Ferdinand Rubach

LOADED CONCRETE

The deliberate ruinization of a war heritage

Located in Vienna’s oldest Baroque garden, this project addresses the gradual degradation of the Flak Tower in the Augarten. The tower, a 132,000-ton concrete monolith, has cast an oppressive and inaccessible shadow over its surroundings since its construction. Decaying and unusable, it paradoxically endures as a preserved piece of heritage, despite its controversial history. The project criticizes this rigid conservation by re-imagining the interplay between preservation, deconstruction, and creation. It seeks to radically contrast the relationship between past and present—not as mere conservation, but as an active process confronting its historical meaning and the question which objects are worth being listed as historical monuments.

Central to the project is the idea to carefully take apart the crumbling tower in a way similar to how stone is cut in a quarry. This process generates temporary spaces within the tower’s intermediate deconstruction stages while repurposing the extracted blocks into new architectural objects for collective gatherings throughout the park and the city. The reuse of cut-out pieces opens up the question in how far concrete as a material is historically loaded and weather its possible to “wash” it.

The once-intimidating tower transforms into an accessible ruin, ready to be conquered by nature. Its degradation symbolizes a shift: from a controversial war memorial to a monument of peace. Fractured into a ruin it contrasts the former oppressive appearance and shows a new critical approach to deal with the sturdiness of undesired war heritages.

Fotos: Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien,