Page 293 - Beyond Decommissioning

274 Beyond Decommissioning

Fig. 6.54 Viaduct arches redeveloped as shops, offices, workshops, etc., Vienna, Austria.
Photo by M. Laraia, 2015.

was built between 1893 and 1898, almost entirely as an elevated railway. It was
planned and executed by the Imperial and Royal State Railways, which opted for a
massive masonry viaduct for the G€ urtel: the famous architect Otto Wagner was
responsible for the esthetics of the city railway. From the very beginning, the planners
wanted the arches below the line to be used for multiple functions and referred to in
legal documents as the “lease of viaduct arches “. Otto Wagner designed facades to
close the arch openings and make up space for small businesses. Due to the varied
topography of Vienna ground, the height of the arches ranges between one and three
levels. Thus, Wagner’s facades were flexible. All facades featured a good deal of visual
transparency, for example, a lot of windows and a minimum of structural supports.
After WW II, however, many of the original facades had been destroyed and were
walled. The change from transparent to closed frontages had far-reaching impacts: a
visual and physical barrier had been installed between the two districts on the right and
the left side of the railway. The situation was made worse by the lack of activities in
the arches. The G€ urtel area started to decay. The increase in car traffic led to further
decay, with green spaces bordering the viaducts being reduced by the street widening.
The buildings fell in disrepair and most of the area became a red-light district.
In the early 1990s, the urbanist Silja Tillner was commissioned by the Vienna plan-
ning department to develop a G€ urtel urban design. In 1995, EU grants for the com-
munity initiative were approved. The City of Vienna presented an improvement
concept named URBION, which complied with the principles of “sustainability”
and “private-public partnership”: it included 60 projects to improve the buildings
and infrastructure, attract new businesses, and promote cultural initiatives and social