Raumkunst holistic venue design philosophy



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Raumkunst at Coliseum Europe Image: Coliseum GSVA

Harald Fux speaks with a lot of confidence and his knowledge of Austrian football is at his fingertips. An assertive and self-assured person he casts his mind back to how as a kid “I was not very proud of Austrian football and you could not be proud of your national team and that very thought made me very sad”. Today, it is a changed scenario as the “Austrian clubs are playing with the ‘Big Clubs’ like the Premier League team Liverpool F.C. (UK)”.

Fux is the big cheese of the sports architecture firm Raumkunst in Austria which is engaged in the Austrian national football team training center design work and Tomasz Zahorski who is the head honcho of the Legia Training Center in Poland joins Fux in stating that the training facilities should be called campus as the ‘campus’ word is all-comprehensive. Fux could not agree more.

Harald Fux is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the sports architecture firm Raumkunst in Austria. He comes armed with a degree in architecture from the Technical University of Vienna and has been a Partner at Raumkunst since 2008.

Tomasz Zahorski is a Member of the Management Boards and Supervisory Boards in a number of sports, entertainment and real estate entities. He helms the Legia Training Center in Poland, the most modern football training and research and development (R&D) facility in Central Europe.

In an exclusive for ‘Coliseum’, Harald Fux, CEO, Raumkunst, Austria, engages in a lengthy discourse with Tomasz Zahorski, Board Member, Legia Warsaw, Poland, and Fux tells Zahorski that they are designing the Austrian national football team training center in Vienna in such a manner so that “everybody can soak in the spirit of soccer as well as celebrate soccer”. Zahorski adds that the football training facilities nowadays have become “more of a research and development (R&D) center for football because now football is getting so much complex”. Echoing similar sentiments Fux hoped that the federation will use the ÖFB Campus Vienna as a “site to celebrate the players because people talk more about the business than the players”. Advocating for equal rights for the women football players Fux informed that in the training facility the rooms have been programed in a different way so as to suit the female athletes and he felt that it is all about looking at things from a broader perspective and changing the mindset.
 

Raumkunst

The architectural firm Raumkunst was founded in Vienna (capital of Austria) in 2008 by Christine Diethör and Harald Fux. Since then, the name has stood for expertise in sports facilities, schools and event venues.
 

Legia Warsaw

The Legia Warsaw is a professional football club based in Warsaw, Poland and is the most successful Polish football club in history. The 31,103-capacity Polish Army Stadium serves as their home arena. The Legia Training Center is the sports venue and the training center of the Legia Warsaw in Książenice in Poland.
 

ÖFB Campus Vienna

A modern, sustainable training center of national importance for the ÖFB, the Austrian Football Association, is being built in Vienna’s Seestadt district (Austria). In the near future, the men’s and women’s teams of the national selection teams will be able to train at this attractive location and play matches in front of around 1,000 spectators.

Haruld Fux who is all agog about the under-construction ÖFB Campus Vienna tells Tomasz Zahorski that working for the Austrian Football Association (ÖFB – the highest governing body for football in Austria which also governs the Austria national football team) feels great and “calling the training facility a campus transport a different feeling, it gives the feel that the campus is open, it celebrates soccer and I think our USP is that we have created an open structure”.

Fux is a person who believes in equal rights and opportunities for the women football players and Zahorski seconds him as he states that “women’s sports and football is also getting bigger and bigger”.

The architect proudly stated that the women’s football team in Austria is very successful and has “set the bar very high”.

Stated Fux, “As we are preparing the campus spaces we are preparing spaces between the stadium for the male and the female players so as to make it as adaptive as possible.”

Talking about the training facility, the architect informs Zahorski that “it is very important that the campus is an open campus so that the Municipality and the people living near it can use the facility as well. They can use one of the pitches at least. We have actually even built one building just for the public with an esports lounge so that they can relate to the national team as well and we have also set up a restaurant so that the players can speak to their fans and build a relationship with them and the national players will not get the feel that they are lodged in a gated community.”
 

Level Playing Field

Fux informed Zahorski that the ÖFB Campus Vienna has been designed as a mixed facility keeping the women’s team in mind – “We have gender-neutral sanitary facilities. It was not easy to convince the club that the sanitary facilities have been designed in different ways so that the women players would feel comfortable.”

He added, “We did not design a Mayor-perspective stadium or a Mayor-perspective hotel or dressing room or sanitary facilities.”
 

Wrap-up

Harald Fux ended his conversation with Tomasz Zahorski by informing the latter that sustainability has been accorded topmost priority in the above training facility. He strongly felt that the venue operators/owners should not adopt sustainable practices just for the sake of adopting it but should do it in the right earnest – “We should make the facility as sustainable as possible – in social, economical and ecological ways. At the ÖFB Campus Vienna we have Green façades, we have Green roofs with TV on the roof but what is very exciting is the fact that we can use the groundwater as an energy supplier. We have the groundwater with 15 degrees the whole year round. So, we can use this energy for heating as well as cooling the pitches as well as the building.”

The holistic approach of Harald Fux and his team will definitely provide optimal training conditions for the Austrian national football team players.

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