Art + Performance Bunker

Six flak towers (flaktürme) loom over the city of Vienna, serving as grim reminders of Austria's Nazi-identity in the last World War. Two of these reside in Arenbergpark.

Rather than preserving, restoring or memorializing theses structures—each of which removes the structure from the daily conscious—they are reborn as a node for the creative arts. By consolidating a variety of programmatic functions from the surrounding city, the new Kultur Fabrik inspires regular and repeated use by the common residents of Vienna.

This function re-contextualizes the unfortunate history of the flakturm, encouraging the confrontation that brings reconciliation between a people, its history and the place that houses both.

As a result of the massive scale of its construction, the interior space is incredibly insular. The building is basically sound-proof and light-proof and the mass of the structure even creates a uniform temperature year-round (as if underground). The various programs respond to these qualities.

Program by Floor

Ground Floor: Lobby, box office, administration, storage
First Floor: Music performance (concert venue/club)
Second Floor: Art-house cinema (3 screens)
Third Floor: Photography production
Fourth Floor: Rotating theater (5 stages + 2 staging areas)
Fifth Floor: Theater + Set Design (workshop + studio)
Sixth Floor: Music production (5 recording/production studios)
Seventh Floor: Semi-accessible roof deck + energy harvesting functions (wind-turbines, passive-solar thermal capture)

school — Rhode Island School of Design
course — Independent Study
advisor — Markus Berger
location — Vienna, Austria
scale — 30,000m²
date — Winter 2011

Private / Residential

Public / Institutional

Commercial / Retail

Design / Build

Art + Performance Bunker

Program by Floor