Vienna
Status
completed
Period
2019-2022
Client
Hotel Gilbert, Austrotel HotelbetriebsgesmbH
General Planning
Eidenböck Architekten
Interior Design
BWM Architekten
Landscape Design &
Facade Engineering
Green4Cities GmbH
with Simma Zimmermann
Team G4C
Verena Linhart, Bernhard König
Super-Green at the Museumsquartier
On Vienna’s Spittelberg, opposite the Museumsquartier, the Hotel Gilbert and its brasserie “&flora” have been created as new lush green places in the city. With its green facades and roofs, the hotel is a pioneer in climate change adaptation in the very dense 7th city district.
The starting point for the transformation was the Hotel ViennArt, which with its postmodern design had already reshaped a variety of different buildings and structures. Over the past 60 years, different masonry, concrete skeletons, lightweight constructions and filigree hall roofs had been transformed into a hotel building that was now to be extensively and lushly greened.
The green roofs and facades were developed as an atmospherically dense and climatically effective greening under extreme load-bearing and constructive requirements. Different construction systems were used, loads were distributed in a small modular way and every gram of superstructure was optimised in order to green the entire building, including the roof, in the long term.
The greening concept consists of three elements: the 125 m2 Living Wall (manufacturer Sempergreen) in Breite Gasse, the 270 m2 trough-bound façade greening in Kirchberggasse and the inner courtyard, and the 250 m2 herb garden on the courtyard roof. The hotel has greenery on all facades and on the roof, which has already become an important part of the local ecosystem.
Urban climate
The Living Wall in Breite Gasse, with its grasses, ferns and climbing plants, provides a cooling capacity of between 250 and 337 kWh per day on hot summer days through natural evaporation. This is roughly equivalent to the output of five air conditioners over the same period. In addition, the plants actively improve air quality, reduce fine dust pollution and reduce heat reflection when the sun is shining. Together with cooling through the evaporation effect, a cooling of the street space by up to 3 degrees Celsius can thus be achieved. The noise level is reduced by about half (7-10dB) by the Living Wall.