of city
boundary
151 m
lowest point
(Lobau)
543 m
highest point
(hermannskogel)
Neubau (7th district) are now the
trendy destinations they have become.
Vienna’s lohas (‘lifestyle of
health and sustainability’) have
taken up residence right behind the
museum complex, on the Spittelberg,
which was known previously
as the notorious ‘burlap district’
before it gained its upmarket leisure
reputation. Organic is the buzzword,
and Vienna’s most prominent
market, the Naschmarkt, has
latched onto the trend. On Fridays
and Saturdays, small farm producers
from Vienna’s surrounding areas
sell their organic produce to the lohas.
Shopping for heritage vegetables
is, after all, part of getting on.
Organic alongside
kosher
Near to the Naschmarkt, where a
gourmet paradise has grown up
alongside the fruit and vegetable
stalls, a new boom is underway in
the area around Karmeliter market.
Organic market stalls, kosher
butcheries, Turkish vegetable sellers
and small restaurants give it a
multicultural atmosphere. But it
is the area’s Jewish history that is
most present: in 1624, Emperor Ferdinand
II evicted all Jews from the
city centre and relocated them to
the Lower Werd – today’s Karmeliter
district. In the 19th century, as
Jewish life blossomed, the second
Viennese residential district became
known as the Matzo Island
(Mazzesinsel). It was here that Sigmund
Freud went to school, Arnold
Schönbrunn Palace St Stephen’s Cathedral
Schönberg lived, and Joseph Roth
wrote some of his most beautiful
works.
The district has since begun a process
of gentrification. First it was
the students, then the artists, and
finally the bobos (bourgeois bohemians)
who discovered the area and
settled into their converted lofts.
ALPINE also played a significant
role in the second district’s appreciation:
with 35,000 cubic metres
of reinforced concrete, 4,700 tons
of reinforcement, 40,500 square
metres of formwork, 22,000 square
metres of diaphragm wall, 2,700
metres of piles and 120 construction
workers, ALPINE extended the
U2 underground line beneath the
Danube Canal, diagonally across
Vienna’s second district all the way
to the Praterstadion. Of course,
improved accessibility means that
living and working in the area is
now a more attractive prospect.
Hence ‘Viertel Zwei’ (District Two),
a large-scale project currently underway
for which ALPINE constructed
the office buildings, one of
which presented a particular challenge
due to its height of 85 metres
and crescent-shaped footprint. The
entire project complex consists of
four office buildings, one hotel and
a residential building, and is set to
be completed by the end of 2010.
So Vienna is looking forward as well
as back – all the more so with the
construction of a new central railway
station (ALPINE is involved
through ARGE) on the site of the
Big wheel at Prater
Heldenplatz and Hofburg
old Südbahnhof (Southern Station).
This is not only set to make
the Austrian capital an ultramodern
transport hub, but will also give it a
completely new district.
Vienna –
worth living,
worth loving
Vienna is a city of waltzes and Jugendstil,
coffee-house culture and
horse-drawn carriages, vineyards
and Heuriger wine taverns, opera
balls and new year concerts, boys’
choirs and Lipizzaners, schnitzel
and Sachertorte. But it also a modern
metropolis. Even more importantly,
Vienna is worth living and
worth loving. After coming first
last year, Vienna was once again
nominated the world’s best city to
live in by the 2010 Mercer Report,
which compared 221 cities around
the globe.
Yet despite yielding to the winds
of time – and to star architects like
Zaha Hadid, Dominique Perrault,
Jean Nouvel and Coop Himmelb(l)au
– the Viennese love tradition,
and there would be nothing more
un-Viennese than feeling compelled
to be modern. //

inSightS
PAGE 10
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been working since 2004 on
a set of guidelines for corporate social responsibility, under the chairmanship of Brazil
and Sweden. These guidelines aim to define what constitutes corporate social responsibility
(CSR) and how CSR can be put into practice. Around 400 experts from 91 countries have
worked on the draft for the ISO 26000 standard, which is to be approved before the end of
2010. This standard will not be certifiable, it aims purely to provide orientation and offer
recommendations.
aiR Challenge
For decades, the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing and its European
counterpart Airbus have been battling it out for supremacy in the skies. Airbus’s mighty
A380, the biggest passenger aircraft of all time, was countered in 2007 by Boeing
with its smaller but highly versatile 787 Dreamliner – the first commercial
aircraft to be built mainly out of carbon composites. In the 1960s Boeing
developed the legendary Boeing 747, also known informally as
the Jumbo Jet, which was, at the time, the world’s largest passenger
aircraft.
PAGE 22
PAGE 14 PAGE 32
Giants
The highest dam in
the world is in Tajikistan:
completed in 1980,
the Nurek dam is 300
m high.
The world’s longest
dam is 224 km long:
the Chapetón dam in
Argentina.
Completed in 2006, the
Three Gorges Dam in
China holds the record
for the most powerful
hydroelectric power
plant on earth.
MUST SEE
VIENNA
PAGE 40
Schönbrunn Palace
Schönbrunn zoo
Albertina
Museum of Art History
Belvedere
Vienna Big Wheel
Sisi Museum
Imperial Apartments
Silver Chamber
Natural History Museum
Hofburg
St Stephen’s Cathedral
Danube Tower
sIgn
langUage
A thumb extended upwards means ’everything’s OK’
in Europe, the USA and Latin America, especially Brazil,
while in some Islamic countries it denotes an obscenity.
// In Bulgaria and parts of Greece and India, shaking
the head means ‘yes’ – as opposed to the Western meaning.
// As a sign of respect, many Africans avoid eye
contact when talking to parents or superiors; in North
America and most of Europe this would be considered
inappropriately shy or even dishonest. // Sticking out
your tongue is a sign of disgust in northern Europe,
and an insult if done to somebody else. In Tibet, however,
it is an expression of deference and respect.

44 // INNOVATION
SECOND
SKIN
INNOVATION The outer layer of a building is more than just a protection against the weather.
It is a dynamic interface between the inside and the outside worlds. Innovative technologies
are now giving building shells an intelligence of their own.
// MelAnIe Müller
T
he building shell of the future is a living thing.
It is intelligent and responds autonomously to
heat and cold, light and darkness, noise and
quiet. Inside, conditions are always ideal for the inhabitants.
A building’s shell is, so to speak, its second skin.
In fact, nature is the foremost example when it comes
to developing new facade technologies, since it always
succeeds in adapting to changes in environment.
Simple protection against wind and precipitation is no
longer enough. Over the years, the demands which
buildings and their skins must meet have grown. Today’s
facade has to fulfil a wide range of economic, architectural
and ecological functions – while maintaining
its own unique aesthetic appearance. The aim is to
encourage a dynamic exchange between the building
and its environment, creating a habitat – and not just
a cavity.
Regulating eneRgY
Nowadays the hot issue is always a facade’s energy efficiency.
And indeed, things have come a long way
when it comes to heat insulation: double and triple
glazing is an outstanding insulator and reduces the loss
of energy enormously. What is more challenging is to
prevent unwanted energy gains – in other words, the
heating-up of a building when the sun shines strongly.
Most methods of providing shade have shortcomings:
sunscreen coatings cannot adapt, sun shields affixed
externally can be damaged by wind and other weather
conditions. But a step in the right direction has been
taken by the development of dual-layer facades which
enable blinds, solar panels and so on to be mounted in
between.

the aim is a dynamic exchange between
building and environment.
ALPINE is testing what is currently the most advanced
product in facade shade technology for the construction
of Petrom City in Bucharest. A type of venetian
blind is positioned between two panes of glass. This
structure is impressively thin and easy to maintain, and
it helps steer light into the building and optimise energy
consumption.
thin Yet StRong
The development of high-performance membranes and
foils has been a real leap forward in terms of finding the
right material for building facades. These filigree materials
inspire architects to bold designs, but they also
bring with them a series of outstanding properties. For
instance: ETFE film (a copolymer made of ethylene and
tetrafluoroethylene) is enormously durable (it lasts for
more than 20 years), extremely robust, maintenancefree,
non-combustible, self-cleaning, recyclable and
95% transparent.
ALPINE used this innovative material some years back
when it created the largest ETFE membrane shell in
the world for the facade of the Allianz Arena in Munich
(66,500 sq m, more than eight times bigger than the
pitch inside). A total of 2,786 diamond-shaped cushions
made out of the 0.2-mm-thick film cover the roof
and facade of this football stadium. The cushions were
made in identical pairs, but no two pairs are identical,
which means that around 1,500 different diamonds
were required. For the project team, fitting them in
place was, at times, quite tricky. ‘Getting the right materials
to the right place at the right time was a logistical
challenge: the cushions, their sealing adaptors, and the
profiles used to clamp them in place,’ recalls Kay Gerber,
project director. ‘We had to number the cushions.’ Each
cushion is now permanently supplied with compressed
air. The pressure is monitored constantly and continually
adjusted (e.g. summer/winter). The translucency
of the ETFE film allows the grass on the pitch to grow
nicely.
The shell of the Allianz Arena can light up in three different
colours. For this special lighting concept, the
film required additional treatment: little white dots
were printed all over it so that the light wouldn’t simply
shine through, and the fluorescent lamps behind
the cushions were given coloured filters. Depending on
which team is playing, the Allianz Arena can light up in
red (Bayern Munich), blue (1860 Munich) or white (e.g.
an international fixture), giving it its spectacular appearance.
fabRiC faCadeS
At the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual
Design (ILEK, or Institut für Leichtbau Entwerfen
und Konstruieren) in Stuttgart, similarly intensive
research goes on in search of the ideal material for
building shells. There they focus on textiles, and their
interest is in multilayer fabric building shells which
combine the benefits of membrane construction – such
as diversity of form, transparency and low weight –
with outstanding properties of heat and noise permeability.
So-called ‘phase-change’ materials can change
their state to adapt to different temperatures, thereby
absorbing or emitting heat as required. This makes the
building shells developed at ILEK highly adaptive and
pioneering. Once again, nature has been the inspiration.
‘The biological potential for complex interface properties
in covers is very broad,’ states Susanne Gosztonyi, project
manager and member of the Sustainable Building
Technologies Faculty at the Austrian Institute of Technology
(AIT). She is currently involved in this field as
part of the BioSkin project, which is funded as part of
the ‘Building of the Tomorrow Plus’ scheme. This project
researches the potential of biologically inspired energy-efficient
facade technologies. She believes that the
facade of the future ‘will be able to fulfil a wide range of
varying, sometimes contradictory, requirements, and will
do so intelligently, with maximum energy-efficiency and
with a high level of convenience. It will also use a minimum
of power and resources.’ The aim of the study is to utilise
discoveries from biology to create innovative approaches
to new types of facade. ‘The greatest challenge we face
lies in our objective of abstracting phenomena from nature
and translating them into technical functions.’ No less
than 240 potential analogies have already been found in
biology to match 40 required functional profiles. Of the
former, 35 ‘high potentials’ have been selected and examined,
and the principles upon which they work have
been determined. These selected role models will serve
as a source of ideas in the development of futuristic facade
concepts and provide valuable input for the R&D
activities of the building industry. Thus a vision of the
future gradually becomes reality, and the simple wall
becomes a second skin. //
Ü www.bionicfacades.net
Ü www.hausderzukunft.at
45
A 100-m aerial
working platform
and nets
stretched out
at great height
were required to
fit the cushions
onto the roof and
facade of the
Allianz Arena.

46 // RESOURCES
water
resoUrce
he earth is a watery planet.
Around 70% of its surface
is covered in water.
But most of this is saline; only 2.5%
of the world’s water is fresh, and
around 1% is suitable for human
use. Water is therefore valuable –
and its value is set to rise steeply in
the near future.
RiCh and PooR in WateR
Global water resources are very unevenly
distributed. There are areas
of excess and areas of shortage, primarily
for reasons of climate. Climate
change has aggravated this
situation. If the world’s population
continues to grow at the present
rate, warns the UNESCO World
Water Report (2009), then clean
water will soon be in short supply.
By 2050 the population will have
grown by another three billion people,
90% of whom will have been
born in developing countries where
the supply of drinking water and
sanitary facilities is already a problem.
More people die as a result of
dirty water each year than from
AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
But the countries hit hardest by the
shortage of water are those Arab,
African and Asian countries where
there is little rainfall, coupled with
a fast-growing population. China
is already in a state of crisis, having
only 7% of the world’s water
reserves with which to supply 20%
of the world’s population. Furthermore,
the country’s stratospheric
industrialisation is leaving its mark:
most existing water sources are
contaminated by waste water and
chemicals. There are frequent and
dramatic drinking-water shortages.
On China’s to-do list, water
management and water reprocessing
are right at the top.
WateR on the moVe
LIQUID ASSET When water is plentiful it’s easy to forget the importance of
this life-giving resource. But in many countries there is a severe shortage of water.
One of them is China.
// MelAnIe Müller
In July 2010,
the United
Nations declared
the right to
clean water
a fundamental
human right.
T
China’s water is very unequally
distributed: there is an acute shortage
in the heavily populated north,
while the south has most of the reserves
and suffers often from flooding.
For this reason the Chinese
have been making plans to divert
water from south to north since the
1950s. Now these plans are being
put into action: the largest water
transfer project of this kind (South–
North Water Transfer Project) is to
span a distance totalling 1,000 kilometres
along three routes to channel
water from the Yangtze River
in the south into the three largest
rivers of the north. With a total
cost of around 48 billion euros and
a planned construction period of
almost 50 years – the project is due
for completion in 2050 – it is by far
the biggest building undertaking of
this kind anywhere in the world.
Another large-scale water transfer
project is the Shanxi Wanjiazhai
Yellow River Diversion Project
(WYRDP) in which ALPINE
has been closely involved since the
nineties. Its objective is to alleviate
the water shortage in some of
China’s important industrial areas
by diverting water from the Yellow
River. Again there are three
routes: in the first phase of expansion,
the main line (44 km) and the
south line (103 km) have been built
towards the provincial capital of
Taiyuan. As part of the second expansion
phase, work is currently
ongoing on the north line (approx.
167 km), which will lead to the city
of Datong.

making WaY foR WateR
One of the biggest challenges in this
project is the enormous height difference.
Water from the Wanjiazhai
Reservoir on the Yellow River must
first be lifted 364 metres via several
pumping stations, before being
able to flow east along the tunnel.
As part of the first building phase
(1997–2001), ALPINE constructed
two enormous pumping stations
(165 metres long, 18 metres wide
and 39 metres high), including all
of the necessary caverns, horizontal
passages, shafts and tunnels (access,
ventilation tunnels and so on).
Working conditions were anything
but easy, as Ingo Cottogni, project
director, explains: ‘The temperature
there fluctuates between a maximum
of 38°C and a minimum of –30°C.
Extreme cold during some months
prevented us from applying shotcrete
or cementing the anchors in place.’
The fact that the construction site
was very near to human settlements
also made it very difficult to
use explosives. High precision was
required at every turn. ‘Since water
pressures were going to be high in
the distributor channels, the surface
properties had to fulfil extremely high
demands,’ reports Cottogni. ‘The lining
work was painstaking, we had to
work to the millimetre.’
The first building phase has since
been completed and ALPINE is now
busy with the second phase, constructing
an important component
of the North Main Line: the Pinglu
Tunnel. This tunnel runs near
and, in part, beneath the city after
which it is named, and will enable
the transfer of water to Datong.
What is exceptional about this tunnel
is its length. ‘At 25.7 kilometres
this is one of the longest tunnels in
the world to be drilled using a single
tunnel-drilling machine,’ says Meik
Müller, who is responsible for this
area at ALPINE BeMo Tunnelling.
This brings with it certain challenges:
‘The workers have to drive for one
and a half hours into the tunnel every
day before they even reach their place
of work,’ says Müller. ‘Providing adequate
ventilation with dimensions of
this kind is also not easy.’ But it isn’t
just the workers who face difficulties
– the materials used also have
a lot to cope with. ‘The trains which
transport the people and materials in
and out of the tunnels travel hundreds
of kilometres a day.’ Maintenance
work never ends.
But all of this should have paid off
by 2011, when clear water should
be gushing into an otherwise dry
region. //
In each subterranean pumping station,
water is elevated by 142 m.
Thousands of concrete segments (tubbings) are required
to line the Pinglu Tunnel.
47

ower
48 // ENVIRONMENT
without
end
BATTERIES Everywhere you see people telephoning, listening to music and working on
computers. What you don’t see is all of the pacemakers keeping hearts beating around you,
and the people who can hear better thanks to modern technology. What all of these people
have in common, however, is that mobile energy storage makes their lives easier.
// AndreAS eder
I
In the shops we take them for granted: row
upon row of colourfully packed energy-givers
in all sorts of shapes and sizes, performing
at all sorts of levels. Batteries. From the tiniest buttons
at one end of the shelf they range systematically all the
way to the big fat ones at the other end. And those are
just the batteries for normal consumers. There are also
car batteries and other, even more specialised types.
What they all have in common is that they allow you to
take electricity with you wherever you go. But this ap-
Powered by the wind and sun, the hYBROX 2+
supplies almost unlimited energy regardless of
its location.
parent independence has limits, since batteries are not
very efficient and their capacity is finite. This makes
their uses limited, and there is a pressing need for more
efficient mobile energy storage methods.
limited PeRfoRmanCe
Although a lot has happened since the battery was invented
at the beginning of the 19th Century, progress
has not kept pace with the development of technology

as a whole. Energy sources, energy supply and especially
energy efficiency are some of the biggest challenges
facing mankind. And batteries play a big part in
that. The development and progress of modern technologies
is often directly connected to how power will
be supplied to them. Batteries still contain relatively
little energy. Then there are the drawbacks of weight
and longevity. These factors make batteries an expensive
source of energy. Yet they are essential for much
of modern everyday life – mobility without batteries is
unthinkable.
As battery performance rises and sizes shrink, the demand
for output also grows. Faster computers, more
complex tasks, faster execution. Electrically driven vehicles
are a serious prospect for the near future – and
yet they are still not feasible because of their batteries.
On the other hand the concept of the fuel cell may also
establish itself, although progress is proving slow; small
yet safe, clean, cheap batteries containing inexhaustible
energy is, and for the time being will probably remain,
fiction.
eneRgY – alWaYS and eVeRYWheRe
But if certain factors such as space and mobility are not
so important, then batteries can come into their own as
part of autonomous energy acquisition and supply systems.
Combined with renewable and inexhaustible energy
sources, batteries exhibit extraordinary potential.
One such system, which is powered by wind and sun,
was developed by ALPINE-ENERGIE and is called the
HYBROX 2+ , an energy container which is completely
independent of location, and which can supply almost
unlimited power around the clock. Nor does it need to
be connected to any existing power network infrastructure.
Because it can be extended in modules to
meet different requirements, this power supply solution
can be used almost anywhere in the world, supplying
electricity to a range of facilities such as research stations,
remote transport routes and inaccessible, mountainous
regions, all with a minimal use of fossil fuels
and without the need for an existing power network.
ALPINE-ENERGIE took the bold decision to build a
20 SeC. // batterY
completely autonomous energy container in autumn
2008. The finished product was preceded by numerous
simulations which enabled a string of optimisations
and led to the construction of a prototype. That began
at the end of 2009, and the prototype began operation
after just three months – quick work considering the
complexity of the project with its diversity of components
for energy acquisition, optimisation and remote
access. However, ‘test operation is running superbly and
our expectations have been more than fulfilled,’ enthuses
Gerhard Garbeis, technical development manager at
ALPINE-ENERGIE.
In fact, ‘hybrid stand-alone systems’ are nothing new.
What is new about this design is that it can be individually
customised. Simulation can be used to adapt the
module to future factors such as location, load profiles
and servicing.
PoWeRing ahead
The arrangement developed by Alessandro volta around 1800 known as the
‘voltaic pile’ is considered the forerunner of today’s battery. The first electrical
battery suitable for mass production was invented by dr William cruickshank
in 1802. He constructed an arrangement of square copper sheets which were
soldered together at the sides. Between these he placed zinc sheets of an
equal size, and placed this whole arrangement into a wooden box sealed with
cement. This was then filled with saline electrolyte or acid diluted with water.
All of the batteries from that period were primary cells, which meant they
could not be recharged. The French physicist gaston Planté invented the first
rechargeable battery in 1859.
But the project would not be an innovation if it did not
involve numerous challenges. Achieving maximum
yield in minimal space is not something you can just do
over the weekend. Then there are the issues of longevity,
climate control and ventilation which accompany
the development process permanently. In the future it
will be important to develop more efficient PV modules
and wind generators, as well as more cost-effective,
higher-performance materials and technologies in
the battery sector. In this project, for instance, they are
aiming for a significant reduction in size by using lithium
instead of lead.
The challenges are therefore many, and there is much to
do. But when you consider that what you are working
towards is sustainable energy management for a future
worth living in, then it is worth every effort. //
49
New technologies
have to
adapt themselves
to the
existing
possibilities for
mobile power
supply.

50 //
CONSTRUCTIVE
COLUMN BY ANDREE BOCK
On right angles and
left hands
I earn my money by writing things
like this column. Don’t tell anyone,
but although I’m writing for a construction
company, I don’t actually
know anything about building. I’m
not an engineer, nor an architect,
nor a construction worker – I simply
write.
That does not in any way detract from
my admiration for those people who
erect great buildings. On the contrary.
These people will one day be
able to say to their children: ‘Look my
child, your father built this skyscraper.
It is standing there and will continue
to stand for 100 years – because your
father built it.’
But who will remember this column
in 100 years?
The famous photograph of 11 building
workers enjoying lunch on a steel
girder suspended in the air on the
Rockefeller Center has become part of
our collective memory.
Personally, I can’t even get onto a
ladder. ‘Ladderphobia’ is the name
I give to vertigo. And to me, a right
angle is a theoretical phenomenon
which has something to do with the
Greek mathematician Pythagoras,
whom we have to thank for such
beautiful words as hypotenuse. Furthermore,
when it comes to changing
a light bulb I find all sorts of excuses
not to do it. My two left hands are
players in a do-it-yourself tragedy,
also of Greek character, in which everything
always ends unhappily.
But then again there are many parallels
between writing and building.
Take a skyscraper, for example.
Both begin with an idea – the idea
of giving a city a landmark. Or the
writer’s idea that building can be
art, and that art is a trade which can
be learned. Building a skyscraper
begins with the foundations, which
are usually made of concrete. The
foundations of writing are research.
A building is built by placing one
brick on top of the next, while a
novel grows word by word. Storey by
storey the former rises, chapter upon
chapter the latter grows. There are
many people involved in building.
And you would not be reading this
column if a typesetter had not set
it; if a printer had not mastered his
machines; and if there had not been
someone to deliver INSIDE to you.
Just as you can’t simply conjure up a
skyscraper out of thin air, writing
does not come from inspiration
alone. One author was once asked if
he could only write when the muses
had kissed him, to which he replied:
‘Yes, but fortunately they kiss me
punctually at nine every morning when
I sit down at my desk.’
So, to give this column its final lick
of paint and hand over the keys to
you, I would add that a piece like
this is called a column because it is
usually made up of just one vertical
row of text – which looks like a kind
of pillar.
Now I have ended up building two
pillars for you. My work is done.
I am now going to go and scrub the
ink from my hands and go home –
until tomorrow at nine o’clock in the
morning.
// IMPRINT
PUBLISHER - ALPINE Holding GmbH
Marketing & Konzernkommunikation
Alte Bundesstraße 10 · 5071 Wals /Salzburg · Austria
Phone +43 662 8582-0 · Fax -9900 · inside@alpine.at
www.alpine.at
EDITOR IN CHIEf - Andreas Eder
EDITORIAL STAff - Melanie Müller
DESIGN / ART DIRECTION - Florian Frandl
AUTHORS fOR THIS ISSUE - Andree Bock, Rosi Dorudi,
Andreas Eder, Jörg Geiger, Marion Hierzenberger,
Michaela Hocek, Michael Kriess, Claudia Lagler, Melanie Müller,
Marina Pollhammer, Claudia Riedmann
CONCEPT & ORGANISATION - Marina Pollhammer
PICTURE CREDITS - Claudia Leopold S. 6-9 // respACT
austrian business council for sustainable development S. 11
// Chris Boyes S. 17 + 18 // Andreas Hofer S. 1, 2, 14-16, 44,
51 // Baureferat München, Werner Sobek Ingenieure S. 20
// Stadt Linz S. 21 (Wissensturm, Bücherregal) // Günter R.
Wett S. 21 (Bauzaun) // Marion Schmieding, Alexander Obst,
Berliner Flughäfen S. 24 // Vasiliki Papaeconomou S. 33 // Gert
Pie S. 39 // Alexander Ferchenbauer S. 41 // istockphoto.com/
sharply_done S. 5 + 22 (XL jet airplane landing at sunset)
// istockphoto.com/starfotograf S. 5 (hands) // istockphoto.
com/ChrisSteer S. 5 (Modern and Old Architecture in Vienna)
// istockphoto.com/assalve S. 5 (fluvial topography) //
istockphoto.com/mxtama S. 10 (Spring Design) // istockphoto.
com/enjoynz S. 10 (Nature burst) // istockphoto.com/LdF
S. 13 (Very young tree isolated with coins) // istockphoto.
com/adventtr S. 19 (Earth layers model) // istockphoto.
com/Videowok_art S. 19 (White water lily) // istockphoto.
com/derprinz S. 19 (Underground in Vienna) // istockphoto.
com/c-vino S. 19 (Mehrere Weingläser) // istockphoto.com/
pixhook S. 19 (Luggage Tower) // istockphoto.com/D4Fish S.
19 (Focus On The Positive) // istockphoto.com/hughmitton S.
25 (Airplane Docked) // istockphoto.com/Adventure_Photo S.
27 (Man Mountain Biking Trail in Aspen Forest) // istockphoto.
com/willyseto S. 29 (Nine Dragon Screen) // istockphoto.
com/fotoVoyager S. 29 (China Bell Tower Xi‘an) // istockphoto.
com/zentilia S. 30 (Soccer ball coming out of monitor) //
istockphoto.com/Edin S. 31 (USB cable) // istockphoto.com/
mariusFM77 S. 32 + 34 (hand gesture set) // istockphoto.
com/mevans S. 33 (Tip of the Iceberg) // istockphoto.com/
DNY59 S. 35 (Old Swing) // istockphoto.com/ZoneCreative S.
35 (waterline with splash and bubbles) // istockphoto.com/
markisss S. 35 (Horizontal grass border) // istockphoto.com/
Raffaelo S. 35 (Coffee drip and coffee stains) // istockphoto.
com/TheresaTibbetts S. 35 (French Coffee) // istockphoto.
com/automaton1 S. 36 (Hail at Firehole River and Upper
Geyser Basin) // istockphoto.com/holgs S. 42 (Prater
landmark in Vienna, Austria) // istockphoto.com/Deejpilot
S. 42 (St Stephens Cathedral) // istockphoto.com/TBE S. 42
(Heldenplatz and Hofburg Vienna, Austria) // istockphoto.com/
pressdigital S. 42 (christmas fair castle schoenbrunn, Vienna)
// istockphoto.com/Claudiad S. 43 (Technic and nature) //
istockphoto.com/mechanick S. 43 (Passenger Jet Dreamliner)
// istockphoto.com/pringletta S. 43 (Travel Stickers) //
istockphoto.com/peepo S. 43 (thumbs up) // istockphoto.com/
Deejpilot S. 46 (Water Surface) // istockphoto.com/restyler S.
49 (Batteries) // iStockphoto.com/RusN S. 50 (pebble pyramid)
// Restliche Bilder: ALPINE Bildarchiv, ALPINE-ENERGIE, Privat
PRINT - agensketterl Druckerei GmbH
PUBLICATION - biannually
- This is the English translation of the magazine. The German
version of this magazine applies in case of any differences.
- Typographical and printing errors subject to change.
- Despite very careful preparation and production of this
issue no responsibility can be taken for the correctness of
this information and any liability by ALPINE Holding GmbH is
expressly excluded.

Allianz Arena, Munich / DE
PAGE 44

your ideas are our blueprints.
Behind every big building project is an even bigger idea. We don’t simply pile up stones or bore holes into mountains.
We shape the world in which we live. In the process, we have acquired the expertise that we apply in realising even
your most outlandish ideas. Put us to the test!
More information at // www.alpine.at