Living in an artwork: The extraordinary geographies of the Hundertwasser-Haus, 1 Vienna

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 111-134

  Kraftl, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Architecture; Everydayness; Extraordinary; Hundertwasser Haus

Indexed keywords

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN; ART; BUILDING;

AUSTRIA; CENTRAL EUROPE; EURASIA; EUROPE; VIENNA;

EID: 58449097085     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474008097982     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. In addition to the extraordinary attention that the house has received, even its name is subject to contention. In 2003, a legal process over the creative ownership of the house was in process. It was argued that Josef Krawina, the original architect assigned to work with Hundertwasser, should be recognized in the name of the house. Although this case was upheld, at the time of my research, the building was known as the Hundertwasser-Haus, so I use this terminology for simplicity.
2. Quotation from interview with respondent. All respondents' names have been changed in this paper.
3. K.H. Koller, Hundertwasserhaus, Wien (Vienna, Museums Betriebs Gesellschaft MBH, 1996), p. 9.
4. D. Chaney, Cultural change and everyday life (Basingstoke, Palgrave); G.J. Seigworth, 'Banality for cultural studies', Cultural studies 14 (2000), pp. 227-68; H. Lefebvre, Critique of everyday life (London, Verso, 1991); M. Blanchot, 'Everyday speech', in S. Hanson, ed., The infinite conversation (Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 238-45.
5. J. Horton and P. Kraftl, 'For more-than-usefulness: Six overlapping points about Children's Geographies', Children's geographies 3 (2005), pp. 131-43; R. Martin, 'Geography and public policy: The case of the missing agenda', Progress in human geography 25 (2001), pp. 189-210.
6. Seigworth, 'Banality for cultural studies'; in various guises, recent interest in 'non-representational' geographies has interrogated the manifold affective and performative styles in which knowledge and meaning are produced: See N. Thrift, 'Afterwords', Environment and planning D: Society and space 18 (2000), pp. 213-55; see also H. Lorimer, 'Cultural geography: The busyness of being "morethan-representational"', Progress in human geography 29 (2005), pp. 83-94.
7. L. Holloway and P. Hubbard, People and place: The extraordinary geographies of everyday life (London, Prentice Hall, 2000).
8. P. Stallybrass and A. White, The politics and poetics of transgression (London, Methuen, 1986); J.R. Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London (London, Virago, 1992); K. Tester, ed., The flaneur (London, Routledge, 1994); J. Rendell, '"Bazaar Beauties" or "Pleasure is our pursuit": A spatial story of exchange', in I. Borden, J. Kerr, J. Rendell and A Pivaro, eds., The unknown city: Contesting architecture and social space (Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 104-21.
9. M.J.S. Rudwick, Scenes from deep time: Early pictorial representations of the prehistoric world (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996); M.J.S. Rudwick, The great Devonian controversy: Shaping of scientific knowledge amongst gentlemanly specialists (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998).
10. A. Vidler, The architectural uncanny: Essays in the modern unhomely (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1992), pp. 17-44; R. Mighall, A geography of Victorian gothic fiction: Mapping history's nightmares (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003).
11. K. Hetherington, The badlands of modernity: Heterotopia and social ordering (London, Routledge, 1997).
12. L. de Cauter, 'The panoramic ecstasy: On world exhibitions and the disintegration of experience', Theory, culture & society 10 (1993), pp. 1-23; D. Ley and K. Olds, 'Landscape as spectacle: World's fairs and the culture of heroic consumption', Environment and planning D: Society and space 6 (1988), pp. 191-212; A. Pred, 'Spectacular articulations of modernity: The Stockholm exhibition of 1897', Geografiska annaler 73B (1991), pp. 45-84.
13. G. Debord, The society of the spectacle (New York, Zone, 1967); J. Baudrillard, Simulacra and simulation (Ann Arbor, Michigan University Press, 1994); A. Bonnett, 'Art, ideology and everyday space: Subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism', Environment and planning D: society and space 10 (1992), pp. 69-86.
14. S. Kraetke, '"Global media cities": Major nodes of globalizing culture and media industries', in N. Brenner and R. Keil, eds., The global cities reader (London, Routledge, 2006), pp. 325-31; D.C. Rapoport, Terrorism: Critical concepts in political science (London, Routledge, 2006).
15. J. Hannigan, Fantasy city: Pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis (London, Routledge, 1998).
16. Much of this work uses political semiotic, textual, and/or iconographic approaches. See, for example: J. Goss, '"The magic of the mall": An analysis of form, function and meaning in the contemporary built environment', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1993), pp. 18-47; D. Matless, 'A modern stream: Water, landscape, modernism and geography' Environment and planning D: Society and space 10 (1992), pp. 569-88; D. Cosgrove, B. Roscoe and S. Rycroft, 'Landscape and identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21 (1996), pp. 534-50; R. Taylor, The word in stone: The role of architecture in Nationalist Socialist ideology (Berkeley, UCP, 1974).
17. K. Frampton, Modern architecture: A critical history (London, Thames & Hudson, 2000); D. Cosgrove, Social formation and symbolic landscape (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); D. MacNeill, 'Skyscraper geography', Progress in human geography 29 (2005), pp. 41-55.
18. R. Fishman, Urban utopias in the twentieth century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1982); D. Sharp, Modern architecture and expressionism (London, Longman, 1966); S. Sadler, The situationist city (London, MIT Press, 1998).
19. P. Restany, The power of art: Hundertwasser, the painter-king with the five skins (Koeln, Taschen, 2001), p. 45.
20. F. Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser architecture: For a more human architecture in harmony with nature (Koeln, Taschen, 1997), p. 258.
21. N. Wates and C. Knevitt, Community architecture: How people are creating their own environment (London, Penguin, 1987); J. Hughes and S. Sadler, Non-plan: Essays on freedom, participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism (Oxford, Architectural Press, 2000).
22. L. Lerup, Building the unfinished: Architecture and human action (London, Sage, 1977).
23. Perhaps the best examples have emerged from deconstructive architecture. See, for example: B. Tschumi, Architecture and disjunction (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1994); A. Benjamin, 'Deconstruction and art/the art of deconstruction', in C. Norris and A. Benjamin, eds., What is deconstruction? (London, Academy Editions, 1988), pp. 33-54.
24. M. Miles, Art, space and the city: Public art and urban futures (London, Routledge, 1997).
25. I. Borden, J. Kerr, A. Pivaro and J. Rendell, Strangely familiar: narratives of architecture in the city (London, Routledge, 1996); Sandercock, L. Towards cosmopolis (Chichester, Wiley, 1998).
26. I. Borden, J. Rendell, J. Kerr and A. Pivaro, J. 'Things, flows, filters, tactics' in I. Borden, J. Kerr, J. Rendell and A. Pivaro, eds., The unknown city: Contesting architecture and social space (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 2-27.
27. For examples of such approaches, see Goss, 'The magic of the mall'; J. Goss, 'The built environment and social theory: Towards an architectural geography', Professional geographer 40 (1988), pp. 392-403; J. Duncan and N. Duncan, '(Re)reading the landscape', Environment and planning D: society and space 6 (1988), pp. 117-26.
28. L. Lees, 'Towards a critical geography of architecture: The case of an ersatz colosseum', Ecumene 8 (2001), pp. 56-7.
29. J. Jacobs, S. Cairns and I. Strebel, '"A tall storey...but, a fact just the same": The red road high-rise as a black box', Urban studies 44 (2007), pp. 609-29; J. Jacobs, 'A geography of big things', Cultural geographies 13 (2006), pp. 1-27.
30. Jacobs et al., 'A tall storey', pp. 613-14. See also Thomas Gieryn's analysis of the stabilization of complex, contested meanings and materials at a new bio-technology laboratory: T. Gieryn, 'What buildings do', Theory and society 31 (2002), pp. 35-74.
31. J. JacoRs and S. Smith, 'Guest editorial: Living room: rematerialising home', Environment and planning A 40 (2008), pp. 515-19; M. Hand and E. Shove, 'Orchestrating concepts: Kitchen dynamics and regime change in Good Housekeeping and Ideal Home, 1922-2002', Journal of home cultures 1 (2004), pp. 235-56; A. Blunt and R. Dowling, Home (London, Routledge, 2006).
32. Hand and Shove, 'Orchestrating concepts', p.235.
33. Jacobs and Smith, 'Guest editorial', p. 517.
34. L. Lees, 'Ageographia, heterotopias, and Vancouver's new public library', Environment and planning d: Society and space 15 (1997), pp. 321-47; M. Llewellyn, 'Polyvocalism and the public: 'doing' a critical historical geography of architecture', Area 35 (2003), pp. 264-70; P. Kraftl, 'Building an idea: The material construction of an ideal childhood', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2006), pp. 488-504; P. Adey, 'Surveillance at the airport: Surveilling mobility/mobilising surveillance', Environment and planning A 36 (2004), pp. 1365-80.
35. Kraftl, 'Building an idea'.
36. Jacobs et al., 'A Tall Storey'.
37. M.E. Gardiner, 'Everyday utopianism: Lefebvre and his critics', Cultural studies 18 (2004), pp. 228-54; see also P. Ffrench, 'A different life: Barthes, Foucault and everyday life', Cultural studies 18 (2004), pp. 290-305.
38. Gardiner, 'Everyday utopianism', p. 228.
39. Ibid., p. 243.
40. For more details about the Hundertwasser-Haus in the context of Viennese social housing, see E. Bramhas, Der wiener Gemeindebau: Von Karl-Marx-Hof zum Hundertwasser-Haus (Basel, Birkhaeuser, 1987).
41. Applicants must be Austrian or EU citizens, or a 'recognized other' and have lived with a Viennese address for two years. The maximum income limits for eligibility are as follows for 2004: For a one person household, 25,000 Euros/year (£17,000); for a four person household, 48,000 Euros/year (£33,000). Rent in the house varies by size of apartment. However, the standard Viennese rates are 2,08 per square metre per week for a category 'B' (large- to medium-sized) flat, which works out at around 50 per week. Source: http://www.wien.gv.at/ wienerwohnen/. Accessed 24 July 2006.
42. All interviews were undertaken in German, with both individuals and couples. The interviews were taped and transcribed (in German), but for reasons of space, only their English translation appears here.
43. Hundertwasser, 'Hundertwasser architecture', p. 48.
44. Hundertwasser's paintings adorn the front of three of Ed Soja's books: see, for example, the first edition of E. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical studies of cities and regions (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000).
45. D. Thompson, 'Friedensreich Hundertwasser,' (2000) http://hs.riverdale.k12.or.us/~dthompso/art/100h2o/. Accessed August 2004.
46. W. Schmied, 'The mole - father of all architects', in Hundertwasser, 'Hundertwasser architecture', pp. 6-7. Schmied points out that Hundertwasser's upbringing as the son of a Jewish mother, in 1930s Vienna, may explain his introversion.
47. Restany P., 'The power of art'; for a full collection of Hundertwasser's work, see W. Schmied and A. Fuerst, Hundertwasser's complete works: collector's edition (Koeln, Taschen, 2003); for critical essays on Hundertwasser's life and his architectural practice, see R. Schediwy, Hundertwassers Haeuser: Dokumente einer Kontroverse ueber zeitgemaesse Architektur (Wien, Edition Tusch, 1999).
48. The precise aesthetic, technological and social definitions of architecture were and are contested: See K. Frampton, Modern architecture: A critical history (London, Thames & Hudson, 2000). However, it is clear that Hundertwasser was especially critical of Adolf Loos' attack on ornamentation, of the straight line, and of box-like, 'system-built' housing blocks such as the many social housing flats that are scattered nearby the Hundertwasser-Haus, and which were built between 1930 and 1960.
49. These speeches are re-printed in Hundertwasser, 'Hundertwasser architecture'.
50. Ibid., p. 49.
51. Ibid.
52. B. Kreisky, contemporaneous Federal Chancellor of Vienna, cited in Hundertwasser, 'Hundertwasser architecture', p. 250.
53. Hundertwasser, 'Hundertwasser architecture', pp. 258-60.
54. Schmied, 'The mole', p. 7.
55. Restany P., 'The power of art', p. 45.
56. Most of these texts were written in German. Excerpts have been provided in English only, for reasons of space.
57. I. Santner, 'Sozusagen das achte Weltwunder', Die Weltwoche 44 (1984), p. 63.
58. G. Krause, 'Ein Prestigeprojekt wird wirksam faul', Kurier (14 August 1991), p. 21.
59. Such a negative response to 'naïve' and hopeful forms of utopianism has become a characteristic of Anglocentric representations of utopia, and is therefore far from unusual. However, many utopian theorists argue that this representation is grossly unfair, and in fact masks an implicit, 'logical' utopianism which justifies (amongst other things), the 'war on terror' begun by the USA and its allies following the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. For more, see: R. Jacoby, The end of utopia: Politics and culture in an age of apathy (New York, Basic Books, 1999); R.S. Jacques, 'What is a crypto-utopia and why does it matter?', in M. Parker, ed., Utopia and organization (Oxford, Blackwell, 2002), pp. 24-39.
60. Schloss Neuschwanstein is a fairy-tale royal castle in southern Bavaria, Germany. It is widely believed to be the inspiration for Disney's castle.
61. I. Santner, 'Friedensreich Hundertwasser architektelt gardenless weiter', original source and pagination unknown. Excerpt taken from photocopy at the Hundertwasser archive in Vienna, September, 2002.
62. A. Flatscher, 'Wien im Hundertwasser-Boom: Der meister baut und baut...' Salzburger Nachrichten (5 May 1991), no pagination.
63. K. Khittl, 'Wohnen im Pflanz', Wochenpresse 20 (1985), no pagination.
64. J.D. Reed, 'An old flasher's fantastical flats', Time 38 (1985), p. 60.
65. L. Leary, 'Bright character's colourful work', Observer (March 1996), p. 206.
66. M. Pawley, 'Friendensreich Hundertwasser: Maverick architect building against the grain', Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk. Accessed April 2002.
67. H. Adam, 'Inflation des schoenen Scheins: Die Hundertwasser-Well', Neue Zuercher Zeitung (22 March 1994), no pagination.
68. Clarified in personal communication with Joram Harel, Hundertwasser's erstwhile manager, May 2002.
69. ORF is the Austrian television and radio network.
70. The extracts included in this section of the paper are reproduced from my field notebooks.
71. See, for instance, Jacobs and Smith, 'Guest editorial', p. 517.
72. Thousands of visitors have entered remarks into the official visitor books, available at KunstHausWien, an art gallery dedicated to Hundertwasser's paintings and models, located 200 metres from the Hundertwasser-Haus (and also re-designed by Hundertwasser).
73. Koller, 'Hundertwasser-Haus', pp. 9-11.
74. This excerpt is taken from an informal interview (conducted 1 March 2003) with the owner of the café on the ground floor of the Hundertwasser-Haus. The owner had worked here and observed life outside the house for many years.
75. On gender and architecture, see D.F. Krell, Archeticture: Ecstasies of time, space and the human body (Albany, SUNY Press, 1997); M. Domosh, 'A 'feminine' building? An inquiry into the relations between gender ideology and aesthetic ideology in turn-of-the-century America', Ecumene 3 (1996), pp. 305-24.
76. Gardiner, 'Everyday utopianism'.
77. S. Pile, 'The un(known) city...or, an urban geography of what lies buried below the surface', in I. Borden, J. Kerr, J. Rendell and A. Pivaro, eds., The unknown city: Contesting architecture and social space (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 262-79. On the utopian possibilities of the uncanny, see P. Kraftl, 'Utopia, performativity and the unhomely', Environment and planning D: Society and space 25 (2007), pp. 120-43.
78. A questioning which Steve Pile extends to the unsettling of power relations and boundaries in the contemporary western city. See Pile, 'The un(known) city', pp. 274-6.
79. For an early example of nonrepresentational thinking in geography, see N. Thrift, 'Afterwords', Environment and planning D: Society and space 18 (2000), pp. 213-55. I recognize, of course, that discourses, images and controversies may be figured as nonrepresentational practices (and vice-versa) but I am making a simpler (dare I say empirical) point here regarding the importance of written texts, biographies, speeches, newspaper articles and images to the Hundertwasser-Haus and extraordinary places like it.