Waldspirale
I've never been a fan of the Friedensreich Hundertwasser's buildings. They're a bit too goofy and definitely the product of a painter rather than an architect (which in itself isn't a problem, but the surface treatment of the exteriors I think stems from this). His most well-known building is easily the eponymous apartment complex in Vienna he "completed" in 1986; I put quotes around completed because his buildings are never really finished. They evolve over time not only via the growth of trees and other vegetation integral with his buildings but by the occupants as well, who are allowed to paint the wall outside their unit in the Hundertwasser Haus, for example. This "strident philosophy of ecology and personal freedom," said about the late artist in a New York Times article yesterday on a posthumous winery opening in California, is something I definitely appreciate, though the execution still troubles me.
Image by Alexander Deppert
In a slide show accompanying the Times article, I was struck by the Waldspirale development in Darmstadt, Germany, shown above and below. While the striped exterior and onion domes leave much to be desired aesthetically, the ramping green roof is just amazing. It extends the green courtyard across the whole development, giving residents easy access to this area. It also helps the project relate to its context, by giving the mass a low scale inside the block but giving the public face a larger, more appropriate scale on the adjacent streets.
This is the kind of architecture that is in vogue now (witness Aaron Betsky's book Landscrapers from 2002), though in a more tame and less artistic manner. It's an appropriate strategy for a world that needs to get a lot greener.
Image by Alexander Deppert
In a slide show accompanying the Times article, I was struck by the Waldspirale development in Darmstadt, Germany, shown above and below. While the striped exterior and onion domes leave much to be desired aesthetically, the ramping green roof is just amazing. It extends the green courtyard across the whole development, giving residents easy access to this area. It also helps the project relate to its context, by giving the mass a low scale inside the block but giving the public face a larger, more appropriate scale on the adjacent streets.
This is the kind of architecture that is in vogue now (witness Aaron Betsky's book Landscrapers from 2002), though in a more tame and less artistic manner. It's an appropriate strategy for a world that needs to get a lot greener.
Chicago would be at least 10 times as much fun if all developer driven condos were required to have colorful stipes and onion domes. The south loop would look like a cross between candy land the board game, and a Pucci fashion show. Give me that over the nicest beige precast or greenish blue curtain wall any day.
ReplyDeleteI love Hundertwasser's work so much -- and this is coming from someone whose tastes are generally so austere they border on the monastic, so it's not the aesthetics. It's the sense I get, whenever I'm confronted by one of his buildings, that he built entirely out of love: love of color, love of humanity, love of trees, love of buildings. Aesthetics be damned; the man had a point to make, and he made it. We could all do worse, and very often do.
ReplyDeleteI confess I am conflicted between feeling like I should love something so exuberant and overflowing with life, and being filled with repulsion by the crudeness and rigorless sprawl of these buildings. I guess I've been an architect too long to find these things beautiful.
ReplyDeleteterrifying, hundertwasser was not an architect. his architecture is a fraud.
ReplyDeleteYes, Anonymous, Clearly, this roofed and walled structure intended for permanent use is an intentional perversion of the art or science of building in order to induce you to part with something of value.
ReplyDeleteThe more I look at this building, the more it looks like a Coogie (aka Cosby) sweater.
ReplyDeleteactually, a lot of his other less known designs form around a partnership between natural green areas and built areas. his art is beautiful, and the idea to inport it to facades was less succesful, but maybe today he would have used projections and media screans to do something else, thats what he had at the time. his art shows he was even more creative than the buildings. Eyal.
ReplyDeleteIf his buildings are remembered for years to come, I think it'll be for the partnership of the green and the built and the freedoms he gave people to manipulate their environment. In many ways the (ongoing) outcome arises from these two concerns and therefore is out of his control. One can say he's a facilitator in his buildings, more than an artist or architect...though that point of view doesn't address why his buildings therefore look very similar to each other.
ReplyDelete