The goal of the design is to increase the visibility of the historically-protected work of Roland Rainer through careful interventions, while providing the broadcasting corporation with adequate space to meet its new requirements. A compact, central media and broadcasting building has been designed in which all of the ORF’s primary functions are bundled. This building, with its new garages and workshops, has been designed with aspects of Roland Rainer’s architecture and has been lent a self-reliant, urban appearance by the addition of a forecourt and a pond. The two-storey multimedia newsroom is in the centre of the building, which can be accessed from all usage areas over short distances. The transparent upper floors are structurally designed as four bars. Technical and ancillary rooms are found in the basement. Each of the four bars have been designed as a multi-storey girder, which spans the newsroom without supportive columns. This supporting structure, which consists of a steel framework with reinforced concrete floor slabs, is covered by an outer envelope of extensively-glazed material and then by a layer of fine-textured, expanded metal panels, which have been bent diagonally to provide bracing and serve as a sunscreen.
