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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Technology Center Seestadt Phase 2 in Vienna, Austria by ATP architects engineersSeptember 4th, 2020 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: ATP architects engineers People with visions require places where they can realize them. Such a place has existed since summer 2019 in Seestadt Aspern, Europe’s largest urban development area. A five-sided site is home to the Vienna Business Agency’s fan-shaped industrial campus, which is notable for its special H-form.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball
 Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball The Seestadt has been known for its innovative buildings, which are designed to ensure both the high quality of life and economic strength of the district, for a number of years. The first flagship project in the 240 hectare development zone was the multiple award-winning plus-energy office building “aspern IQ”, which was integrally designed by ATP Vienna and, back in 2012, both the first building to be completed in the Seestadt and the first component of the “Technology Center Seestadt”, as the entire complex is known today. Since its victory in a competition for Phases 2 and 3 in 2016, ATP has been writing the next chapter in the history of the Technology Center Seestadt. The opening of Phase 2 has now complemented the 6,600 m² of lettable space of Phase 1 with another 5,600 m2 that are designed for companies with a focus on innovative technologies. Hannes Achammer, architect and associate partner at ATP architects engineers Vienna, continues to enjoy his visits to the Seestadt, even after the completion of the second phase. He had overall responsibility for the project and, together with his team, ensured that it was completed in summer 2019. “Both the building’s tangible mixture of modern technology and innovation and the products of its tenants make me even more enthusiastic about developing these qualities further in the next phase.” Location: close to the city Technology Center Seestadt is located in Vienna’s dynamic 22nd district, just 30 minutes by metro from the heart of the city. Those coming by car despite the excellent U2 connections can park on the neighboring plot on Sonnenallee. Cyclists can lock their bikes in the covered area on the forecourt adjacent to the main entrance. Anyone wanting to freshen up can then do so in the shower in the basement.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball H-concept: modular and flexible One basic design requirement was that the building should be modular in order to leave future tenants (most of whom had not yet been identified during the early design phases) a maximum of flexibility in laying out their premises. As pioneers in integrated design with BIM the ATP team led by Hannes Achammer was ideally equipped to meet this challenge and optimally fulfill the needs of both the client and the eventual users of the building. In planning the expansion, ATP was able to make targeted use of the experience gained by the facility managers of Phase 1. This experience also led to the conclusion that buildings don’t always have to be rectangular blocks. Quite the opposite, in fact: Phase 2 has a systematically developed H-form that fans out across the five-sided plot. Shifts in the geometry enable the building volume to be arranged optimally on the site and fit flexibly into the campus. Indeed, ATP’s architects and engineers saw the urban planning challenge of the site as a great opportunity: The resolute implementation of the H-form in the floor plans of the rental areas enabled them to combine aspirational architecture and cost effectiveness with the required flexibility.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball Creating “room for the whole of life” In addition to the gains in spatial flexibility, this H-form also offers a further significant advantage outside the building: one part of the generally high-quality and inviting external areas could be realized as a series of functional courtyards that are located on Christine-Touaillon-Straße on the southeastern edge of the campus. Generated by the special form of the building, these “semi-open courtyards for working and relaxing” act as an external extension of the internal space where the tenants can continue working on their projects in the open while passers-by can gain a sense of the function of and life on the campus. The courtyards, which are accessible to vehicles, are finished with heavy-duty in-situ brushed concrete and separated from the street by a belt of greenery – an asset that adds a very special quality to the Technology Center Seestadt. This view is shared by Gerhard Hirczi, Managing Director of the Vienna Business Agency, whose instructions to ATP included the requirement to create spaces in which there is “room for the whole of life”. A home for Industry 4.0 The interiors of Technology Center Seestadt offer tenants ideal conditions for working on the technology projects that they are developing for Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things, or the smart world of tomorrow. As usual, ATP’s integrated design process for the building benefited from a detailed needs analysis that was carried out in advance. This identified the features that a potential tenant such as an innovative manufacturing company would require in order to be able to establish a perfect base in the Technology Center Seestadt. The needs analysis listed not only functional requirements such as a high level of comfort and daylight, simple-to-use building services, and flexible spaces but also social aspects such as the need for communication and communal facilities that encourage the exchange of ideas. These requirements led to the basic division between the production spaces on the ground floor and the offices on the two upper floors.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball This separation between the classic offices and experimental research areas can also clearly be seen today in the appearance of the different levels of the building. In terms of materials and colors, Phase 2 resembles “Number One” – Phase 1. However, a series of subtle differences permits a certain level of differentiation and lightness of touch within the overall campus-like appearance. The ground-floor façade of rear-ventilated, large-format fiber cement panels creates a monolithic base with an alternating rhythm of full-height wall and window elements on a 1.35 m grid. The strip windows of the upper two floors create a floating volume with an urban presence on Christine Touaillon-Straße. This subtle, industrial touch enables the Technology Center to act, both functionally and atmospherically, as an appropriate and coherent piece in the overall jigsaw. It simply ensures that the campus is more than the sum of its individual parts. The separation of the floors of the building in terms of function also means that these floors naturally have different spatial requirements. For example, the approximately 150 to 200 m2 ground floor rental units have an impressive floor to ceiling height of four meters. Due to its strengthened and sunken floorplate this exceptionally high multifunctional zone has a loading capacity of 10.0 kN/m2 and is also ideal for heavy machinery. In order to deliver such machinery each rental unit has a large door, which also connects the internal space with the adjacent dedicated courtyard. If changes are necessary tenants can create additional foundations for machinery at any time. Each of these units also contains a separate IT infrastructure room with the necessary cooling – a key demand of IT companies that is ideally provided for in this project.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball The organization of the building beyond this ground floor is equally practical and functional. All lifts and corridors are dimensioned for the transport of standard euro-pallets – without any risk of bumping and bruising. Users taking the state-of-the-art duplex lift to the first floor arrive at the so-called “multifunctional spaces lite”. With areas of between around 60 and 210 m² and a loading capacity of 7.5 kN/m2 these are ideal for companies that require space for both office activities and moderately-sized machinery. The first floor also contains a meeting area with two ten-person meeting rooms. These can be reserved by the tenants on line and their central location also means that they act as places for coming together and informal exchange. A perfect location for brainstorming sessions for up to 120 people can be found in the lettable seminar area in Phase 1. The upper level contains further rental units of between 140 and 260 m² for offices with a correspondingly lower loading capacity of 5.0 kN/m2. Interior Innovative lighting  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball One area that can be enjoyed by all tenants is the multi-story foyer, which is oriented to the north and whose façade has a low proportion of glazing. However, anyone who imagines that this must be a dark and uncomfortable factory-like space couldn’t be further from the truth. For the centrally located foyer in the Technology Center Seestadt is home to an innovation that is unique in Europe: It can be flooded with sunlight at any time of the day. This is made possible by a daylight collector by the Swedish company Parans. Sun-tracking collectors on the roof of the central plant transfer the daylight via fiber optic cable to the central multi-story meeting space. In combination with artificial light this innovative system not only creates a differentiated lighting quality but also saves electricity – as well as thrilling tenants by drawing the vibrancy and the atmosphere of daylight deep into the building. Sustainability Climate-neutral development Like Phase 1, which, as Europe’s only plus-energy office building, not only had a powerful media presence but was also nominated for the Energy Globe Vienna 2013 and presented with the EU Green Building Integrated Design Award 2014, Phase 2 also meets the high sustainability expectations of the Seestadt. Hannes Achammer and his team trusted this task to the sustainable building experts of ATP’s in-house research company ATP sustain. Managing Director Michael Haugeneder recalls his particular enjoyment of this project: “Seestadt is THE model project in the area of sustainability – which offers us the perfect opportunity to make a statement about the future of building and to show how sustainable building can become a standard.” The experts continued the energy-saving measures from Phase 1 while also adding new elements. For example, the energy concept makes maximum use of resources that are available on site – e.g. groundwater, exhaust heat, and (photovoltaic) electricity – and flexibly adapts these in line with the characteristics of the project. One illustration of this is the central water and heat pump that enables up to 10,000 liters of generated “cold” and heat to be both stored and used as required. As a result of all these well-thought-out measures, Phase 2 was awarded 935 out of a possible 1,000 points and, hence, Gold certification status and was named as one of Austria’s thirty particularly sustainable buildings by the Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNB) in 2019.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball Integrated design with BIM As in all projects that take shape in the heads and on the screens of ATP, the company naturally makes full use of integrated design with BIM. This common digital model was used directly with the clients as a basis for making decisions throughout the planning process and also contributed to the high-quality and timely completion of the implementation process. And, of course, the advantages of the model do not end with the completion of the building. In future, this should also serve as a tool for BIM-based facilities management as well as enabling users to carry out cost-efficient maintenance and expansion.  Image Courtesy © Kurt Kuball
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