The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Ars Electronica Center took place on March 1, 2007. It launched an ambitious architectural undertaking that would go up in record time—building a multi-level structure immediately adjacent to the existing facility and then wrapping the entire ensemble in a glass shell, the AEC’s spectacular 5,100-m2 LED façade. The result is a holistic entity, a striking highlight of the Linz cityscape, and the architectural counterpart of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art on the opposite bank of the Danube.

Main Gallery below the Water Table

Situated on the building’s east side is a spacious terrace that provides an attractive setting for open-air events. Its eastern end inclines upwards and features a set of wide steps. Directly below this Ars Electronica Plaza is the approximately 1,000-m2 Main Gallery, the core of the new Ars Electronica Center. This exhibition space’s floor is about 1½ meters below groundwater level, which presented a major construction challenge. The eastern end of the Main Gallery segues into the labs, testing facilities and workshops of the Ars Electronica Futurelab, whose staffers now enjoy ideal working conditions.

Almost 30 Million Euros

The Ars Electronica Center now features more than 6,500 m2 of space. The addition was designed by the Viennese firm of Treusch architecture, and cost about 30 million euros. The project was supervised by a municipal agency, Gebäudemanagement der Stadt Linz.

Ars Electronica possesses one of the world’s most extensive archives of digital media art from throughout the last 25 years. It consists of the Catalog Archive and material documenting the Ars Electronica Festival (from 1979), the Archive of the Prix Ars Electronica (from 1987), material on Ars Electronica projects as well as biographies of the artists and theoreticians who took part in them.

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