engineering

Vienna Gasometers

Vienna Gasometers is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Vienna Gasometers rather than just read about it. In short: The Vienna Gasometers are four gasholder houses, built as part of the municipal gas works in Vienna, Austria. The original gasholder houses were constructed from 1896 to 1899.

Key takeaways

Vienna Gasometers belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Vienna Gasometers to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Vienna Gasometers from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Vienna Gasometers are four gasholder houses, built as part of the municipal gas works in Vienna, Austria. The original gasholder houses were constructed from 1896 to 1899. They are located in the 11th district, Simmering. They were used from 1899 to 1984 to house gas holders (also known as gasometers), each with a storage capacity of 90,000 cubic meters (3 million cu. ft.). After the transition from coal gas to natural gas between 1969 and 1978, the four gasholder houses were no longer used and were shut down. Only the brick exterior walls were preserved. The structures have found new residential and commercial use in modern times, and are now a tourist attraction.

History The Gasometers were built from 1896 to 1899 in the Simmering district of Vienna near the Gaswerk Simmering gas works of the district. The containers were used to help supply Vienna with town gas, facilities which had previously been provided by the English firm Inter Continental Gas Association (ICGA). Once the contracts with the ICGA expired, the city decided to construct facilities to handle its own gas needs. The Gasometers were retired in 1985 because Vienna transitioned from town gas and coal gas to natural gas. The Vienna Gasometer was featured in the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights.

Residential redevelopment Vienna undertook a remodelling and revitalization of the protected monuments and in 1995 called for ideas for the new use of the structures. The chosen designs by the architects Jean Nouvel (Gasometer A), Coop Himmelblau (Gasometer B), Manfred Wehdorn (Gasometer C) and Wilhelm Holzbauer (Gasometer D) were completed between 1999 and 2001. Each gasometer was divided into several zones for living (apartments in the top), working (offices in the middle floors) and entertainment and shopping (shopping malls in the ground floors). The shopping mall levels in each gasometer are connected to the others by skybridges. The historic exterior wall was conserved. One of the ideas rejected for the project was the plan by architect Manfred Wehdorn to use the Gasometers for hotels and facilities for the planned World Expo in Vienna and Budapest. On 30 October 2001 the mayor of Vienna attended the official grand opening of the Gasometers, although people had begun moving in as early as May 2001.

Technical details

The four Gasometers structures each held a cylindrical telescopic gas holder, each with a volume of about 90,000 m3 (3 million cu. ft.) seated in a water basin, each enclosed by a red-brick facade. They are each 70 metres (230 ft) tall and 60 metres (200 ft) in diameter. The Gasometers were gutted during the remodelling and only the brick exterior and parts of the roof were left standing. Coal gas was dry-distilled from coal and was stored in these containers before it was distributed into the city gas network. The "town gas" was originally used only by the street lamps, but in 1910, its use for cooking and heating in private homes was introduced.

Indoor facilities Indoor facilities include a music hall, a movie theatre, a student dormitory, and a municipal archive. There are about 800 apartments, two thirds within the historic brick walls, with 1600 regular tenants, as well as about 70 student apartments.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Vienna Gasometers

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Vienna Gasometers claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Vienna Gasometers before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Vienna Gasometers ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Vienna Gasometers

In research: Vienna Gasometers appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Vienna Gasometers in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Vienna Gasometers is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures in Simmering (Vienna), Coop Himmelblau, Cultural venues in Vienna, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Vienna Gasometers outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Vienna Gasometers in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Vienna Gasometers means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Vienna Gasometers out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Vienna Gasometers in simple terms?

The Vienna Gasometers are four gasholder houses, built as part of the municipal gas works in Vienna, Austria. The original gasholder houses were constructed from 1896 to 1899.

Why does Vienna Gasometers matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Vienna Gasometers?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Vienna Gasometers.