VIENNA AIRPORT CITY - THE WORKING WORLD OF TOMORROW

The development of the airport’s real estate site into a sustainable Airport City is a key element of the airport’s strategy, as the Vienna Airport site plans tobe carbon neutral by 2023. To achieve this, sustainable measures are regularly put in place, which increasingly make decarbonisation and the avoidance of emissions possible. CO2 emissions have already been reduced by 70% per passenger since 2011. Vienna Airport plans tobe CO2-free by 2023 at the latest and thereby become a “Green Airport”.

Sustainable development on the site: Office Park
Austria’s most sustainable office building, which opened in 2020, is located in the centre of Airport City, the state-of-the-art Office Park 4. The building extends over ten floors with a total of 26,000 sq m of office and conference floor areas, providing space for around 2,500 employees. The unique feature of Office Park 4 is that it complies with the most stringent environmental guidelines. The state-of-the-art office building has been awarded a platinum certificate for its energy efficiency by the Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNI). Geothermal energy, that is cooling and heating with thermal energy, plays a key role in this. To achieve this, 450 energy piles were drilled into the soi land some 39 kilometres of geothermal pipes were laid. Highly efficient ventilation systems with sorption rotary heat exchangers and heat recovery via a closed-loop air handling system ensure pleasant comfort levels in the occupied zones with no draughts.

The world of work reimagined: modern co-working and conference spaces
The socio-ecological issues incorporated in the design of the project add another facet to Office Park 4, as its planning and design were aligned and adapted to the needs of the people. As a result, Office Park 4 has also been awarded ÖGNI Crystal certification. “The focus is on people at the OP4,” explains Wolfgang Scheibenpflug MRICS, Senior Vice President Real Estate and Landside Management at Vienna Airport.

Spacious meeting areas, a kindergarten and restaurants contribute to enhancing the working experience and employees’ feeling of well-being. Attractive co-working and meeting rooms painted in different colours create a varied and flexible working environment. Depending on the objective, a meeting can be held in the “Prater” creative room, in the comfortable “Coffee House”, or in the relaxed atmosphere of the “Heuriger”. Traditional hierarchical layouts have been done away with to build more of a community within the building. 

Photovoltaic offensive and improved energy efficiency
The use of a photovoltaic plant is part of the airport’s strategy alongside sustainable development. Vienna Airport has been operating six photovoltaic plants since 2016: on the roofs of Hangar 7, the old winter service hall, the Air Cargo Centre, on the site of the former sewage treatment plant, the new Office Park4 and, more recently, on the roof of car park 8. The seventh plant is located on the roof of car park 3 and went into service at the end of 2021. Covering an area of 24 hectares on the perimeter of the airport, the new PV plant, the eighth at the airport – and Austria’s largest free-field solar power plant – will go into service in the spring of 2022. Some 55,000 PV panels will deliver a yield of around 24 mega watts of peak power. Vienna Airport will generate around 30 million kilo watt hours of electricity with all eight plants – roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of around 7000 families. In future, the airport will meet about one third of its electricity needs with solar energy. Vienna Airport will further significantly reduce its CO2 emissions with the district heating supply operated by OMV becoming carbon neutral in 2022.

Green transportation with e-mobility at Vienna Airport 
Vienna Airport AG (FWAG) has invested over €30million in e-mobility by 2020, saving at least 1 million litres of diesel fuel per year. There are currently more than 380 vehicles operating on the apron (including electric handling vehicles, such as electric tractors,electric forklift trucks, electrical passenger stairs, and electric catering vehicles). Vienna Airport also has 51 electric car charging stations. With the commissioning of the world’s first flywheel (rotating) mass energy accumulator, it is now possible tooffer the fast-charging of electric cars. This provide spassengers and employees with state-of-the-art technology for the fast-charging of electric vehicles. All these measures are a further step toward ViennaAirport’s target of becoming carbon-neutral by 2023 and carbon-free by 2050.

Airport City at a glance
Airports have long since grown from being pure transit areas to become multifunctional locations. The name “Airport City” was chosen for good reason, as the airport’s real estate strategy has many parallels with an urban development project. The combination of perfect transport connections, local amenities, health care services, childcare and, at the same time, a wide range of office and logistics spaces, has attracted countless companies in recent years alone. The relocation of companies, such as DHL, its subsidiary DHL Air, Cargo-partner, and Makita and Moxy Hotels, a Marriott brand, offers massive potential synergies. The fact that the airport site is regarded as the “Gateway to Eastern Europe” contributes to Vienna’s and Austria’s competitiveness as a business location.

Office Park 4 - Facts & Figures
Commissioned: 2020 Usable floor space: approx. 26,000 sq m Flexible office space: from 180 sq m to 2,300 sq m, co-working spaces Transport connections: A4, A6, B9, suburban line S1,City Airport Train (CAT), rapid transit railway, bus lines 

Website: www.airportcity.at