House Havana - Tobacco Factory Linz

The "House Havana" – listed as a monument - is located near the danube promenade in the industrial ensemble of the tobacco factory in Linz. It was built as a tobacco warehouse in the 1930s according to plans by Peter Behrens and Alexander Popp. In the mid-1960s, the storage building was increased and the area in the south and in the north in front of the building were built over. After the demolition of all non-historical-listed components in 2017, there started an EU-wide architecture competition finding ideas for a new use.

The credo of the revitalization is not to disturb the balance of the industrial monument by Peter Behrens in its strong presence despite a new facade statement, but to supplement it with a coherent concept for the preservation of monuments. The main actor plays the glass block - originating from the beginning of the 20th century and also considered an element in functional architecture. This choice of material enables maximum light yield inside the formerly dark tobacco store.

The glass facade consists of 70,000 glass blocks and extends over six floors with an area of ​​over 1,800 m². In order to correspond to Behren's prevailing structure, all supporting steel constructions disappear inside the glass block joints and are only visible horizontally in the form of a supporting window. The steel windows, in turn, are divided into the specified grid of the listed concrete skeleton structure and allow natural ventilation through a pivoting sash opening, also a reference to the historical building. As a clear contour between the existing and the newly created, the entire glass brick facade is surrounded by a black steel band. A new canopy forms the lower end of the facade, which was also irrevocably lost when it was demolished in the 1960s.

The newly built stair tower inside creates an introverted environment before entering the individually designed office space. Two oppositely arranged, single-flight, concrete staircases each overcome the height of an entire storey. The stepped bottom view of the flights of stairs creates an impression that is reminiscent of a lithograph by M.C. Escher. The railing construction is reduced to massive round steel rods, which were anchored directly into the stairways by means of hundreds of core drillings. The identity-creating round glazing, as a reminiscence of the large number of porthole windows in the factory, was positioned exactly at the level of the crossing points of the stairs and thus enables insights and views from special angles of the magazine.

The standard floors are also based on the axis grid of the historical design. The floor plan is reduced to the infrastructural supply in the center and four new sanitary zones were created in the unexposed outer corners. The space in between is used and designed by the respective users of the floors individually according to their needs.

Task: Revitalization of a listed tobacco store by Peter Behrens
Procedure: EU-wide open architecture competition
Client: Immobilien Linz GmbH & Co KG
Architecture: kaltenbacher ARCHITEKTUR zt-gmbh / STEINBAUER architektur+design
Structural engineering: Thomas Lorenz ZT GmbH / KMP ZT-GmbH
Technology: Kinast Schmid GmbH / pbW D. Wintersperger / ETECH Schmid and Pachler Elektrotechnik GmbH and CoKG / FSSM GmbH
Place: Peter-Behrens-Platz 4, 4020 Linz
Constructed area: 1,250 m²
Usable area: 8,000 m²
Realization: 2017-2022
Facade: glass block facade