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Gasometer

Vienna, Austria

I’ve said it a bunch of times…EUROPEAN VENUES ARE WAYYYY MORE AWESOME THAN AMERICAN VENUES!!

The Gasometers were built from 1896 to 1899 in the Simmering district of Vienna near the Gaswerk Simmering gas works of the district. The containers were used to help supply Vienna with town gas, facilities which had previously been provided by the English firm Inter Continental Gas Association (ICGA). Once the contracts with the ICGA expired, the city decided to construct facilities to handle its own gas needs. At the time, the design was the largest in all of Europe.

The Gasometers were retired in 1984 due to new technologies in gasometer construction, as well as the city’s conversion from town gas and coal gas to natural gas. Gas can be stored underground or in modern high-pressure gas storage spheres under much higher pressures and in smaller volumes than the relatively large gasometers. In 1978, they were designated as protected historic landmarks.

During the years after their decommission, they were used for various purposes, including being used as a setting in the movie James Bond: The Living Daylights and as a venue to host the Gazometer-Raves. Sound in the large round structures reverberated and exhibited a special echo that was popular to the ravers, and the term Gazometer was well-known in the scene.

Vienna undertook a remodelling and revitalization of the protected monuments and in 1995 called for ideas for the new use of the structures. The chosen designs by the architects Jean Nouvel (Gasometer A), Coop Himmelblau (Gasometer B), Manfred Wehdorn (Gasometer C) and Wilhelm Holzbauer (Gasometer D) were completed between 1999 and 2001. Each gasometer was divided into several zones for living (apartments in the top), working (offices in the middle floors) and entertainment and shopping (shopping malls in the ground floors). The shopping mall levels in each gasometer are connected to the others by skybridges. The historic exterior wall was conserved.