Robin Stummer: The Secret History of Vienna
[Robin Stummer is the editor of Cornerstone architecture magazine.]
Vienna's secrets can be big. One of the largest measures half a million cubic metres, weighs several hundred thousand tonnes, and thrusts more than 55 metres into the sky. Not surprisingly, it's a pretty open secret. Everyone in the city knows about the Flaktürme - flak towers - the huge gun emplacements built during the Second World War to fend off Allied bombers.
All six of these reinforced concrete colossi survive, brooding grey thugs of buildings that sprouted at the heart of a city of baroque cherubs, delicate colonnades and sensuous art nouveau maidens. Being thugs, they have refused to budge, and still dominate their surroundings without a hint of remorse.
Yet the flak towers do not exist as part of "official" Vienna, the tourist temple to Mozart, Strauss and chocolate cake. Other than a brief mention in guidebooks and the occasional academic study, they are invisible. Yet Vienna is, of course, also the city of Sigmund Freud, and these relics of a dark past are poised to burst out of the city's subconscious.
Furious at Vienna's state of denial over the towers and the Nazi era that gave rise to them, a band of students and architectural historians is determined that the full truth about the monsters - one of the largest groups of concrete structures in Europe - should be told...
Read entire article at Newstatesman
Vienna's secrets can be big. One of the largest measures half a million cubic metres, weighs several hundred thousand tonnes, and thrusts more than 55 metres into the sky. Not surprisingly, it's a pretty open secret. Everyone in the city knows about the Flaktürme - flak towers - the huge gun emplacements built during the Second World War to fend off Allied bombers.
All six of these reinforced concrete colossi survive, brooding grey thugs of buildings that sprouted at the heart of a city of baroque cherubs, delicate colonnades and sensuous art nouveau maidens. Being thugs, they have refused to budge, and still dominate their surroundings without a hint of remorse.
Yet the flak towers do not exist as part of "official" Vienna, the tourist temple to Mozart, Strauss and chocolate cake. Other than a brief mention in guidebooks and the occasional academic study, they are invisible. Yet Vienna is, of course, also the city of Sigmund Freud, and these relics of a dark past are poised to burst out of the city's subconscious.
Furious at Vienna's state of denial over the towers and the Nazi era that gave rise to them, a band of students and architectural historians is determined that the full truth about the monsters - one of the largest groups of concrete structures in Europe - should be told...