Vienna - Gasometer City

Gasometer City, Vienna, Austria

I'm teaching this week in Vienna, Austria, for Hitachi Data Systems. The HDS folks in Vienna rent classrooms at a nearby training facility, a company called Fast Lane. Fast Lane is affiliated in some way with New Horizons here in the US. This is the view of the "Gasometer City" development from the office building in Simmering where Fast Lane is located.

A "gasometer" is a storage tank for natural gas, to maintain pressure going out to residential and commercial buildings. There were four large gas storage tanks in Simmering that were taken out of service in the 1990s. The city of Wien (Vienna) decided to re-develop the huge structures as residential and commercial space, commissioning four different architects to re-work the interior of each tank. Most of the space is apartments, but there are 2-3 levels per tank of commercial/retail/mall space. One of my favorite pubs is Bierometer, located in Gasometer D.

The photo above shows Gasometer A. The office building that appears to be attached to the tank on the left is the BankAustria Halle. It's actually attached to Gasometer B, though.