When the stadium for a >Workers Olympiad< - one of the most beautiful complexes in Europe, as the daily press put it - was opened in 1931 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Republic of Austria on the Prater site in Vienna, Otto Ernst Schweizer, the architect, was suddenly catapulted into the ranks of internationally acclaimed architects. The stadium, which can seat 60,000, was built as an amphitheatre on the model of its ancient predecessors, in particular the Colosseum in Rome, which Schweizer had studied intensively; the Viennese stadium seen as a reinterpretation of the enormous Roman structure on the basis of the constancy of things that were valid, which was one of the basic premises of his architecture.

Immo Boyken：Grandeur in simplicity-Schweizer's stadium jn Vienna

Aerial views and plans

Site plan 26-Aerial views 27-Plan 28-Section 29

Pictorial section

Exterior views 30-Building shell 36-Interior views 38-

Grandstand and playing field 44

Credits