Although the
Danube river has been inextricably connected with Vienna, for centuries, it had played only a subordinate role in the city of
Vienna. Unlike in many other cities, the Danube river, because of the numerous floods it regularly caused, was omitted from the
urban area. Buildings grew up in Vienna on both sides of the
Danube river – but not up to the Danube. Only after extensive
flood-control engineering and the creation of the
New Danube relief channel, with
Danube Island, in the 1970s, was the surrounding cityscape of the Danube river of interest to builders. The establishment of Donau City had its origins in the organization of the Vienna International Garden Festival in April 1964. This was on a site of a former landfill, later superficially rehabilitated, in an area between the Old Danube and the New Danube. On October 12, 1962, the construction of the
Danube Tower began, and two years later, the Garden Festival was held. The site of the garden show was known as
Donaupark. Not far from Donaupark, in 1967, the planning of the UNO-City was started, opened in 1979. Through the construction of the U1 and the
Reichsbruecke (Empire Bridge), the UN-City had a high-ranking access to the traffic system. The terrain gained increasing importance with the opening of the
congress center in 1987. Next, at the end of the 1980s, there were plans to hold a Vienna-
Budapest EXPO along the northern bank of the Danube river in Vienna. However, the planned
EXPO 1995 was canceled because a majority of Viennese voters rejected it in a
referendum on the project. The site was then developed for a subsequent use as a multifunctional district. In 1991, the EXPO organizing corporation was succeeded by the Vienna Danube Region Development Corporation (WED), with major Austrian banks and
insurance companies(BA-CA,
Erste Bank,
Raiffeisen Bank for Labor and Economy, Invest Bank AG,
UNIQA,
Wiener Städtische) as principal
shareholders. WED owns the area and is responsible for its overall development. Within a few years, the district became a second urban center in Vienna, with residential and office buildings, research facilities, recreational facilities and event locations. Work on the construction of infrastructure for future use began in 1993. The Danube Bank Motorway (A22) was roofed over, providing more area. The foundation for the first building was completed in 1995, with the start of construction of the
Andromeda Tower. The total area is 17.4 hectares. Of this total, approximately 1.7 million cubic meters are used for construction, which represents a gross floor area of approximately 500,000 square meters. Nearly two-thirds of those buildings are already completed and utilized. ==Gallery==