The Taste of Sustainability
magdas ESSEN
Big kitchen, big commitment: Caritas Wien organized a competition for the design of a new operational building for its magdas Social Business. ATP Vienna convinced the jury with its concept for an unconventional commercial facility that will act as an ecological and social model – including a comprehensive ÖGNB Gold-certified recycling and upcycling and energy concepts.
In order to strength its brand and its development of sustainable areas of activity, magdas Social Business, a subsidiary of Caritas in the Archdiocese of Vienna, was on the lookout for a home for its new activities in the field of food production and catering. The requirement for the new operational building was that it should accommodate optimal working processes – for the production of up to 25,000 meals per week for retirement homes, kindergartens, and schools –, an innovative and dynamic working environment, and high-quality spaces where people can meet up and spend time together.
Socially sustainable architecture
magdas Social Business creates employment opportunities for people for whom the job market is particularly challenging. The new building in Vienna’s 23rd District should provide a worthy home to magdas ESSEN: with an industrial kitchen, public canteen, and offices spaces for the management and administrative staff.
In addition to the aspiration to high levels of sustainability, it was also essential to the client that the project should generate social added value. As a result, the ATP design team placed this social idea and the cultural symbolic character of the company at the heart of its concept.
We know that the operation of an industrial kitchen is a highly energy-intensive process and that this places an enormous responsibility on our shoulders. It was thus very important to us as clients to focus on the subject of sustainability from the very beginning of the tender process and we were delighted to be accompanied by a designer such as ATP who works with ATP sustain, an in-house research company that looks after the areas of energy and sustainability.
Michael Kleinbichler
Managing Director of magdas Social Busines
Energy efficiency at the gourmet level
A resource-friendly energy concept was developed together with the sustainability experts of ATP sustain. In addition to using renewable energy, the warmth extracted from the kitchen and the cooling plant heats the offices and staff areas, a roof-mounted photovoltaic plant generates additional electricity, and rainwater is used in the irrigation and cleaning of the external spaces. The building was awarded ÖGNB-Gold certification – with 961 out of the possible 1,000 points representing the highest score received by a commercial building in Austria to date.
It was highly enriching to find a client such as Caritas, whose awareness of sustainability issues is as sharp as that of ATP. As a design team, this gave us another reason to prove that the better world of tomorrow requires outstanding buildings.
Florian Schaller
Architect, Lead Project Manager in Vienna
Materials with previous lives: comprehensive re- and upcycling
The holistic re- und upcycling concept – which was developed together with the materialnomaden – enabled large amounts of demolished and waste material to be reused. The parquet floor comes from an earlier Caritas retirement home, the wall panels in the canteen were once ceiling panels in an office building, and the roof terrace is made from recycled timber. Interior elements such as lights, handrails, door panels and frames, postboxes, and natural stone slabs had previous lives and were upgraded and reused with a great love for detail.
magdas is undoubtedly our most unconventional industrial building and the ÖGNB Gold underlines that it is an outstanding example of sustainable building
Michael Haugeneder
Managing Director
ATP sustain
