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HATED - BUILT - LOVED HUNDERTWASSER ARCHITECTURE 30 November 2000 - 25 February 2001 Friedensreich Hundertwasser died on 19 February 2000. To mark his passing, we are holding a memorial exhibition, featuring some 20 architect´s models on a scale of 1:50 of his international projects. These models have never been seen in Austria, and most of them were hand-fashioned by Hundertwasser. The models include projects which have been realised in Germany, Austria, Japan and the United States. Façade foreman, benefactor by force, ingenious dilettante, amateur master builder, latter-day Gaudì, prettifier, would-be architect, façade guru... Bluff architecture, house of horrors, communal hanging gardens, Neuschwanstein for public-housing tenants, kitsch palace, Canary Islands for Kakania, textbook for garden dwarfs, horror castle and idyllic arbour... Rarely has an artist anywhere in the world upset people so much as Hundertwasser. Famed/infamous all his life for his statements and activities, his first architecture project in Vienna in 1986 was a pure provocation from the beginning. The "Hundertwasser House", vilified and rejected by many as an ingeniously launched marketing project, landed on its feet, as it turned out. Erected in a neighbourhood of Vienna which could fairly be described as the "stick", its subsequent attractiveness could not in any way have been foreseen. It seemed more likely to have a future as "Hundertwasser´s architectural junk", rotting and forgotten somewhere on the Danube Canal... It turned out quite differently, and what was formerly a huge controversy is today a must on the list of sights to see for the tourists from all over the world, who, along with the Viennese, make their way to this remote section, by subway, by tram (the N line - as in North Pole!) and on foot, like Boy Scouts or pathfinders. Since 1991 the Viennese have been coming primarily to look for KunstHausWien, and usually they find it. It was opened in 1991, not far from Hundertwasser House, in the buildings of the former Thonet furniture factory, and was designed by Hundertwasser. With over 1600 m² of exhibition space, half of it for the only permanent exhibition of Hundertwasser´s oeuvre in the world and the other half reserved for large-scale international exhibitions. KunstHausWien was another oddity in the city: Austria´s first privately funded and managed museum, with no subsidies from the city or the state. This was inconceivable in Vienna at that time. And at that a museum with no days off, open daily from 10 a.m. to 7. p.m. So one need not fear finding the doors closed once one has found it. The project, initially discarded with a smile of condescension, quickly became a fixed star in the Viennese exhibition firmament, thanks to the furor caused by its international exhibitions, and even die-hard Hundertwasser opponents have by now learnt to overcome their disgust and don´t miss a single exhibition. Much of what is said in Austria about Hundertwasser, his life and his architecture, belongs to the realm of fairy tale and myth. But then, what would this city be like without fairy tales and myths? We shall miss Hundertwasser very much. An exhibition catalogue will be published in German and English. THE EXHIBITION WAS SUPPORTED BY
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