ÖBB Education Campus

A new employee training centre for ÖBB – Austrian national railways – in St Pölten provides theory, and practical learning facilities as well as hotel accommodation for visiting staff.  The main building houses both training spaces and the overnight rooms in a single building.  Glazed and inviting at ground floor level, the building takes the form of a sliced open block above first floor level, with a 5-storey hotel wing to the west, and a 3- storey training wing to the east.  Recessed balconies around the hotel wing provide visual depth to the façade and extra amenity space for guests.

A central courtyard enjoys a visual connection to sports pitches and a relaxation landscape to the north, beyond which are a range of practical and technical teaching spaces – track construction and practice track for learner locomotive drivers, etc.  Within the main building an open plan sound-protected courtyard is designed to be relatively introverted, inviting building users to relax during breaks in teaching to sit and enjoy the outdoors.

The façade of the education campus accentuates the different uses in a variety of ways. The generously glazed ground floor frames the entire educational, clearly displaying ÖBB’s training measures to the public. The façade of the seminar wing features a horizontal banded cladding system that varies in height according to the needs of the spaces within.

A technically advanced facade cladding system has been chosen as a response to the focus on technical training within the building: a ventilated rainscreen perforated metal façade with integrated external sun shading. The metal cladding panels feature varying perforations which vary across the building to lend further dynamics to the building design. This facade system is wrapped around all sides of the new training centre ensuring a coherent character across this complex project.

Video (german) ÖBB Education Campus (© ÖBB/wexplore)