Thoughts from Harald Gründl
on the District Heating Plant Spittelau in Vienna
17. October 2022
photo: Ludwig Schedl
The architectural redesign of the waste incineration plant was completed in 1992.
Hundertwasser's vision was that this architecture should be an example of a symbiotic harmony between technology, ecology and art, a reminder to society to mend its wasteful ways.
“Even 30 years later, we are still away an unfortunate distance from this social utopia of a more beautiful, waste-free future. This memorial still stands in the middle of Vienna, where 220 garbage trucks dump our municipal waste into a bunker of outrageous proportions every day. […] From the visitor platform you can see gigantic amounts of household waste. Two giant gripping arms stir up the mountain of garbage and feed the two openings to the kiln. From one ton of our waste, 205 kilos of slag, 25 kilos of ash and 1.4 kilos of toxic filter cake remain, which is stored underground in Germany,” wrote Harald Gründl (designer and environmentalist) in his article, published in the newspaper “Die Presse”, June 2022.
Hundertwasser's vision was that this architecture should be an example of a symbiotic harmony between technology, ecology and art, a reminder to society to mend its wasteful ways.
“Even 30 years later, we are still away an unfortunate distance from this social utopia of a more beautiful, waste-free future. This memorial still stands in the middle of Vienna, where 220 garbage trucks dump our municipal waste into a bunker of outrageous proportions every day. […] From the visitor platform you can see gigantic amounts of household waste. Two giant gripping arms stir up the mountain of garbage and feed the two openings to the kiln. From one ton of our waste, 205 kilos of slag, 25 kilos of ash and 1.4 kilos of toxic filter cake remain, which is stored underground in Germany,” wrote Harald Gründl (designer and environmentalist) in his article, published in the newspaper “Die Presse”, June 2022.