September 23, 2017–January 28, 2018
September 23, 2017–March 25, 2018
Graz Architecture
This exhibition shows the work of seven Graz-based architects born in the 1930s and 1940s who belong the same generation as British architects Cook and Fournier. Although the architects featured in the exhibition have all spent a number of years abroad and have operated or still operate within influential international networks, Graz and Styria remain a centre of vital interests for them in many respects. These British and Austrian architects share a considerable number of both professional and private connections, as is clearly demonstrated by the close links between the two exhibitions.
Diverse positions
The title of the show, taken from the book Architektur-Investitionen. ‘Grazer Schule’, 13 Standpunkte (Forum Stadtpark 1984), reflects the diversity of the figures in the exhibition. Rather than seeking to unite their approaches under one label, such as “the Graz School,” the show instead embodies the range of architectonic positions to be found here. These varied attitudes converge at certain points, yet at times are far removed from one another. The exhibition sets up “nodes” that suggest connections between thoughts and projects. Some examples: the spatial, social and socio-economic redefinition of the single family house has been a subject for Szyszkowitz + Kowalski and Frey; social housing has become a leading issue for Huth, Szyszkowitz + Kowalski and Giencke; modalities for participation were programmatically explored by Huth and Szyszkowitz + Kowalski; Huth/Domenig, Frey and Hafner have examined the use of structures and structural architecture at various levels; Giencke, Szyszkowitz + Kowalski and also Huth have always had an explicit interest in aesthetics, Giencke and Frey also place a great emphasis on the functional, technical and socio-economic aspects of a building; while Szyszkowitz + Kowalski, Frey and Huth/Domenig with Floraskin followed ecological agendas—even if their positions at first seem to diverge greatly. Wolff-Plottegg and Domenig both concentrate on authorship but from opposite ends, so to speak. These are but a few of the cross-connections formulated in the exhibition. In the creation of the various nodes, individual and different approaches are not downplayed, but instead clarify positions and put them in relation to one another. Projects that have an explicit connection with Cook & Fournier and/or Archigram, such as the Gewächshaus/Botanischer Garten by Volker Giencke, City in Space by Hafner or Cowicle by Konrad Frey, are presented within the Up into the Unknown section, so further strengthening the ties between the two exhibitions.
Different perspectives
The outside view plays an essential role in the exhibition, casting different perspectives on the architects’ works: the featured architects’ self-interpretation stands alongside perceptions based on a curatorial and art institutional view and the vision of the two exhibition architects, Niels Jonkhans (Up into the Unknown), and Rainer Stadlbauer (Graz Architecture). Jonkhans was the senior manager for the implementation of the Kunsthaus, and Stadlbauer was assistant to Wolff-Plottegg at the Vienna University of Technology, yet they belong to a different generation and hence look at the material from both a certain closeness and a distance. An external perspective is also provided by the curators, the exhibition graphic artist Anna Lena von Helldorff, and the invited visual artists, whose role can best be compared to that of commentators. Their task was to examine the exhibited architectural positions from today’s perspective. In addition to the artists previously mentioned, Oliver Hangl and Julia Gaisbacher will also feature in the exhibition Up into the Unknown. Hangl’s work is an acoustic portrait of Wohnanlage Alte Poststraße by Szyszkowitz + Kowalski, providing an audible interpretation of developments in this spatial/societal vision and changing needs in housing estate life. Gaisbacher starts with Huth’s Eschensiedlung housing project. A series of photographic interior and exterior images are presented together with documentation, archive materials and also Huth’s working model, in use over 40 years ago.
Up into the Unknown
Since its opening in 2003, the Kunsthaus has presented and facilitated many works by renowned artists and over the years has become a landmark for Graz. At the heart of the exhibition stands the development process of this building, together with the collaboration between planning and implementing architects, museologists, companies and its subsequent use by artists.
The origins of the Kunsthaus
The ideas for a living, communicative and constantly changing site for contemporary art were born a long time ago in another place, and in the midst of an environment shaped by pop culture: 1960s London. Back then, Cook and the other members of Archigram were already thinking about periscopes protruding from buildings, space ships that alighted in sleepy towns, spongy, landscape-like zones and variable skins for buildings. Cook and Fournier’s first joint project, the Batiment Public in Monte Carlo, was intended as a platform for all kinds of activities: go-karting, a circus, chamber music and even ice hockey. For the project that foreshadowed the Kunsthaus, envisaged in and on the Schlossberg, the architects imagined a huge, vividly coloured tongue stretching out of the hill and down into the street below. After decades of fruitless efforts to establish a Kunsthaus for Graz, it happened at last around the millennium: Cook and Fournier won the competition to build the Kunsthaus on the Eisernes Haus site.
The building phase
The exhibition title Up to the Unknown refers to a famous quote of Cook, and originally alluded to the way you glide into the building on the “travelator”—at first we cannot know what awaits us inside. However, the title also refers to building processes that cannot be completely controlled, and to the gaps that open up between ideas and their realisation. Time pressure, budget constraints, functional requirements and technical limitations led to substantial changes to the original plans, but also to creative “ad hoc” solutions during the construction process. For this reason, Jonkhans, at that time a partner of Cook and Fournier, sees “the Kunsthaus as a built and continuously evolving drawing.” This sometimes very challenging development process is shown in the exhibition, as is the collaboration between planning and implementing architects, museologists, companies and its subsequent use by artists.
