Page 207 - Beyond Decommissioning

188 Beyond Decommissioning

Fig. 6.18 Zacherlfabrik, Vienna, Austria.
Photo by M. Laraia.

In 2006, the last heirs of the Zacherl dynasty started a collaboration with the Art
Grant of the Jesuite monastery in Vienna. They refurbished the Zacherlfabrik,
removed floors, and merged them into a hall that was used for art exhibitions and
in summer for music performances (Zacherlfabrik, n.d.). Unfortunately, due to finan-
cial reasons, this support came to an end in 2013 and the fate of Zacherlfabrik is cur-
rently uncertain.
A not-so-successful redevelopment case is described by Vrusho (2015). Unlike
most other cases discussed in this book, this redevelopment project at Durres, Alba-
nia was carried out cheaply due to the economically disadvantaged conditions of
the country at the time. A three-story industrial building had been built in 1950
and served for 45 years as tobacco warehouse. The adaptive redevelopment of
the building for housing requirements was carried out in 1995. The new tenants
were former tobacco workers. The structure remained unchanged. Interventions
primarily consisted of floor reinforcements, installation of dividing walls, recon-
struction, and repairing of the ceilings. Floor reinforcements were made by adding
6 cm of reinforced concrete. The internal apartment walls were made using 10-cm
hollow bricks, whereas the dividing apartment walls were 20 cm thick. All wall
plastering, internal and external, was remade using standard plaster and lime.
The building was not plastered from the outside. The building is 15.3m
2
66.4m and covers an area of 1000 m . The reconstruction was based on small 1
2
+1 apartments (one bedroom and one living room, around 60m each). To exploit
the available area to the max the apartments were placed along both sides of a long
corridor. The common areas were left with only 6% of the construction. The build-
ing contains now 12 apartments and some 95 inhabitants.