The new addition

On 25 May 2004 the Filmarchiv Austria officially declared Austria’s most advanced and efficient film storage depot open for business. Designed to both exist in harmony with the older facilities and to complement them, the new building has promoted the existing film depot into a functional and architecturally noteworthy centre for film preservation. The construction is based around the latest advances in film archiving and endeavours to set standards in both the economic and environmental fields. For the first time in Austria there now exists an authentic freezer compartment for the long-term archiving of particularly valuable material and delicate colour films. For the first time in Austria a film institution has achieved the standards of film archiving displayed by international archives. These improvements have laid the foundation for a long-term preservation of the country’s film heritage.

The company EMBACHER WIEN was entrusted with the layout and planning of our new film storage depot. Their architectural concept captivated us by its functional ascetics, the finished construction captivates one even more through its spectacular façade enveloped by copper panels the width of film reels. As with the whole of the project this feature also sprang from functional considerations: appearing almost like an organic work of basketry, the exterior protects the building from direct sunlight and contributes to the optimal climatic conditions within the depot.

Viewed from the front, the new construction incorporates the proportions of the existing listed building and strikes a balance between old and new in its transparent covered entrance. The whole of the new building’s innovative façade plays with this idea, drawing a bow over both history and the present. As they come into contact with patina, the copper panels will eventually lose their colour, exchanging their shimmer for a matt green-brown and existing in perfect harmony with the surrounding countryside.

The exterior of the depot thus symbolises both the inevitable passing of time and the shared knowledge caught in moving images that were created within this passing, a knowledge which now needs to be conserved. Films and their perception, material and its properties: all of these succumb to processes of change, the very processes that can be read in the building’s façade. The fact that this piece of architecture will age alongside the films it houses communicates a clear standpoint: to hand films down for future generations in their original condition as primary sources of culture and history. This is a central objective of the Filmarchiv Austria and it can now be realised fully.