At the end of February, after 10 years’ work, the 250-metre DC Tower was taken into use in Vienna – the first of two high-rise structures planned by Dominique Perrault as a new urban gateway to the Austrian capital. Whether the proposed 170-metre-high twin tower will actually be erected depends on developments in the city’s property market for offices.
Despite the elaborate appearance of the tower, its constructional logic is quite simple. Thirty per cent of the 290,000-tonne building volume is situated below ground. The structure above this consists of a core and floor slabs in reinforced concrete – about 110,000 m3 altogether. The bays that project out a few metres from the facade, lending the tower its unmistakable form, are borne by steel sections, some subject to tension, some to compression. The additive system of steel construction – still evident today internally along the facade – is not a particularly elegant solution.
All spaces in the tower, which was erected as a »Green building«, are naturally ventilated. An ingenious combination of narrow ventilation louvres with a covering layer of perforated aluminium ensures that not even rooms on the uppermost floors suffer from gusts of wind. Finally, it should be mentioned that the DC Tower is served by the fastest lift in Austria. ?
Despite the elaborate appearance of the tower, its constructional logic is quite simple. Thirty per cent of the 290,000-tonne building volume is situated below ground. The structure above this consists of a core and floor slabs in reinforced concrete – about 110,000 m3 altogether. The bays that project out a few metres from the facade, lending the tower its unmistakable form, are borne by steel sections, some subject to tension, some to compression. The additive system of steel construction – still evident today internally along the facade – is not a particularly elegant solution.
All spaces in the tower, which was erected as a »Green building«, are naturally ventilated. An ingenious combination of narrow ventilation louvres with a covering layer of perforated aluminium ensures that not even rooms on the uppermost floors suffer from gusts of wind. Finally, it should be mentioned that the DC Tower is served by the fastest lift in Austria. ?