Filmarchiv Goes Green

The guiding principle in designing the structure was to maximize the use of renewable building materials and energy systems. Drawing inspiration from Japanese wooden boxes, in which the oldest nitrate films have been known to survive even under the most severe climatic conditions, the nitrate film repository in Laxenburg is the world’s first archival building to be built entirely from wood. Thanks to an innovative energy concept, the repository runs entirely on eco-friendly electricity. The massive building envelope, designed to passive-house specifications, accounts for the fact that despite its state-of-the-art air-conditioning system the structure’s consumption of energy does not exceed that of a one-family house.

The design of the building’s outer shell is uncompromisingly functional. The architectural firm Jordan, which was in charge of planning, has created a structure that is powerful in an almost contemplative way, its clear and pure outline the perfect expression of the FAA’s work’s cultural dimension. Suggestively embedded in the surrounding natural scenery, the nitrate film repository glows in the landscape like a temple of the arts. The red entrance to the edifice, modelled on the sumptuous entrances of old movie palaces, is nothing less than an architectural invitation to rediscover, over and over again, the visual worlds of the past.

The nitrate film repository was awarded the Austrian Solar Prize and the Lower Austrian prize for best wooden building.

Since 2015, the Viennese urban-garden pioneer Eva Vesovnik has been in charge of the FAA’s citizen garden project. Today, the FAA grounds at the Augarten boast an award-winning garden paradise, a green oasis that during the summer season also hosts the annual open-air festival Kino wie noch nie [Cinema Like Never Before]. The organic fruits and vegetables grown there provide the Grünstern Urban Garden kitchen in the Augarten and at the METRO Kinokulturhaus with a steady supply of fresh ingredients.

By popular request, this winning formula has been replicated in the new METRO Kinokulturhaus. In 2015, the Grünstern team took up quarters at the Kinokulturhaus in new interiors designed by Gregor Eichinger, and since then has been in charge of providing the entire house with culinary delights. Thus, right in the heart of Vienna a culinary urban-garden laboratory has come into being, where over the course of the year’s seasons the sensual pleasures afforded by produce grown on the little plot around the corner are both demonstrated and celebrated. In other respects, too, the Grünstern urban-garden-kitchen philosophy is a perfect match for our institution: promoting diversity, rediscovering old strains, preserving the cultural heritage are all priorities shared by the Film Archive and the Grünstern team in equal measure.

The Pallet Pavilion originated in a project by German architect Matthias Loebermann, who, together with a group of students from Biberach college, developed the concept as a contribution to sustainable, temporary building. The idea they came up with was as simple as it was convincing: Euro pallets ‒ cheap, globally standardized platforms for moving goods ‒ would serve as the structure’s basic building blocks. Loebermann devised a simple stacking system yielding sophisticated sculptures whose dynamic curves and radii can make them seem almost organic.

A prototype of the project attracted much attention when it was unveiled at the World Ski Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In the course of a workshop he gave in Vienna, Matthias Loebermann, together with FAA staff members and activists from the citizen garden, worked out a concept that was tailor-made for the Augarten site. In a brainstorming session full of fascinating group dynamics the eventual shape of the structure, balancing aesthetic considerations and functional demands, was quasi-collectively arrived at.

The Pallet Pavilion was built in June 2013 ‒ just in time for that year’s open-air film festival. Since then, every summer the Pallet Pavilion has cast its spell on the guests of Cinema Like Never Before.