"DC Tower 1" rises to 250 m. (220m + 30m antenna) has opened its doors to the public, on February, 2014. The 58-storey tower containing offices, apartments, a hotel and a top-floor sky bar rises above a public plaza in the Austrian capital's developing Donau City district.

DC Tower 1 was design by french firm Dominique Perrault Architecture. The tower, a 220-metre skyscraper -Austria's tallest building- with a folded glass facade, is at  eastern bank of the Danube, in Vienna.


The towers function as two pieces of a gigantic monolith that seems to have split into two unequal halves, which then open to create an arch with undulating and shimmering facades that bring the newly created public space to life in the void created there," said Dominique Perrault.


The DC Tower 1 and the future Tower 2 follow the development philosophy of projects already implemented in the Donau-City as well: pedestrian and traffic levels are situated on different planes. A customised wind tunnel mock-up of the DC Towers and their surroundings was built and subjected to several rounds and types of testing to develop measures for optimising wind comfort in near-ground zones.

Project description by architects, Dominique Perrault

DC Tower 1

When an architect delivers a building it is always an extremely emotional moment, marked by the end of a long process of mediation, from absolute potentiality of early sketches to fine tuning in situ of final details. An actor, for a time, in the endless development of territories, the architect exits the scene. He hands over the controls to those he has been working for. This is the moment when architecture transitions from the intellectual, conceptual state to the fundamentally physical and real.

In Vienna, these feelings are magnified by the iconic character and extreme visibility of the DC Tower 1, but also by the history that binds me to the project. One beginning twelve years ago, in 2002, when WED held an international competition for the development of the last remaining section of Donau City, and a history which continues to be written.

From the start the project offered a site with incredible potential: an open terrain, facing Imperial Vienna, embedded in the geography of the Danube, lying on a plateau on the river's eastern bank, like a bridgehead to two Viennas. But the site was not virgin territory as several previous projects had been conceived for it. So there was a conceptual "already there", a thoroughly fascinating virtuality.

Very early on, what kindled my interest most in this site was the bridgehead with the rest of the Donau City district, with the river banks but also the conditions for breathing life into a public space on an esplanade. We took advantage of this commission to design a genuine entry gate to Donau City. Reversing objectives for earlier development projects envisaged here, WED specifications called for a decidedly mixed-use program, an indispensable condition for germinating the contemporary urban vibration we were proposing to create in and around the towers.

The towers function as two pieces of a gigantic monolith that seems to have split into two unequal halves, which then open to create an arch with undulating and shimmering façades that bring the newly created public space to life in the void created there. Dancing on their platform, the towers are slightly oriented toward the river to open a dialogue with the rest of the city, turning their backs on no one, neither the historic nor the new Vienna.

Today, the first of the two towers is up and the result is quite amazing, thanks notably to the invaluable collaboration of the Hoffmann-Janz architecture office. The visual qualities of the folded façade create a new way to read the skyline of Donau City, its undulations signalling the entry point of this new polarity. The folds contrast with the no-nonsense rigour of the other three façades, creating a tension that electrifies the public space at the tower’s base.

The façade's folds give the tower a liquid, immaterial character, a malleability constantly adapting to the light, a reflection or an event. For interior spaces, on the other hand, with Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, the associate designer, we have tried to make the building very physical and present. The structure is not hidden, does not evade the eye. The exposed concrete framework is touchable. Stone and metal used in lobbies and circulations contribute to the tower’s generous and reassuring physicality.

We have tried to avoid a tendency in contemporary architectural production to hide the architect's real work, of sewing, suturing the project and contextualising and anchoring it in the environment. Design emerges in a later phase. Towers floating above the ground are too severe, like architectural objects, objects in themselves. They must land, take root in the soil of cities, in places where their urban substance is found. The aim is to get the basic horizontality of the city and the public space to coincide with vertical trajectories.

The work on the base and foundation of the DC Tower 1 was highly stimulating. Architectural arrangements determine the tower's relationship to the ground. On the back façade, the public space rises from the level of the esplanade in a series of staggered steps to reach the ground reference plane. This structuring of topography launches the tower and creates a spatial interface accessible to all, making the occurrence of such a physical object both possible and acceptable.

On the other three façades, metallic umbrellas gradually rise from the ground on the approach, softening the violence of the eruption and blending city and movement into the tower's future. Important work on neighbourhood fringes remains to be done to reveal the geographic features of this urban landscape and take better advantage of the river bank.

With this first tower the city of Vienna has demonstrated that the punctual and controlled emergence of high-rises can participate in creating the city and produce contemporary, economical, high-energy performance mixed-use buildings adapted to metropolitan business requirements and lifestyles.

 

CREDITS.

Architect.- Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris, France.
Associated architect.- Hoffmann & Janz Architectes, Vienna, Austria. Engineering.- Perrault Projets (architectural engineering ), Bollinger & Grohmann, Gmeiner Haferl Zivilingenieure ZT GmbH (structure), Werner Sobek Ingenieure (façades), ZFG - Projekt (fluids), Dr Pfeiler GmbH (Bauphysik), TB Eipeldauer & Partner GmbH (electricity), AXIS,  Ingenieursleistungen ZT GmbH (VRD), Wacker Ingenieure (wind study).
Location.- Donau-City, Vienna, Austria.
Client.- WED (Wiener Entwicklungsgesellschaft für den Donauraum AG).
Site area.- 11 000 m²
Total built area.- 229 000 m²
Built area on surface.- 155 000 m²
- tower I 90 400 m² tower II 61 500 m²
Underground built area.- 74 000 m²
- tower I 45 500 m² tower II 16 500 m²
Height.- tower I 250 m (220m + 30m antenna), 60 floors • tower II 160 m, 44 floors.

Total built volume.- 762 000 m³
Built volume on surface.- 523 000 m³
- tower I 316 500 m³ • tower II 206 500 m³
Underground built volume.- 239 000 m³
- tower I 183 500 m³ • tower II 55 500 m³

Beginning of conceptual design.- 2002.
Beginning of construction.- tower I 2010.
Estimated construction period ca. 3 years.
Inauguration DC Tower 1.-  february 2014.

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Dominique Perrault (1953), architect from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1978) and Higher Diploma in Towm Planning (1979) from the same university, based its office in 1981 in Paris, and currently has two international offices in Geneva and Madrid. He has been professor in several Architectural Schools, as the one of Rennes, New Orleans, Chicago, Barcelona, Brussels or Zurich and his work has been exhibited in museums all around the world..

Figure of French architecture, Dominique Perrault gained international recognition after having won the competition for the National French library in 1989 at the age of 36. This project marked the starting point of many other public and private commissions abroad, such as The Velodrome and Olympic swimming pool of Berlin (1992), the extension of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in (1996), the Olympic tennis centre in Madrid (2002), the campus of Ewha’s University in Seoul (2004) and the Fukoku Tower in Osaka, Japan (2010).

He is member of the Grand Paris scientific council, was appointed curator of the French Pavilion in the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2010), being the subject of the installation METROPOLIS ?.

Among the prizes he has been awarded with, the AFEX Award for the Ewha Womans University in Korea and the “Grande Médaille d’or d’Architecture” from the Académie d’Architecture in 2010, the Mies van der Rohe prize (1997), the French national Grand Prize for Architecture (1993) and the Equerre d’argent prize for the Hotel Industriel Berlier (1989).

The body of his work was assembled in a monographic exhibition: “Dominique Perrault Architecture” exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2008 and later made and itinerant show that travelled to Madrid (ICO Foundation, 2009) and Tokyo (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2010). In 2015 he was awarded with the Praemium Imperiale prize, by the imperial family of Japan and Japan Art Association.

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Published on: March 2, 2014
Cite: "The DC Tower 1 by Dominique Perrault, is Austria's tallest building" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/dc-tower-1-dominique-perrault-austrias-tallest-building> ISSN 1139-6415
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