Continuing my tour of Austrian architecture, today I am blogging about the UN Headquarters in Vienna. Vienna is a city that is half the size of Oklahoma City, but with almost twice the population. The UN Center is on the east side of Vienna, formerly a very industrial part of the city, but after the second world war, it was largely abandoned. When the UN came to Austria in the 1970s, the city government donated the land on which the UN complex is built to encourage growth in the area. They built new subways, a new bridge over the Danube, and apartments nearby to accommodate the UN Personnel in the area. I've always liked this building because of the lightness of the floors between the two external columns. Also, the shape reminds me of someone offering a hug. Before they built the security control building (foreground), you could walk right up to it, over a large plaza, straight from the subway station.
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