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Long Street is a major street located in the historic city centre of Cape Town. This buzzling street is lined with many stores, various ethnic restaurants and bars. It exhibits a diversified culture and attracts tourists from all over the world.
Architecturally it is noted for its Victorian buildings with wrought iron balconies just as the one above.
An 18 degree day didn't stop folks from shopping at the popular Strip District in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
The Strip District is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a one-half square mile area of land northeast of the central business district bordered to the north by the Allegheny River and to the south by portions of the Hill District. The Strip District runs between 11th and 33rd Streets and includes three main thoroughfares — Smallman St., Penn Ave., and Liberty Ave. — as well as various side streets.
In the early 19th century, the Strip District was home to many mills and factories as its location along the Allegheny River made for easy transportation of goods and shipping of raw materials. It was the home of the Fort Pitt Foundry, source of large cannon before and during the American Civil War, including a 20-inch (510 mm) bore Rodman Gun. Early tenants of the Strip District included U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, The Pittsburgh Reduction Company (ALCOA), and later The H.J. Heinz Company, famous ketchup and condiment manufacturer.
The shipping infrastructure built around the manufacturing companies naturally lead to an increase in other types of merchants setting up shop in the Strip. By the early 20th century the Strip District became a vibrant network of wholesalers—mostly fresh produce, meat, and poultry dealers. Soon auction houses rose around the wholesale warehouses and many restaurants and grocery stores were built to feed hungry shift workers at any hour of the day. By the 1920s The Strip District was the economic center of Pittsburgh.
In the mid-to-late 20th century fewer of the Strip's products were being shipped by rail and boat, causing many produce sellers and wholesalers to leave the area for other space with easier access to highways or where there was more land available for expansion. Today in the Strip District there are still several wholesalers and produce dealers, but some estimates say more than 80% of the produce industry left the area—as have the manufacturing plants and mills. Today many of the abandoned warehouses have been renovated into small specialty shops, restaurants, nightclubs, and bars. The historic St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, a landmark built in the ornate Polish Cathedral style in 1891, lies in the heart of the Strip District, bringing a touch of Old World architecture.
The area has developed into a historic market district with many ethnic food purveyors, some art studios, antique dealers, unique boutiques and other such businesses setting up shop where trains once delivered produce by the ton. The Strip District comes alive primarily on weekends during the summer months when street vendors are selling their wares, the open-air farmer's markets are in full swing, and party-goers sit outside and enjoy a drink.
The area has seen interest by residential developers recently, as old factory and warehouse buildings are being transformed into apartments and lofts. Examples include the Armstrong Cork Factory, Brake House Lofts and now the Otto Milk Building. A mixed-use tower is planned for the Ayoob fruit warehouse site.
According to the legend, the Foundation stone of the temple was founded by Peter I. the Church was looted during the time of the war of 1812. Personally Napoleon, fascinated by the grandeur and richness of the temple gave the order to take out of him values in France, but because of the Smolensk peasants almost all of the interior was returned to the temple. Has not returned only antique silver chandelier, which was sawed to pieces; in return for the lost Emperor Alexander I sent a new bronze with crystal pendants. In the Soviet time the Church survived, thanks to the fact, that was included by the League of Nations in the list of outstanding monuments of world architecture. / По преданию, камень в основание храма был заложен Петром I. Храм был разграблен во время войны 1812г. Лично Наполеон, очарованный великолепием и богатством храма отдал приказ вывезти из него ценности во Францию, но благодаря смоленским крестьянам почти все убранство было возвращено храму. Не вернулось только старинное серебряное паникадило, которое распилили на куски; взамен утраченного император Александр I прислал новое бронзовое с хрустальными подвесками. В советское время храм уцелел, благодаря тому, что был включен Лигой Наций в список выдающихся памятников мировой архитектуры.
Believed to be in Public Domain From Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Collections. More on copyright: What does "no known restrictions" mean?
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TITLE: Crowds of French patriots line the Champs Elysees to view Allied tanks and half tracks pass through the Arc du Triomphe, after Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944
CALL NUMBER: LC-USW36-1 A [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-fsac-1a55001 (digital file from original transparency)
LC-USW361-1 A (color film copy slide)
MEDIUM: 1 transparency : color.
CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1944 Aug. 25
CREATOR:
Downey, Jack, photographer.
NOTES:
Number on jacket: K01; OWI number devised by cataloger.
Sign at left: De Gaulle au pouvoir; sign at right: Vive De Gaulle.
No b&w photograph in Lot 12002.
Transfer; FSA-OWI; 1944.
SUBJECTS:
World War, 1939-1945
Crowds
Streets
Military parades & ceremonies
Champs-Elysses (Paris, France)
France--Paris
FORMAT:
Transparencies Color
PART OF: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
DIGITAL ID: (digital file from original transparency) fsac 1a55001 hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a55001
CARD #: fsa1992001606/PP
CopenHill or Amager Bakke is a combined heat and power plant and recreational facility in Copenhagen. The sports facility was designed by the architects Bjarke Ingels Group with an 85 m (279 ft) tall sloped roof that doubles as year-round artificial ski slope, hiking slope and climbing wall. CopenHill was named the "World Building of the Year 2021" at the annual World Architecture Festival.
The plant opened in 2017. It is expected to burn 400,000 tons of municipal solid waste annually. Because of filtration and other technologies, sulphur emission is expected to be reduced by 99.5% and NOx by about 95%. It is claimed to be the cleanest incineration plant in the world.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke
www.copenhill.dk/en/ (website also in English)
Frank Owen Gehry, CC is a Canadian-American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.
His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions and many customers seek Gehry's services as a badge of distinction. His works were by far the most often cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Experience Music Project in Seattle; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany; and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture" – a phenomenon that many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Spaceship Earth’s theme,” William Ellinghaus, then president of AT&T announced at EPCOT Center’s dedication in 1982, “is communications, civilization and communications from Stone Age to Information Age….” Ellinghaus dedicated the 180 foot tall geodesic sphere to, “all of the people who have advanced communications, arts, and sciences, and in so doing have demonstrated that communications is truly the beginning of understanding.”
The outer skin of the building is covered with 11,324 individual isosceles triangle facets, each made of “anodic clear mica” Alucobond. The ideas contained within the sphere - a story of the evolution and promise of human communication - was thanks to sci-fi author Ray Bradbury. The soaring sphere’s form and name were both inspired by futurist Buckminster Fuller.
Walt Disney originally imagined EPCOT as an Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow - a model city where innovations could be tested and perfected to help mankind live better lives. It would have been a living laboratory for urban planning and human progress. But with Walt’s death in 1966, the idea’s greatest champion was gone and it evolved into a theme park modeled on a permanent World’s Fair - themed around world unity and innovation. Spaceship Earth became it’s iconic central architectural marvel.
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This model of EPCOT Center’s Spaceship Earth is designed in-scale with my previous microscale versions of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty Castles. I began with a sphere generated using Bram Lambrecht’s old-but-reliable sphere generator. But the bottom and rear faces needed to be heavily modified to allow for the interior support structures. The scale is roughly 1:360 or so, but with any LEGO modeling, there is some flexibility needed because of piece availability and construction solutions.
Long Street is a major street located in the historic city centre of Cape Town. This buzzling street is lined with many stores, various ethnic restaurants and bars. It exhibits a diversified culture and attracts tourists from all over the world.
Architecturally it is noted for its Victorian buildings with wrought iron balconies just as the one above.
My first miscroscale MOC: This build was built for our local Architecture Lug group ARCHLug for a world Architecture Display.
The Vienna flak towers are six large, of reinforced concrete erected defensive and protective structures in Vienna, which were built in the years 1942-1945 as giant bomb shelters with fitted anti-aircraft guns and fire control. The architect of the flak towers was Friedrich Tamms (1904-1980).
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Image: Terrace of the flak tower in Arenbergpark
The system of the Vienna flak towers consists as a whole of six buildings, three turrets, each with a Feuerleitturm (fire-control tower). The three bunker pairs are arranged in a triangle in the approximate middle of which the Stephansdom is situated. The towers are of different heights, but their upper platforms are in exactly the same altitude, so that an overall coordination of air defense was possible. The maximum operating radius of the four main guns (12.8 cm twin) of each tower was under ideal conditions 20 km. The smaller platforms of combat and fire-control towers were provided for 2 cm anti-aircraft guns, but they were never used in Vienna. In addition to its military crew the flak towers in Vienna served as makeshift hospitals, housed radio stations and partly war-relevant technical companies and offered on a large scale air raid shelters for the population.
Flakturm Augarten
Picture: Flakturm, Augarten
After the war, the Red Army undertook blasting tests in Gefechtsturm (flak tower with battle platform) Augarten, but a removal of the towers failed because of the proximity to residential areas. Nowadays, a removal of the towers would be possible, but now existing only an official decision as to the two anti-aircraft towers in Augarten from 5 April 2000 (GZ 39.086/2/2000) because all six buildings ex lege have been put under monument protection. Today, the towers are partially owned by the City of Vienna and partly owned by the Republic of Austria. There were repeatedly attempts to rebuild the flak towers and make it usable. The ideas range from depot for important backup data to a café or hotel.
Planning
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark - Notstiege (Emergency flight of stairs)
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Elevator shaft to the left, original instructions for lift usage right
After the battles of World War II also spread more and more to Vienna, Adolf Hitler ordered on 9 September 1942 the construction of flak towers in Vienna. The Air Force leadership provided for this purpose as building sites the Schmelz (Vienna), the Prater and Floridsdorf but Hitler rejected these places since the city center would not have been adequately protected because of the large distances. After discussions with Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) Baldur von Schirach, the final locations were determined. Instead of the Augarten, however, was initially the Roßauer barracks under discussion. The decisive factor for the choice of the places were on the one hand, the easy availability of the building ground and on the other hand the possibility to establish railway connections. The plan provided after the victorious end of the war to disguise the flak towers with marble and devote them as monuments to the fallen German soldiers. As with all the flak towers Friedrich Tamms was responsible for the planning, he was represented in Vienna by Anton Ruschitzka, construction management held Franz Fuhrmann from Vienna's city building department. The military leadership rested with Major Wimberger, which, however, had no mission staff. The material procurement was carried out by the Organisation Todt.
Construction
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Emergency Exit Photo: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
With the construction of the flak towers the companies Philipp Holzmann and Gottlieb Tesch were commissioned, smaller firms being integrated via joint ventures. Since the availability of local workers due to conscription declined steadily, more and more prisoners of war, foreign and forced laborers were used in the course of the war. Cement was delivered primarily from Mannersdorf at Leithagebirge, to a lesser extent from Rodaun (situated in the outskirts of Vienna). The gravel stemmed from the gravel pits Padlesak in Felixdorf and Gustav Haager at Heidfeld at the Bratislava railway (Pressburger Bahn), about in the area of today's airport Wien-Schwechat. Sand was delivered in ships over the Danube Canal, which is why in the area of Weißgerberlände sand silos of the United Baustoffwerke AG were built. In this area was already in 1918 a feeder track of the tram through the Drorygasse. Although this was already in 1925 shut down it was restored in 1941 and enlarged in the following year after the construction of a new silo to two tracks. For the then due to the excavation of the foundations coming up overburden, at the Kratochwijlestraße (then Weissenbachstraße) in 22 District was created a landfill, which also got a tram connection.
This report is based on an article in the
WIKIPEDIA - The Free Encyclopedia
and is licensed under the GNU license
Free Documentation Creative Commons CC -BY- SA 3.0 Unported.
On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available .
de.wikipedia.org
The monstrous remnants of the "Third Reich"
District II (Leopoldstadt), anti-aircraft towers in the Augarten, tram line 31 from metro station Scots ring/Schottenring (U2, U4).
On 15 March 1938 gathered some 200 000 Wiener (Viennese people) on Heldenplatz in order to celebrate the "Anschluss" of Austria to the so-called fatherland Germany, something, since the end of the first World War I many had been longing for. Adolf Hitler himself appeared on the balcony of the Neue Burg and announced: "As leader and Chancellor of the German nation and the Reich I report before story now the entry of my home in the German Reich". Then he boarded a plane back to Germany, the rest, as they say, is history. A few years later the magnificent Heroes Square (Heldenplatz) was dug up to plant vegetables there, they needed food for the distraught people who suffered the privations in Hitler's zusammenbrechendem (breaking down) "millennial Reich".
Right: Gefechtsturm in the Augarten
In Leopoldstadt
Below: The Leitturm (control tower) in Arenbergpark
In III. District highway (Landstraße).
The already existing and sometimes bombastic Viennese architecture the occupiers seems to have pleased, no major buildings were added during their reign. On 9 September 1942, however, Hitler decreed that the city center of Vienna like in Berlin and Hamburg should be protected by some huge flak towers, three pairs should form a defensive triangle, St. Stephen's Cathedral was the center. 1943/44, the German troops began the construction of two flak towers in the Augarten and defaced in this way Austria's oldest still existing and in 1712 laid out baroque garden. Another pair of flak towers emerged in Arenberg Park in III. District (Landstraße), a third near the Mariahilferstraße (in Esterházypark and in the courtyard of the barracks Stiftskaserne) in the VI. resp. VII. District (Mariahilf/Neubau). The towers have been made of almost indestructible, 2.5 to 3.5 meters thick reinforced concrete and were self-sufficient, and they possessed their own water and power supply, first aid station and air filters if it should come to a gas attack. Each pair of flak towers contained a big, provided with a heavy gun flak tower and a smaller control tower for communication. The first is either a square tower in the style of a fortress, like the one in the Arenbergpark (neunstöckig - nine storeys), 41.6 meters high, 57 meters in diameter) or a round tower, in fact, sixteen -sided, as in the Augarten Park and the yard of the Stiftskaserne Barracks (zwölfstöckig - twelve storeys, 50.6 meters high, 43 meters in diameter). The heaviest artillery gun (105-128 mm) was standing on the roof, on the projecting balconies below there were lighter guns (20 to 30 millimeters). The Leittürme, from which the air defense was coordinated, were all rectangular (neunstöckig - nine storeys, 39 to 51.4 meters high, 24 to 39 feet long) and equipped with a lighter gun, they possessed communication devices and searchlights on the roof. Toward the of the war the towers only just were functional. They also served as air-raid shelter for the people in the area and each tower had space for 30 000 people. In the event that the war ended with a victory, the architect, the builder of the Reichsautobahn Friedrich Tamms, already had prepared designs to dress up the towers with black marble plates in which the names of the dead German soldiers should be engraved in gold letters. So the towers would also have been victory and war memorials (and thus in a strange way similar to the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna or the Castel de Monte in Apulia).
In the bureau of an architect of Berlin were even found plans to demolish the Jewish Quarter in the Leopoldstadt and to build a huge Nazi forum. Today, however, there is in Leopoldstadt again a thriving Jewish life and the flak towers are frozen monuments to the darkest times of Viennese history (in fact, the Russians tried to destroy the tower in Augarten with dynamite, which later on was mistaken for the vandalism of a few schoolboys, by mistake a forgotten weapon depot setting on fire).
In a famous quote Hitler Vienna compared with a pearl, which he wanted to give a socket. Towards the end of war, however, this socket only consisted of bombed-out buildings and abandoned flak towers, silent witnesses of the delusion of their builder. As a result, only the Leitturm was used in Esterhazy Park, and today in it the house of the sea (Zoo - Haus des Meeres) is accommodated. Outside there is a climbing wall with 25 different routes, and the vertical wall and the projecting balconies give a perfect imitation of an overhanging cliff of 34 meters of height. A conservatory (or biotope) with a miniature rain forest along with monkeys and birds has been added on one side; it is entered through a door that only with difficulty could be broken in the two and a half meters thick reinforced concrete, but this also ensures a uniform temperature for aquariums and vivariums in the tower.
The stable temperatures also have the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) brought to take advantage of the flak tower in Arenberg Park as a magazine and occasional exhibition space; in the meantime it is known as Contemporary Art Tower (CAT).
A former air-raid shelter at the base of the Leitturm in Esterhazy Park now contains the Museum of Medieval legal history: the history of torture
Excerpts from
Duncan J. D. Smith; Only in Vienna
A travelling guide to strange places, secret places and hidden attractions
Translated from English by Brigitte Hilzensauer
Photographs by Duncan JD Smith
"The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt". Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Vienna is certainly one of the greatest and also the most homogeneous capitals in Europe. And it is one of the most fascinating. The overabundance of travel guides that are out there to buy, presents the not too demanding visitor a magical (and easily accessible) abundance of museums, churches, palaces and culinary venues, and they recount the history of the city since the times of the Romans over those of the Habsburg Empire to the present.
Courtesy
Christian Brandstätter Verlag mbH
The publishing service for museums, businesses and public authorities
www.brandstaetter - verlag.at
Total, totalitarian, dead
Picture: Flak tower in 1943 /44, Augarten
At the zero point of the knowledge about the progress of the world stands since 11 September 2001 "Ground Zero". The debris field of the World Trade Center was used as a metaphor, which for its part marks a zero point. "Ground Zero" is called the area that lies in the center of a nuclear explosion. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki this area has been explored, the experiments that began with Albert Einstein's warning of a nuclear policy of Nazi Germany, were successful beyond measure. The name for the nuclear program, "Manhattan Project". With the beginning of the new millennium "Ground Zero" is real returned to where it had once taken its nominal starting point. The skyscraper obviously is able to stimulate the imagination of physicists, ballistics and aeronauts. In the skyscraper the obsessions of the 20th century are concentrated, self-sufficiency and utopia become one in the sky billowing tower. It is the exalted and the sublime. It provides a beacon, of the construction as well as of the destruction.
As the World Trade Center each of the Viennese "flak towers" come along as pairs: One serves as control tower, the other as a flak tower. The central component is the platform, it was needed in high altitudes in order to have a clear field of fire over the city. The tower architecture, which thereby became necessary, one used for bunker systems, no fewer than 40,000 people should here find shelter. For other facilities there was also space: the Gaupropagandaleitung (Regional propaganda direction) for example, the radio station, a munitions factory. At three locations in the city - the triangle that they abzirkelten (encircled), took in Vienna's historic center - in the years 1943/44 had established an own self-contained world, with it corresponded an outside, the world of total war. The flak towers gave this world the architectural icon.
On 14 February 1943, the British Air Force had carpet bombings on German cities announced after it adversary those commitments to civility, just in war of some validity, namely to protect non- military targets, long ago had abandoned. It was a strategy that should give World War II a decisive turn. The Germans had their production concentrated on weapons with immediate penetrating power, especially on fighter planes and tanks. The Allies, however, swore on sustainability, on long-range bombers that now more and more were used. Against such so-called "flying fortresses" should prepare the city's flak towers.
On 18 February 1943 already, the Nazi regime had reacted propagandistically. Joseph Goebbels delivered in the Sportpalast (Sports Palace) those infamous speech in which an unleashed crowd at the top of its voice loud the hysterical question "Do you want total war?" applauded. From then on, the action would no longer overridingly occur on the fronts. Now, as Goebbels put it, the "phalanx of the homeland" was at stake. The war would be carried to the cities. In their midst, in the urban milieu that would now lose all nonchalance and any worth of life. Also, and just that is what the flak towers stand for: their comfort is the security wing, their promise the ammunition depot. They guarantee offensive and defensive in one. In this hard as reinforced concrete alignment, imagined the regime each of every Volksgenossen (member of the German nation).
The flak towers are the architecture of total war par excellence: monumental exclamation marks for military preparedness, towering icons of the resistiveness, uniform archetypes of a technical, an instrumental progress, to which the Nazi state with due atavism was always committed. Furthermore, comes to some extent the domestic political effect: The flak towers are citadels against the own population, reduits in the face of a psychological and social situation, which solely by forced violence, by martial law and concentration camps could be overmastered.
The prototype of the flak towers built up in Berlin, as well as their principle was conceived in the capital, especially by Albert Speer, the Minister for the war economy. But as a kind of urban identification mark they stand in Vienna, and also for this the logic of total war can be used. It is the logic of destruction, the so-called "Nero-command", which after Hitler's disposal would have provided the destruction of all remaining infrastructure in the German Reich. It is the logic of a perverted Darwinism, which would have applied the dictum of unworthy life in the moment of defeat on the own population.
In one of his table talks in May 1942, Hitler blustered about the "huge task to break ... the supremacy of Vienna in the cultural field ...". The hatred toward the city of his youth was notorious, and one may assume that the flak towers, whose placement the "Führer" personally ordered, the enemy, in a manner of speaking, definitely should stake out a target area. Because naturally, the towers would increasingly attract attacks on themselves. But they have the war unscathed as hardly another building survived. That they are standing for the long shot, the totalitarism this very day is clear. To eliminate them, would mean to turn the city with them in rubble.
The old 50 Bridge Street building. Architects 3XN and BVN did a pretty good job on the 2022 remodel, although it looks like the engineers didn't screw it in correctly. Its white borders and cross-angle finish add character to Sydney's skyline, here lit by Vivid. The 1976 original AMP office building on the site which was showing signs of age has been stripped to the core and extended out and up, adding about another 50% floor space.
The 54-floor tower won World Building of the Year at the 2022 World Architecture Festival, with the jury lauding its 'radical sustainability strategy'. It also scored heavily at the 2023 global Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat awards. Owned by Mirvac, Dexus and Rest Super funds, its tenants include AMP, Corrs Chambers Westgarth and Johnson Winter Slattery lawyers, Deloitte consultants, Barrenjoey and Barclays investment banks and EQT private equity.
(to see further pictures and read other information please go to the end of page!)
Flaktowers
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
The Vienna flak towers are six large, of reinforced concrete erected defensive and protective structures in Vienna, which were built in the years 1942-1945 as giant bomb shelters with fitted anti-aircraft guns and fire control. The architect of the flak towers was Friedrich Tamms (1904-1980).
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Image: Terrace of the flak tower in Arenbergpark
The system of the Vienna flak towers consists as a whole of six buildings, three turrets, each with a Feuerleitturm (fire-control tower). The three bunker pairs are arranged in a triangle in the approximate middle of which the Stephansdom is situated. The towers are of different heights, but their upper platforms are in exactly the same altitude, so that an overall coordination of air defense was possible. The maximum operating radius of the four main guns (12.8 cm twin) of each tower was under ideal conditions 20 km. The smaller platforms of combat and fire-control towers were provided for 2 cm anti-aircraft guns, but they were never used in Vienna. In addition to its military crew the flak towers in Vienna served as makeshift hospitals, housed radio stations and partly war-relevant technical companies and offered on a large scale air raid shelters for the population.
Flakturm Augarten
Picture: Flakturm, Augarten
After the war, the Red Army undertook blasting tests in Gefechtsturm (flak tower with battle platform) Augarten, but a removal of the towers failed because of the proximity to residential areas. Nowadays, a removal of the towers would be possible, but now existing only an official decision as to the two anti-aircraft towers in Augarten from 5 April 2000 (GZ 39.086/2/2000) because all six buildings ex lege have been put under monument protection. Today, the towers are partially owned by the City of Vienna and partly owned by the Republic of Austria. There were repeatedly attempts to rebuild the flak towers and make it usable. The ideas range from depot for important backup data to a café or hotel.
Planning
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark - Notstiege (Emergency flight of stairs)
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Elevator shaft to the left, original instructions for lift usage right
After the battles of World War II also spread more and more to Vienna, Adolf Hitler ordered on 9 September 1942 the construction of flak towers in Vienna. The Air Force leadership provided for this purpose as building sites the Schmelz (Vienna), the Prater and Floridsdorf but Hitler rejected these places since the city center would not have been adequately protected because of the large distances. After discussions with Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) Baldur von Schirach, the final locations were determined. Instead of the Augarten, however, was initially the Roßauer barracks under discussion. The decisive factor for the choice of the places were on the one hand, the easy availability of the building ground and on the other hand the possibility to establish railway connections. The plan provided after the victorious end of the war to disguise the flak towers with marble and devote them as monuments to the fallen German soldiers. As with all the flak towers Friedrich Tamms was responsible for the planning, he was represented in Vienna by Anton Ruschitzka, construction management held Franz Fuhrmann from Vienna's city building department. The military leadership rested with Major Wimberger, which, however, had no mission staff. The material procurement was carried out by the Organisation Todt.
Construction
Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
Emergency Exit Photo: Flakturm, Arenbergpark
With the construction of the flak towers the companies Philipp Holzmann and Gottlieb Tesch were commissioned, smaller firms being integrated via joint ventures. Since the availability of local workers due to conscription declined steadily, more and more prisoners of war, foreign and forced laborers were used in the course of the war. Cement was delivered primarily from Mannersdorf at Leithagebirge, to a lesser extent from Rodaun (situated in the outskirts of Vienna). The gravel stemmed from the gravel pits Padlesak in Felixdorf and Gustav Haager at Heidfeld at the Bratislava railway (Pressburger Bahn), about in the area of today's airport Wien-Schwechat. Sand was delivered in ships over the Danube Canal, which is why in the area of Weißgerberlände sand silos of the United Baustoffwerke AG were built. In this area was already in 1918 a feeder track of the tram through the Drorygasse. Although this was already in 1925 shut down it was restored in 1941 and enlarged in the following year after the construction of a new silo to two tracks. For the then due to the excavation of the foundations coming up overburden, at the Kratochwijlestraße (then Weissenbachstraße) in 22 District was created a landfill, which also got a tram connection.
This report is based on an article in the
WIKIPEDIA - The Free Encyclopedia
and is licensed under the GNU license
Free Documentation Creative Commons CC -BY- SA 3.0 Unported.
On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available .
de.wikipedia.org
The monstrous remnants of the "Third Reich"
District II (Leopoldstadt), anti-aircraft towers in the Augarten, tram line 31 from metro station Scots ring/Schottenring (U2, U4).
On 15 March 1938 gathered some 200 000 Wiener (Viennese people) on Heldenplatz in order to celebrate the "Anschluss" of Austria to the so-called fatherland Germany, something, since the end of the first World War I many had been longing for. Adolf Hitler himself appeared on the balcony of the Neue Burg and announced: "As leader and Chancellor of the German nation and the Reich I report before story now the entry of my home in the German Reich". Then he boarded a plane back to Germany, the rest, as they say, is history. A few years later the magnificent Heroes Square (Heldenplatz) was dug up to plant vegetables there, they needed food for the distraught people who suffered the privations in Hitler's zusammenbrechendem (breaking down) "millennial Reich".
Right: Gefechtsturm in the Augarten
In Leopoldstadt
Below: The Leitturm (control tower) in Arenbergpark
In III. District highway (Landstraße).
The already existing and sometimes bombastic Viennese architecture the occupiers seems to have pleased, no major buildings were added during their reign. On 9 September 1942, however, Hitler decreed that the city center of Vienna like in Berlin and Hamburg should be protected by some huge flak towers, three pairs should form a defensive triangle, St. Stephen's Cathedral was the center. 1943/44, the German troops began the construction of two flak towers in the Augarten and defaced in this way Austria's oldest still existing and in 1712 laid out baroque garden. Another pair of flak towers emerged in Arenberg Park in III. District (Landstraße), a third near the Mariahilferstraße (in Esterházypark and in the courtyard of the barracks Stiftskaserne) in the VI. resp. VII. District (Mariahilf/Neubau). The towers have been made of almost indestructible, 2.5 to 3.5 meters thick reinforced concrete and were self-sufficient, and they possessed their own water and power supply, first aid station and air filters if it should come to a gas attack. Each pair of flak towers contained a big, provided with a heavy gun flak tower and a smaller control tower for communication. The first is either a square tower in the style of a fortress, like the one in the Arenbergpark (neunstöckig - nine storeys), 41.6 meters high, 57 meters in diameter) or a round tower, in fact, sixteen -sided, as in the Augarten Park and the yard of the Stiftskaserne Barracks (zwölfstöckig - twelve storeys, 50.6 meters high, 43 meters in diameter). The heaviest artillery gun (105-128 mm) was standing on the roof, on the projecting balconies below there were lighter guns (20 to 30 millimeters). The Leittürme, from which the air defense was coordinated, were all rectangular (neunstöckig - nine storeys, 39 to 51.4 meters high, 24 to 39 feet long) and equipped with a lighter gun, they possessed communication devices and searchlights on the roof. Toward the of the war the towers only just were functional. They also served as air-raid shelter for the people in the area and each tower had space for 30 000 people. In the event that the war ended with a victory, the architect, the builder of the Reichsautobahn Friedrich Tamms, already had prepared designs to dress up the towers with black marble plates in which the names of the dead German soldiers should be engraved in gold letters. So the towers would also have been victory and war memorials (and thus in a strange way similar to the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna or the Castel de Monte in Apulia).
In the bureau of an architect of Berlin were even found plans to demolish the Jewish Quarter in the Leopoldstadt and to build a huge Nazi forum. Today, however, there is in Leopoldstadt again a thriving Jewish life and the flak towers are frozen monuments to the darkest times of Viennese history (in fact, the Russians tried to destroy the tower in Augarten with dynamite, which later on was mistaken for the vandalism of a few schoolboys, by mistake a forgotten weapon depot setting on fire).
In a famous quote Hitler Vienna compared with a pearl, which he wanted to give a socket. Towards the end of war, however, this socket only consisted of bombed-out buildings and abandoned flak towers, silent witnesses of the delusion of their builder. As a result, only the Leitturm was used in Esterhazy Park, and today in it the house of the sea (Zoo - Haus des Meeres) is accommodated. Outside there is a climbing wall with 25 different routes, and the vertical wall and the projecting balconies give a perfect imitation of an overhanging cliff of 34 meters of height. A conservatory (or biotope) with a miniature rain forest along with monkeys and birds has been added on one side; it is entered through a door that only with difficulty could be broken in the two and a half meters thick reinforced concrete, but this also ensures a uniform temperature for aquariums and vivariums in the tower.
The stable temperatures also have the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) brought to take advantage of the flak tower in Arenberg Park as a magazine and occasional exhibition space; in the meantime it is known as Contemporary Art Tower (CAT).
A former air-raid shelter at the base of the Leitturm in Esterhazy Park now contains the Museum of Medieval legal history: the history of torture
Excerpts from
Duncan J. D. Smith; Only in Vienna
A travelling guide to strange places, secret places and hidden attractions
Translated from English by Brigitte Hilzensauer
Photographs by Duncan JD Smith
"The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt". Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Vienna is certainly one of the greatest and also the most homogeneous capitals in Europe. And it is one of the most fascinating. The overabundance of travel guides that are out there to buy, presents the not too demanding visitor a magical (and easily accessible) abundance of museums, churches, palaces and culinary venues, and they recount the history of the city since the times of the Romans over those of the Habsburg Empire to the present.
Courtesy
Christian Brandstätter Verlag mbH
The publishing service for museums, businesses and public authorities
www.brandstaetter - verlag.at
Total, totalitarian, dead
Picture: Flak tower in 1943 /44, Augarten
At the zero point of the knowledge about the progress of the world stands since 11 September 2001 "Ground Zero". The debris field of the World Trade Center was used as a metaphor, which for its part marks a zero point. "Ground Zero" is called the area that lies in the center of a nuclear explosion. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki this area has been explored, the experiments that began with Albert Einstein's warning of a nuclear policy of Nazi Germany, were successful beyond measure. The name for the nuclear program, "Manhattan Project". With the beginning of the new millennium "Ground Zero" is real returned to where it had once taken its nominal starting point. The skyscraper obviously is able to stimulate the imagination of physicists, ballistics and aeronauts. In the skyscraper the obsessions of the 20th century are concentrated, self-sufficiency and utopia become one in the sky billowing tower. It is the exalted and the sublime. It provides a beacon, of the construction as well as of the destruction.
As the World Trade Center each of the Viennese "flak towers" come along as pairs: One serves as control tower, the other as a flak tower. The central component is the platform, it was needed in high altitudes in order to have a clear field of fire over the city. The tower architecture, which thereby became necessary, one used for bunker systems, no fewer than 40,000 people should here find shelter. For other facilities there was also space: the Gaupropagandaleitung (Regional propaganda direction) for example, the radio station, a munitions factory. At three locations in the city - the triangle that they abzirkelten (encircled), took in Vienna's historic center - in the years 1943/44 had established an own self-contained world, with it corresponded an outside, the world of total war. The flak towers gave this world the architectural icon.
On 14 February 1943, the British Air Force had carpet bombings on German cities announced after it adversary those commitments to civility, just in war of some validity, namely to protect non- military targets, long ago had abandoned. It was a strategy that should give World War II a decisive turn. The Germans had their production concentrated on weapons with immediate penetrating power, especially on fighter planes and tanks. The Allies, however, swore on sustainability, on long-range bombers that now more and more were used. Against such so-called "flying fortresses" should prepare the city's flak towers.
On 18 February 1943 already, the Nazi regime had reacted propagandistically. Joseph Goebbels delivered in the Sportpalast (Sports Palace) those infamous speech in which an unleashed crowd at the top of its voice loud the hysterical question "Do you want total war?" applauded. From then on, the action would no longer overridingly occur on the fronts. Now, as Goebbels put it, the "phalanx of the homeland" was at stake. The war would be carried to the cities. In their midst, in the urban milieu that would now lose all nonchalance and any worth of life. Also, and just that is what the flak towers stand for: their comfort is the security wing, their promise the ammunition depot. They guarantee offensive and defensive in one. In this hard as reinforced concrete alignment, imagined the regime each of every Volksgenossen (member of the German nation).
The flak towers are the architecture of total war par excellence: monumental exclamation marks for military preparedness, towering icons of the resistiveness, uniform archetypes of a technical, an instrumental progress, to which the Nazi state with due atavism was always committed. Furthermore, comes to some extent the domestic political effect: The flak towers are citadels against the own population, reduits in the face of a psychological and social situation, which solely by forced violence, by martial law and concentration camps could be overmastered.
The prototype of the flak towers built up in Berlin, as well as their principle was conceived in the capital, especially by Albert Speer, the Minister for the war economy. But as a kind of urban identification mark they stand in Vienna, and also for this the logic of total war can be used. It is the logic of destruction, the so-called "Nero-command", which after Hitler's disposal would have provided the destruction of all remaining infrastructure in the German Reich. It is the logic of a perverted Darwinism, which would have applied the dictum of unworthy life in the moment of defeat on the own population.
In one of his table talks in May 1942, Hitler blustered about the "huge task to break ... the supremacy of Vienna in the cultural field ...". The hatred toward the city of his youth was notorious, and one may assume that the flak towers, whose placement the "Führer" personally ordered, the enemy, in a manner of speaking, definitely should stake out a target area. Because naturally, the towers would increasingly attract attacks on themselves. But they have the war unscathed as hardly another building survived. That they are standing for the long shot, the totalitarism this very day is clear. To eliminate them, would mean to turn the city with them in rubble.
From Wikipedia:
he Kurilpa Bridge (originally known as the Tank Street Bridge) is a A$63 million pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Brisbane River in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The bridge connects Kurilpa Point in South Brisbane to Tank Street in the Brisbane central business district. In 2011, the bridge was judged World Transport Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival
Baulderstone built the bridge[4] and the company's design team included Cox Rayner Architects and Arup Engineers.
Kurilpa Bridge is the world's largest hybrid tensegrity bridge. Only the horizontal spars conform to tensegrity principles. The Kurilpa Bridge is a multiple-mast, cable-stay structure based on principles of tensegrity producing a synergy between balanced tension and compression components to create a light structure which is incredibly strong.
The bridge is 470 metres (1,540 ft) long with a main span of 128 metres (420 ft) and features two large viewing and relaxation platforms, two rest areas, and a continuous all-weather canopy for the entire length of the bridge. A canopy is supported by a secondary tensegrity structure. It is estimated that 560 tonnes (620 short tons) of structural steel including 6.8 kilometres (4.2 mi) of helical strand cable are incorporated into the bridge.
The bridge structure comprises 18 structural steel bridge decks, 20 structural steel masts and 16 horizontal spars[citation needed] or in layman's terms horizontal masts. 72 precast concrete deck slabs sit on the main bridge deck and are secured to the steel structure and together by in-situ concrete stitch pours[citation needed]. The complex cabling system comprises 80 main galvanised helical strand cables and 252 tensegrity cables that are made from superduplex stainless steel[citation needed]. The piecing together of these elements was the highest risk on the project, where any error in the dimension of one of the elements would have halted the critical path of the project. The superstructure was within 13mm of its planned vertical position in its final state at the centre of the bridge.
The bridge is lit with a sophisticated LED lighting system which can be programmed to produce an array of different lighting effects. Depending on lighting configurations, 75%-100% of the power required is provided by solar energy. All electrical work was done by Stowe Australia.
Architect: Gert Wingårdh
Built in: 2010-2011
Client: Chalmersfastigheter
A new building for innovation and entrepreneurship, called Kuggen, is built on Lindholmsplatsen in Gothenburg. Designed by architect Gert Wingårdh, the five-storey building is round and reminiscent of a sprocket. Construction started in October 2010 and was finished in March 2011.
Kuggen has already won awards. The international real estate summit MIPIM arranged annually in Cannes, gave Kuggen an award in the Sustainable Buildings class, and the project was selected as one of two out of 300 to receive Future Projects Awards.
Kuggen was also one of the nominated contestants in the World Architecture Festival, Barcelona, in the category "Learning".
On the second floor there is a walkway to the buildings on Lindholmspiren in one direction and to the Jupiter building on Campus Lindholmen in the other. The building grows outward the higher you go, and will house facilities for business and research.
Media Harbor / Medienhafen
"Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank Owen Goldberg; 28 February 1929) is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles.
A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France; MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies on the University of Cincinnati campus; Experience Music Project in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the museum MARTa Herford in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City."
Source: wikipedia.org
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by former King Juan Carlos I of Spain. Built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Cantabrian Sea, it is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.
One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something."[2] The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.
n 1991, the Basque government suggested to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that it would fund a Guggenheim museum to be built in Bilbao's decrepit port area, once the city's main source of income.[3][4][5][dead link] The Basque government agreed to cover the US$100 million construction cost, to create a US$50 million acquisitions fund, to pay a one-time US$20 million fee to the Guggenheim and to subsidize the museum's US$12 million annual budget. In exchange, the Foundation agreed to manage the institution, rotate parts of its permanent collection through the Bilbao museum and organize temporary exhibitions.[6]
The museum was built by Ferrovial, at a cost of US$89 million. About 5,000 residents of Bilbao attended a preopening extravaganza outside the museum on the night preceding the official opening, featuring an outdoor light show and concerts. On 18 October 1997 the museum was opened by Juan Carlos I of Spain.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative.[9] The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that "the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light".[10] The interior "is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country".[11] The atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower because of its shape, serves as the organizing center of the museum.[6]
When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world's most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism (although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement),[12] a masterpiece of the 20th century.[13] Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time",[14] while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium," its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales.[13] Herbert Muschamp praised its "mercurial brilliance" in The New York Times Magazine.[15] The Independent calls the museum "an astonishing architectural feat".[11] The building inspired other structures of similar design across the globe, such as the Cerritos Millennium Library in Cerritos, California.[citation needed]
The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass and titanium on a 32,500-square-meter (350,000 sq ft) site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of the city; while modest from street level, it is most impressive when viewed from the river.[15][16] With a total 24,000 m2 (260,000 sq ft), of which 11,000 m2 (120,000 sq ft) are dedicated to exhibition space, it had more exhibition space than the three Guggenheim collections in New York and Venice combined at that time.[5] The 11,000 m2 of exhibition space are distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which follow a classic orthogonal plan that can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. The remaining nine galleries are irregularly shaped and can be identified from the outside by their swirling organic forms and titanium cladding. The largest gallery measures 30 meters wide and 130 meters long (98 ft × 427 ft).[4][15] In 2005, it housed Richard Serra's monumental installation The Matter of Time, which Robert Hughes dubbed "courageous and sublime".[17]
The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the "organization of the artist" prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used computer visualizations produced by his own Digital Project software and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines donated $1,000,000 towards its construction.
Media Harbor / Medienhafen
"Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank Owen Goldberg; 28 February 1929) is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles.
A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France; MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies on the University of Cincinnati campus; Experience Music Project in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the museum MARTa Herford in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City."
Source: wikipedia.org
Atrium of the new city hall of Nieuwegein, designed by Kim Nielsen of the Danish 3XN.
(this building is nominated for the World Architecture Awards 2012, in the public building category)
on the outside it's beautiful too.