Klagenfurt district heating plant - Cool minimalism as cladding for hot boilers

摘要

The new district heating plant in Klagenfurt aims to show the benefits of pursuing architectural goals in designingtechni-cal buildings. If we number the imperative of waste and its expression as basic supports of the fossil energy cultural style of the last two centuries, as Peter Sloterdijk recently did in answering the question "what happened in the 20th century" then the immediacy with which our cities were modernised to exploit the benefits offered by such fuels, particularly during the post war reconstruction period, becomes understandable. Klagenfurt provides particularly eloquent evidence of this: here, after the war, all the tram tracks were taken up and the public transportation system switched over completely to bus, and a district heating plant was moved so close to the city that the 85-me-tre-high chimney stack could become a self-confident part of the urban silhouette, complementing the old imperatives in the form of church spires and the Landhaus towers.