OEAMTC Headquarters Vienna
The new ÖAMTC headquarters on Baumgasse in Vienna’s 3rd municipal district is an unmistakable, strongly expressive icon on Austria’s busiest road (the A23) in the centre of Vienna. Here ÖAMTC offices previously distributed at five different locations have been brought together. As well as all the administration spaces the building is characterized by generously sized service areas for members of this automobile association and a technical services facility. The ÖAMTC headquarters is the workplace for around 800 staff, and all the club services are combined in this new mobility building. On the roof there is a heliport that serves as the new location of the rescue service helicopter “Christophorus 9”.
This is a multi-functional building with offices, testing hall, seminar rooms, staff restaurant, sales space, film studio, call centre and heliport. Different functions are depicted in this complex building. Its special quality lies in the unusual organization of these areas along a vertical axis. The axis itself is experienced in the form of a generously sized, multi-storey atrium, in which the interaction of the areas referred to is spatially legible.
ÖAMTC – the support point
From the service workshops to the heliport all the elements of the programme are laid out along a single vertical axis, i.e. also from the counter to the reception and the event areas to the large atrium of the offices. Logistically compact contents with high degree of efficiency, which is essentially what support points are, are here transformed and applied to the building in a translated form..
ÖAMTC – transparency
On approaching the counter you find yourself on an oversized glazed “cockpit”, amidst the workshop, into which mechanics have driven the cars parked earlier down a ramp to a lower level. Clients have a comfortable panoramic view all of this from above – if their car is raised they see it “eye to eye”, as it were. From the counter a generously sized void opens upwards, through which a prominent staircase leads to the lobby. You also enter the building on this level if you come by foot from the U3 metro station at Erdberg, a short distance away. The building – and with it the ÖAMTC – is open in every direction to everyone.
ÖAMTC – communication
All the various parts of the building communicate with each other – but communication outwards is also important. This takes place in the public/semi-public area: the events hall, conference rooms, and TV studio are on the entrance level, on the level above is the highly important call-centre, which is in fact constantly on-line and in contact with the outside world and which is emphatically and functionally made in the form of a centralized space. All these areas are organised around a two-storey foyer. This is also the first level of the large office atrium, from which routes and visual connections lead upwards. This in turn completes the internal flow of communication.
ÖAMTC – sign
The building is a sign, a symbol of mobility. Its unique form, organised in a circular and star-shape, emphatically conveys the fact that here everything revolves around mobility and the means related to it, while at the same time demonstrating the organization’s efficiency and speed. Therefore both in formal terms and as regards content, it is a coherent, architecturally articulated symbol of an organization headquarters and, for both viewers and users, it evokes at all levels the feeling of having a strong and reliable partner. It is also a symbol of the self-confident way in which the business’s views itself, with which staff and members can identify – with excellently organized, harmonized facilities offering a high level of interaction and communication, expressed in the form of clear, open and transparent spatial connections oriented to meeting the needs of customers and staff alike
ÖAMTC – landmark building
Through its shape the ÖAMTC headquarters clearly and deliberately distinguishes itself from the monotonous, yet heterogeneously scattered, block and slab-type buildings in the surroundings whose form is derived exclusively from their commercial and industrial contents and from the optimisation of their functions. Here, in contrast, the focus is far more on the social components of help and support and being integrated in a network of service and care – both as a communication factor in the macro area of the building’s overall structure and in the layout of the individual organisational units.
The icon stands in a park and garden-like landscape which develops on the one hand on top of the escape staircases and on the other on the connecting clasp between the U3 and Baumgasse that remains free of buildings.
