Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Artistic Style and Themes - Architecture

Architecture

Although Hundertwasser first achieved notoriety for his boldly-coloured paintings, he is more widely known for his individual architectural designs. These designs use irregular forms, and incorporate natural features of the landscape. The Hundertwasserhaus apartment block in Vienna has undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a melody to the feet"), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows. He took no payment for the design of Hundertwasserhaus, declaring that the investment was worth it to "prevent something ugly from going up in its place".

From the early 1950s he increasingly focused on architecture, advocating more just human and environmental friendly buildings. This began with manifestos, essays and demonstrations. For example, he read out his "Mouldiness Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture" in 1958 on the occasion of an art and architectural event held at the Seckau Monastery. He rejected the straight line and the functional architecture. In Munich in 1967 he gave a lecture called "Speech in Nude for the Right to a Third Skin". His lecture "Loose from Loos, A Law Permitting Individual Buildings Alterations or Architecture-Boycott Manifesto", was given at the Concordia Press Club in Vienna in 1968.

In the Mouldiness Manifesto he first claimed the "Window Right": "A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door." In his nude speeches of 1967 and 1968 Hundertwasser condemned the enslavement of humans by the sterile grid system of conventional architecture and by the output of mechanised industrial production. He rejected rationalism, the straight line and functional architecture.

For Hundertwasser, human misery was a result of the rational, sterile, monotonous architecture, built following the tradition of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, author of the modernist manifesto Ornament and crime (1908). He called for a boycott of this type of architecture, and demanded instead creative freedom of building, and the right to create individual structures. In 1972 he published the manifesto Your window right — your tree duty. Planting trees in an urban environment was to become obligatory: "If man walks in nature's midst, then he is nature's guest and must learn to behave as a well-brought-up guest." Hundertwasser propagated a type of architecture in harmony with nature is his ecological commitment. He campaigned for the preservation of the natural habitat and demanded a life in accordance with the laws of nature. He wrote numerous manifestos, lectured and designed posters in favor of nature protection, including against nuclear power, to save the oceans and the whales and to protect the rain forest. He was also an advocate of composting toilets and the principle of constructed wetland. He perceived feces not as nauseous but as part of the cycle of nature. His beliefs are testified by his manifesto The Holy Shit and his DIY guide for building a composting toilet.

In the 1970s, Hundertwasser had his first architectural models built. The models for the Eurovision TV-show "Wünsch Dir was" (Make a Wish) in 1972 exemplified his ideas on forested roofs, tree tenants and the window right. In these and similar models he developed new architectural shapes, such as the spiral house, the eye-slit house, the terrace house and the high-rise meadow house. In 1974, Peter Manhardt made models for him of the pit house, the grass roof house and the green service station – along with his idea of the invisible, inaudible Green Motorway.

In the early 1980s Hundertwasser remodelled the Rosenthal Factory in Selb, and the Mierka Grain Silo in Krems. These projects gave him the opportunity to act as what he called an "architecture doctor".

In architectural projects that followed he implemented window right and tree tenants, uneven floors, woods on the roof, and spontaneous vegetation. Works of this period include: housing complexes in Germany; a church in Bärnbach, Austria; a district heating plant in Vienna; an incineration plant and sludge centre in Osaka, Japan; a railway station in Uelzen; a winery in Napa Valley; and a public toilet in Kawakawa.

In 1999 Hundertwasser started his last project named Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg. Although he never finished this work completely, the building was built a few years later in Magdeburg, a town in eastern Germany, and opened on October 3, 2005.

Buildings

• Hundertwasser House, Vienna, Austria
• District Heating Plant, Spittelau, Vienna, Austria
• Hundertwasserhaus Waldspirale, Darmstadt, Germany
• KunstHausWien, Vienna, Austria
• Kindergarten Heddernheim, Frankfurt
• Motorway Restaurant, Bad Fischau-Brunn, Austria
• Hot Springs Village, Bad Blumau, Styria, Austria
• Hundertwasserkirche, Bärnbach, Styria, Austria
• Markthalle, Altenrhein, Switzerland
• Wohnen unterm Regenturm, Plochingen, Germany
• Quixote Winery, Napa Valley, (USA), 1988-1998 (his only building in the US)
• Maishima Incineration Plant, Osaka (Japan), 1997–2000
• Public toilets, Kawakawa (New Zealand), 1999
• Hundertwasser "environmental railway station", Uelzen (Germany), 1999–2001
• Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany, 2003–2005
• Ronald McDonald Kinder Vallei, Valkenburg aan de Geul, The Netherlands
• Kuchlbauer-Turm, Abensberg, Germany, 2008–2010

An art gallery featuring Hundertwasser's work will be established in a council building in Whangarei, New Zealand, and will bring to fruition his 1993 plans for improving the building.

Images

• Grüne Zitadelle in Magdeburg, Germany

• Quixote Winery in Napa Valley

• Hundertwasser façade in Plochingen, Germany

• House Waldspirale in Darmstadt

• Thermal power plant in Vienna

• Residential building at Bad Soden am Taunus (suburban Frankfurt, Germany)

• Raststätte Bad Fischau at A2 (Southern Motorway), Austria

• Roof garden of a Kindergarten in Frankfurt-Heddernheim

• Quixote Winery entrance in Napa Valley

• Public toilets Kawakawa, New Zealand