Boris Podrecca architects win the competition for the „UniCredit Bank Austria Campus“

The „UniCredit Bank Austria Campus“ project on the site of the former Nordbahnhof, Vienna's old Northern Railway Station in the city's second district, is located on the axis between central Vienna and Donau-City, the district on the other side of the Danube. It therefore provides a development impetus to the entire city. In this context Bank Austria is marking a milestone at the gateway to the Northern Railway Station in close cooperation with the City of Vienna:

An innovative site of international dimension for Bank Austria's business headquarters, with a gross floor area of about 200,000 square metres, will be developed by 2016 in line with ecologically sustainable criteria. For this purpose Bank Austria will take possession of five building plots from the Austrian National Railways for development and realisation. Bank Austria will itself construct the major proportion of the building components to be used by the bank. The remaining areas will be sold, as project components, to selected investors. The project comprises office buildings, infrastructure units, a Bank Austria Square and a tree-lined, traffic-calmed avenue.

Other facilities will include a 200-room hotel, staff canteens and company kindergartens, a Health Centre and a number of shops. Two underground car parks will accommodate 800 cars.

„The UniCredit Bank Austria Campus provides a major impetus for the development of Vienna's Northern Railway Station. The region has been experiencing steady development since 2004. It will see the emergence of a new city quarter in several stages by the year 2025 across an area of 65 hectares. A number of new projects such as Bike City or Wohnen am Park have been completed over recent years around the newly designed Rudolf-Bednar Park. Sustainable urban development calls for compatible utilisation, by which I mean apartments, workplaces, shops and a social infrastructure. I am all the more delighted that this project, besides the 400 apartments that have already been completed, will provide a large number of workplaces at an intersection which can be easily reached by public transport“, says Maria Vassilakou, Deputy Mayor of Vienna.

„Boris Podrecca is the ideal architect for this project“, says Willibald Cernko, CEO of Bank Austria, „a European mind for the business headquarters of a European banking group. The UniCredit Bank Austria Campus will offer the bank's employees, its customers and guests, other tenants as well as Vienna's inhabitants and all other visitors the opportunity to experience the project as a workplace, a multipurpose recreational area and a meeting place. The largest individual construction project in the Austrian capital moreover underlines Vienna's significance as a business location and, according to current computations of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, it will provide approximately 5,000 jobs.“

The architect Boris Podrecca explains his design for the UniCredit Bank Austria Campus: „The project's ideogram presents a generous concinnity of urban landscape and town buildings. The architecture of the work environment will be embedded in this polarity, while functioning as the zip and the framework of both spheres.“

„The UniCredit Bank Austria Campus project on the site of the former Northern Railway Station is of great significance for Vienna's Leopoldstadt district“, says Gerhard Kubik, city council leader for Vienna's second district, „the project will upgrade the entire Praterstern area. Besides the winning project's aesthetic criteria, I was particularly impressed by the excellent use of available space with its generous green areas and the related high-quality workplaces.“