The history and invocation of the Arche in Austrian Radical architecture thinking

Abstract

The architecture of the European Radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s is principally associated with the forward-looking principles of the architectural avant-garde. Scholarship on the movements emphasizes its futuristic and accompanying science fiction elements. While the importance of a visionary focus on the birth and development of the Radical movements is widely acknowledged, the same cannot be said for the connections of the visionary production to the architectural past. This article focuses on the Austrian Radicals and stresses their use of archetypal forms as a means to signify the difference between them and the preceding generation of Austrian modernists. In this sense the passing of editorial control of Bau from the Modernists to the Radicals is a crucial moment in the context of this article.

Keywords:

• architecture history
• Arche
• Austrian Radicals
• radical architecture
• Vienna
• Utopia
• visionary architecture

Public Interest Statement

Where conventional thinking may be argued to eventually lead to crises (even global crises), radical thinking may be seen to be indispensable to the production of innovative visions that would help to overcome such crises.

This happened in the 1960s and 1970s with the new architectural utopias of Superstudio, Archigram and others. Included among them were the Austrian Radicals whose strength of futuristic vision has been recently rediscovered. This article contends that this strength of vision is, in part, a result of their re-reading of history interpreted not as a tradition or memory, but as an attempt to revitalize the paradigm of the Arche.

While not fully achieved in the realized architectural works of the protagonists of this story, Raimund Abraham, Hans Hollein and Wolf D. Prix, this article advocates for the resuscitation of the Arche. Its value reaches beyond the field of architecture as a catalyst for the kind of lateral thinking that is essential in the face of global crises.

1. Premises

While the relation of the Austrian Radicals visionary focus to future technology is widely acknowledged¹ the same cannot be said for the connections their work have to the architectural past. This paper focuses on the Viennese Radicals and their proto-postmodern practices, stressing the importance of history as an anti-modernist tool and a source of inspiration.

The focus on history, in the present study, is a novelty, since, to date, the Radical thinking has been principally associated with the forward-looking principles. While the importance of a visionary focus on the birth and development of the Radical movements is widely acknowledged by the scholars, the same cannot be said for the connections of the visionary production to the use of archetypal forms of the past.

Further, the paper stresses the use of those forms as a foundational sign of discontinuity between the new Radical generation and the Austrian Functionalists. In this sense, the change of trajectory of Bau from the modernist orientation to a Radical perspective is a crucial moment in the context of this article.

A central research question in the present paper can, therefore, be formulated as follows: how have the Austrians Radicals used the history of architecture as a means to contrast the Functionalism of the Austrian modernists, and to embrace a broader understanding of architecture as defined in Hans Hollein’s manifesto “Alles ist Architektur”? The response to the question will unfold through the literature review, memories of the protagonists and archive sources, and be summarized in the discussion and conclusion. To place the relevance of this history in perspective², we will position Austrian Radicalism within the larger radical phenomenon to identify commonalities and differences.

In the second part, we will focus on one specific aspect of the history of architecture, the Arche and, in particular, the thoughts and works of Hollein, Abraham (and Pichler), and Prix as they mainly ultimately determine the nuances that define the unique path of the Austrian Radicals³ representatives of this trend.

The introduction of historical topics and the vicissitudes of Bau are understood collectively here as a fundamental move to affirm the Radicals’ opposition to the modernists’ domination of the architectural debate in post-war Austria. The introduction of primitive forms in architecture is described within this theoretical discourse as an action central to the revolutionary rediscovery of the past. This historical background will allow us to outline both the main features of Austrian Radicalism and the different vocations that distinguished, among the Austrians, those who were more inspired by the Arche⁴.

Further, we will discuss the relevance, in this context, of Kiesler’s Endless House, the Brancusi’s endless column, and the Holy Well of Santa Cristina⁵, a Sardinian version of the Mycenaean tholos, which until recently have been neglected by the field. Those three precedents, perceived as archetypes, are, in fact, significant sources of inspiration for the Austrian Radicals. They belong to distant historic periods and, therefore, also express the broader interpretation of the historic paradigms by the Austrians. In the final part of the paper, we will explore Austrian influence on Italian Radicals also as a means of understanding, in more depth, the work of the Austrians retrospectively.

2. Limitations and need of the study

The article confronts a limited body of theoretical writing produced by the proponents themselves in relation to their own work. One reason for this is the iconoclastic behaviour and the Socratic attitude towards writing and cultural legacy manifested by architects such as Abraham and Prix, who see themselves as “lonesome warriors” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 21), rather than masters for future generations. Moreover, in the limited published texts that do exist, the Austrian Radicals, particularly Abraham and Prix, tend to use a cryptic and involuted writing style.

The knowledge of the work and events surrounding their writing is essential to decipher the meaning of their language. Although fragmented language characterizes the writing of the Radicals, for some, such as Abraham, decryption needs to occur through the “Rosetta Stone” of the architectural drawing (consistently with the interest in esoterism). In other cases, as in the writings of Prix, the pull of pop culture surfaces in the form of slogans and phrases (Prix, 2005).

Considering a number of the protagonists and witnesses of this rich and exciting phase of Post-War architecture have recently passed away, it seems to be an ideal time—nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Austrian Radicalism, with Hollein’s manifesto “Alles ist Architektur”—to focus and reflect on this topic. Our hope is that the lessons of this influential generation of architects will not pass away with them. However, although the objective of the paper is not celebration itself, the actual moment is crucial to catalyse the attention because the distrust of writing by some of the Austrian Radicals and the complexity of their thought makes the oral testimonies, today on the brink of oblivion, even more precious.

The research need for the study is the discovery of evidence regarding the interest in the history of architecture (and in the Arche), by the Austrian Radicals. This interest, which has so far been neglected, according to the thesis of this article, is, instead, a fundamental element and its acknowledgement might be groundbreaking considering the impact that the Austrian Phenomenon (Porsch, 2009) has played in the post-war architecture debate, and its relevance still today.

The oral witness necessarily represents the primary source of information for this text. One of the authors has been lucky enough to share a personal relationship with our protagonists. Many of the ideas expressed here—such as the consideration around the Arche and the importance of shared experience such as visits to the Sardinia—derive from conversations particularly with Wolf Prix, Reiner Zettl, Diane Lewis and Lebbeus Woods. We owe them consideration of the themes they have presented—Abraham’s obsession for primitive forms or instance—and to realise the opportunity to reflect on them at this moment in time.

This is not a hagiographic text. Apart from the experiences described and the points of view expressed by the protagonists, this writing is a personal critical view (presented by the authors) that most likely would not be shared by Prix or Abraham. Disagreement might arise perhaps in our underlining of some inconsistencies or superficiality, or even a certain level of snobbery shown by many of the Austrian Radicals.

3. Austrian Radical positions

During the second half of the 20th century, growing from, and in response to, post-war trends, several architectural paradigms assumed positions in opposition to what was commonly held to be the sterility of modernism. They often forged alliances with technology and futurism, or with traditions and context. “Radical design”, as defined by the Italian architectural critic Germano Celant, entered architectural discourse as the twentieth century’s version of historical utopias (Celant, 1971, 1972). Although Celant is credited with coining the term “Radical design”, Gianni Pettena’s seminal text on the Radicals recognized Radicalism as a historical phenomenon (Pettena, 1996)⁶. The Radicals were mostly promoted in Italy by the journals Casabella, Domus and Controspazio and exhibitions, such as “Utopia e/o rivoluzione”, “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and problems of Italian Design”⁷ and “Living cities”⁸.

The regional development of this largely theoretical consciousness might have initially created an overall impression of a competition for world architectural domination. Instead, it collectively reflected a global quest for a future architecture beyond post-war modernism. Theorisation of the work of Austrian Radicals remains a “grey area” in Radical architectural history, particularly the period between the 1960s and 1980s⁹.

Despite this lack of investigation, the relevance of the Austrian Radicals can be measured by the impact of Hollein’s “Alles ist Architektur”, a statement frequently associated with the Radicals (Hollein, 1968)¹⁰. Hollein’s words simply mean that architecture was no longer an autonomous discipline but, somehow, embedded in all aspects of contemporary life. Emphatic in Hollein’s articulation was a heroic vision of the future in which all forms of art and culture had reached a hybrid condition. This perhaps constituted the crust of theoretical and practical concerns of architectural ideology at the time in Vienna and crystallized in “Viennese Actionism”, a local, ideological war between modernists, historians, and artists (Schmatz & Daniel, 1992)¹¹.

Although Günter Feuerstein’s Visionare Architekture (Berlin, 1988) provided an initial overview of Viennese visionary architecture in 1988, much credit goes to Gianni Pettena for emphasizing, for the first time, the importance of the Viennese architects within the international context. His curated exhibition at the 1996 Venice Biennale directed by Hans Hollein and dedicated to the Radicals remains a milestone¹². The exhibition offers a model reading of the Radicals in which the critical approach, especially regarding the Viennese, is often dedicated to individuals rather than groups.

Consequently, although the practices of these individual Austrian architects remain central both to theory and practice of Radical appropriation in architecture, the knowledge gap in this field and the lack of recognition by critics is largely due to the lack of a “brand” as enjoyed by banner groups such as Superstudio, Archizoom, Metabolists and Archigram. Indeed, the Austrians showed a more individual attitude or, at times, spontaneous collaborations, such as those between Hans Hollein and Walter Pichler or Walter Pichler and Raimund Abraham (Abraham et al., 1988)¹³. Based on the aforementioned interpretation, Viennese Radicalism has the following three significant suppositions:

•	The foundation from which all forms of expression expanded. Thanks to the charisma of Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler, Friedrich St Florian and Raimund Abraham, the disciplinary heteronomy expanded beyond the borders of Austria and became the precedent for other movements; this period featured Hollein’s Die Stadt (1960), Abraham’s Elementare Architektur (1963) and Friedrich St. Florian as a proponent of artistic isotropy, a distinctive feature of the Viennese Radicals that reflected “the union of two complimentary currents” through his sensitivity as an artist to the environment and as an architect to fantasies (Pettena, 1996). Experimentation led to various studies, “the visionary mega-structures of Abraham, which gradually acquired rarefied architectural form, the conceptual and existential rigor of Pichler, the translation of concepts into architecture of Hollein that manifested themselves in the form of drawings, performances, body art, spatial installations, drawings of scenes and objects of possible architectures” (Pettena, 1996, p. 46. Author’s translation);
•	The propulsion, in which Technische Universität and Günter Feuerstein became the catalysts for the emergence of Haus-Rucker-Co., Coop Himmelblau, Zünd-Up, Salz der Erde and Missing Link. During this phase Frantisek Lesak, Mario Terzic and Max Peintner may also be considered leading figures of Viennese Radicalism, given their ability to operate between art and architecture (Pettena, 1996);
•	The consolidation-separation in which, unlike in other Radical contexts, architects try to realize in concrete form what has been previously theorized. The latter is also the phase in which the protagonists of this story start following separate and even opposite intellectual paths14;

In the following section, we will clarify how the history of architecture plays a decisive role in the understanding of Viennese radical thinking and how this role is enriched with meaning through the above suppositions.

4. The relevance of history of architecture in the Austrian Radicals position

As set out in the premises, the rediscovery of the past became a fundamental, self-affirming tactical action, carried out through Bau, which positioned the Radicals in opposition to and as distinct from the modernists. For a better understanding of this, it should be remembered that, from the 1950s, the influences of European Functionalism dominated Austrian architecture. Austrian’s that might be argued to be under this sway included Arbeitsgruppe 4, formed in 1952 by Wilhelm Holzbauer, Friedrich Kurrent and Johannes Spalt at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna during the masterclass taught by Clemens Holzmeister. According to Hollein and Pichler, Holzbauer, Kurrent and Spalt positioned themselves in the field of international Functionalism through an overly technocratic focus in their work.

Hence, influenced by history and politics, Hollein and Pichler attacked systematically Arbeitsgruppe 4 with conceptual projects and text using historical topics as a weapon against the aseptic rationality of modernity. In 1965, Feuerstein, Hollein and Pichler, together with Sokratis Demetrius and Gustav Peichl, succeeded in taking control from the functionalists’ hands of Der Bau, the official journal of the Central Association of Austrian Architects. Hollein and colleagues completely transformed the journal, renamed Bau, by reintroducing historical and intellectual arguments to revitalize the interest in figures such as Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner, Joseph Hoffmann, Rudolf Schindler and, emblematically, Friedrich Kiesler (Obrist, 2015).

Although the stricto sensu interpretation of the modern movement presented by Arbeitgruppe 4 (and contextually by its Radical opponents) may also appear incongruent with the International Style trends that developed elsewhere¹⁵, we still have to consider that the path of liberation, as the Radicals intended it, takes place in a unique historical and cultural context so well described by Jeffrey Kipnis. He suggests that, until the occupation of the Allies and the Anschluss, the roots of the fin de siècle were found in the realization of the Ring, when the city walls in 1857 were replaced by an urban manifestation of a convoluted barrier “dividing the ego from the superego” (Kipnis, 2007, p. 14).

Vienna was known as the “city of the imponderable” (Kipnis, 2007) that swung between the opposites of superficiality and depth. On the one hand, it has bred some of the greatest talents of the western civilized world, like Mozart and Godel; on the other hand, it has always shown its downside through Freud, Kokoschka, Mahler, Meitner, Schönberg, Jelinek and, most significantly here, Kiesler.¹⁶

While Arbeitsgruppe 4 had tried to resist that imponderability through the controlled “dirigisme” of the modern movement (Raggi, 2011), the Radicals considered the cultural instability of the Habsburg capital that combines a sophisticated technological and spatial vocabulary, with an archaic sensitivity as a heritage to rediscover (Raggi, 2011).

Comparison with the contemporaneous Italian context further helps to understand how history became an element of the identity of the Austrian Radicals¹⁷. They saw themselves as a revolutionary generation and the invocation of the past, here, was not an invocation to a shared memory. According to Kipnis their definition of history was evidently distant from any reference to a lost tradition, or to a stratified log of architectural elements as it was considered in Italy during the same period.

Leonardo Benevolo, among others, has highlighted how the parabola of modernism, in Italy, was virtually the opposite, already including instances of the past (Benevolo, 1992). Functionalism did not represent a challenge to history in post-war Italy because of the neo-realistic mitigations of Ludovico Quaroni, Mario Ridolfi, Giovanni Michelucci and BBPR, among others. Post-modernism thus developed without coagulating around subversive attitudes (Rossi was Quaroni’s student and wrote on Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ Casabella) ¹⁸.

5. Archetypal forms

The Austrian Radicals saw the introduction of historical topics as a crowbar to use against the modernists. Their use of archetypes was a direct result of this understanding. This section examines the reasons for their preference of archetypal forms. It will explore the rationale beyond the use of the adjectives “archetypal”, “elementary” and “primitive”, intended by the Radicals to emphasize their interest in the symbolism of “zero degree architecture” (Barthes, 1967).

Hidden beyond the primitive forms encountered in the early civilization, this is virtually the definition of Arche, in opposition to the functionalism and the chronological and cultural meaning of past forms which underlies the monumental need of the post-modernism historicism. According to Peter Noever, for instance, Abraham “never wanted to refurbish what was past”; advocating emancipation from authoritative historical role-models (also from ironical postmodern quotes). He crystallized his complexity of the elementary from practically archetypically forms; unmoved by formalities, growing organically during the building process with the simplest means. In the lecture, he once again made unambiguously clear in opposition to a techno-aesthetic of “anything goes,” that “[n]ew icons will either come from the recognition of our intrinsic ontological limits or they will not arise at all” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 21).

Returning to the description given by Kipnis, it provides a glimpse of how Hollein and Pichler present historic precedent as a call to the symbolic and to recall a time when architecture was an “existential, ritual, primary, behavioural condition that discovers a lost relationship with the body” (Kipnis, 2007, p. 14). This perspective better qualifies the anti-functional position, despite both the modernists and the post-modernists considering the same elements to be part of their lexicon. The dividing line in the use of primitive volumes by them and the Austrian Radicals is as fine as the distinction between positivism and associative thinking. The evanescent concept of pure forms might be argued to be one characteristic of the Functionalist paradigm and, at the same time, its contrary, the unconscious product of a primordial and esoteric act. But the Radicals strove to clarify the distinction. Wolf Prix stated “This formal talent differentiates us from some, and from many architects with Calvinist [the functionalists] Orthodox, or Jesuit backgrounds [post-modernists]. We are most closely related to Jewish cabbalist artists” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 25).

In accord with Prix’s statement, while the same formal phenotypes were used by modern, post-modern and radical architects, each group developed different genotypes with particular regard to function, symbolic value and relation to memory. Prix notes the desire of the Austrian Radicals to use physical shapes to enter into the intimate and unified nucleus of a truth, going beyond exterior appearances (esotericism) and, further, that access to this truth may have different degrees of initiation (rituality). Perhaps this is not unlike the esoteric and mystical teachings of rabbinic Judaism. According to Lebbeus Woods, even if, like the modernists, the radicals believed there was a truth that they could get to, they didn’t believe in modernist truth. Abraham especially “believed in another kind of truth and that is what he was out for” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 100).

The first works of the Radicals, such as Hollein’s Die Stadt (1960), already showed how archetypes deriving from ancestral pasts might become instruments to destabilize the Functionalist culture of the time and lay a foundation for subsequent developments. Hollein’s collages, maybe the most powerful imaginings of Radicalism, present enormous stone concretions over the city of Vienna (die Stadt, 1960). These superstructures allow no space for rational use nor memory of the Classics. They reverberate with the echo of thousand-year-old dolmens and (yet) also the suspended masses of Frederick Kiesler’s conceptual Endless House (1950).

A few years later, Raimund Abraham contributed to Radical discourse with the publication emblematically titled Elementare Architektur (1963). It was immediately recognized for developing the Radical direction and served as a model for its research, through photography, into primitive archetypes in the Austrian regions (Abraham, 1963)¹⁹.

These examples from Hollein and Abraham were representative of the Viennese disquiet. The voluntary escape of the Radicals from a logical and rational reading of reality led to a difficult critical understanding of their decisive role in the flow of creativity that characterized the Sixties and Seventies. Kipnis’ consideration of Viennese Ego and Superego are strengthened by the dissemination, during the same years, of Abraham Maslow’s theories on a hierarchy of needs and Jaques Lacan’s “The symbolic” as a language dimension. In accord with post-structuralism, a Radical’s leitmotif of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Pelkonen, 1996), the Radicals were convinced that a third position was possible, equidistant from post-modernism, and its conservative propositions such as the Italian “Tendenza”; and from the fundamentalism of the moderns. Indeed, the Radicals’ attack was mainly directed at the functionalist interpretation of the modern movement as defined by Arbeitesgruppe 4. They didn’t necessarily take into account the broader components of modern movement’s DNA, such as the initial Expressionist phase of the Weimer Bauhaus coagulated around the charismatic Joannes Itten, with whom, Prix and company shared several pedagogic approaches.

Rationalist interpretations removed architectural attention from more complex and even unconscious human needs, the sense of intimacy and belonging; spirituality and transcendence; anxiety and fear of death, in favour of mere functionalism as a response to the primary needs at the base of Maslow’s pyramid (physiological and biological needs, safety, order, work etc.) (Maslow, 1943). This trait is masterfully exemplified, among other works, by “Alles ist Architektur”, Abraham’s “non proposal—proposal—counter proposal” (1973) and, ultimately, by the initiatory journeys in search of a lost architectural prototype (such as the Holy Well) in which the existential, unconscious and rational spheres find a point of contact and balance.

Hollein’s manifesto was published in the January 1968 issue of Bau (1968, pp. 1–2), becoming the reference for all Radicals beyond Austrian borders. The core of the manifesto is the idea of rethinking the architecture to the root (“radix” = radicalism)²⁰ because traditional architecture does not respond to needs due to the changes of society and technology. The call for including all aspects of life in architecture is a further attack on the current modernist conception as follows:

Limited and traditional definitions of architecture and its means have lost their validity. Currently, the environment overall is the goal of our activities—and all the media of its determination: TV or artificial climate, transportation or clothing, telecommunication or shelter.

Abraham’s text, written for Casabella in 1973 in accompaniment to his “no proposal, proposal, counter-proposal to New York city” is relevant here as an example of his elusive thinking, more anti-determinist than indeterminist, which aims to undermine the logic of nihilism:

Each of us should recognize when the great architectural and political plans are ineffective as a therapeutic means to predict and control the well-being of man. There is no better life, there is life. The optimization and policy changes should be limited to the field of consumption philosophy and the confidence in the future of technology.

Architecture is, therefore, independent of progress and obsolescence. It should propose the formalization of randomness, the unconscious ritual, through the exploitation of all intellectual, not intellectual forces … indoor repressive existence … The cultural changes do not meet the social needs but create previously unknown conflicts and needs. Social changes are the polarization between the last absurdity and the last logic. Therefore, any proposal that concerns the survival of the city must be both a non-proposal and a counter-proposal; not a solution but a significant amplification of forces.

Many of the drawings, as well, seem to provide alternative visions that take into account the profound and even irrational needs of man. Maternal uterus such as Abraham’s capsules (1966), or sensorial envelopes made of paroxysmal lights such as Coop Himmelblau’s Cloud or Villa Rosa are just a few out of many examples (1968).

Conversations between the authors and Prix exposed his implicit recognition of Abraham as a sort of initiator, with regard to the quest and discovery of the archetype as manifestation of the truth. During the commemoration of Raimund Abraham he said that his architectural works “are festivals: sometimes brutal, sometimes hard, sometimes simply there, like the Nurages and spring sanctuaries of Sardinia or the stark temples in Mexico. Abraham’s architecture aims at space or: space times space times space equals architecture cubed” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 25).

The Sardinian or Mexican temples are relevant here as a source of inspiration, for their symbolic significance, as well as the initiators of travel and associated (enriching) experience. In 2009, Prix asked to visit the Holy Temple of Santa Cristina with one of the authors. The Temple is a pivotal architectural work of Sardinia’s Nuragic civilization, one of the most mysterious of the Mediterranean area. Hollein and Prix’s urge toward this underground building is explained by their holding it to be an architectural synecdoche for the whole “metaphysical” dimension that they also sought in Mexico where both Abraham and Prix built their “buen retiro”. In the years following, three other colleagues asked to visit the sanctuary with one of the authors. Two of them, Reiner Zettl and Diane Lewis, linked their interest in the architecture to their relationship with the Austrian Radicals. Mention of the influence exerted by the Sardinian Holy Temple on these figures is included here as an illustration of the interest in the Arche shared by Hollein and Abraham (at least). It embodies an architectural attention to human metaphysical needs that extend beyond function or mere formal inspiration. To explore the Well further in this light, it offers another attraction in that it operates as a kind of astronomical observatory. It admits moonlight and when the Moon is at its zenith, the reflection of the moonlight off the water in the bottom of the well illuminates the interior space. According to archaeologists, the water of the holy well also represents the origin of life and the mother.

Abraham wrote in his short, cryptic memoir that he was born “between water and wine”. He describes the water as “inaccessible/ mysterious/ gravitational” and as the link to “locus” and “mother” (Lienz/ East Tyrol), his most significant memory during childhood and his first “sub-conscious” lesson in Architecture (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 127).

The fascination of the light penetration became a design instrument, according to Jonas Mekas: Abraham’s proposal for the Trade Centre buildings in New York was “two huge walls. One next to other … sunlight would go through those slits of wall one, wall two, exactly in the moment that the buildings were destroyed. It was so simple and so monumental at the same time” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 56). Similar features can be found frequently in almost all of Abraham’s drawings and built works as well as in other Radical’s design, Hollein’s Vulcania and Noever’s Pit for instance.

The obsession with ritualistic spaces and the events they supported was recurrent. Once in Oaxaca during the festival for the Day of the Dead, Abraham insisted on going with a group of friends, including former Morphosis partner Michael Rotondi, to a remote Mexican village “to witness the ceremony of communion with the ancestors. In town there would be a performance of the ritual and in the village there would be an enactment of a ritual. The latter was an authentic medium for reuniting with the ancestors. The former was cultural enrichment”. They opted for the latter (see note 1), the fuller, more immersive experience (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 105)²¹.

6. First journey to New York and development

The passage of witnesses between the first and the second generation takes place, not by accident, through an “initiatory” journey in search of roots and radical identity. The key figure of the two generations is Günter Feurstein who fuelled the debate on experimental architecture and history during the 1960s. Through a series of seminars at the Technische Universität (1963–1968), he showed a new generation of students alternative visions to those of the Academy of Fine Arts.

Thanks to Feuerstein, a memorable trip to the United States (1963) offered students the opportunity to visit the offices of Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, S.O.M. and Mies Van der Rohe. The meeting with Kiesler two years before his death had a particularly lasting impact on the students as follows. Along with the initial coexistence of artists and architects, and the antagonistic use of history, Kiesler’s recognition of a master architect of the twentieth century constitutes a further hallmark of the Viennese radicalism.

The initiatory journey is therefore a theme that belongs to the identity of Austrian Radicals since their birth. And the leading role is undoubtedly that of Feurstein. In subsequent years, in fact, the first attempts to design free forms appeared in the design studios of the studio coordinator Karl Schwanzer and Feuerstein, Schwanzer’s assistant. The visionary ideas Laurids Ortner (city on platforms, airports in the form of insects, organic residential complexes) and other future members of Haus-Rucker-Co. aroused a stir in the university.

In 1966–67, inspired by Schwanzer and Feuerstein, Helmuth Swiczinski and Wolf Prix released their first radical project: a residence inspired by the Plug-in-City (Feuerstein, 1988)²².

The subsequent ascension of Viennese radicals during the TU studios seemed unstoppable: Haus-Rucker-Co (1967), Coop Himmelblau (1969), Zund-Up (1969), Salz der Erde (1969) and Missing Link (1970). In 1968, the “Utopie” group organized the exhibition “Inflatable Structures”²³.

During the 1970s, many of the Viennese Radicals consolidated their position in the international panorama due also to the contributions of the Italian architecture journals.

Collaborations were rare, and few acknowledged their common background, causing their paths to diverge. Hollein, Abraham, St Florian and Coop Himmelblau developed relationships and pursued academic activity in the United States (Noever, 1997). Haus-Rucker-Co and Missing Link moved slightly towards a more pragmatic and grounded professionalism. Pichler opted for self-exile. Domenig, as with Zbank, decided to keep his distance from the international debates in the isolation of the Steinhaus project and Graz.

In the Seventies, the role of the charismatic leader for the younger generation, from Feuerstein passes to Abraham (and Pichler). Contexts and role are obviously different: Feuerstein was basically an educator, and his adepts were still students. As anticipated in the previous paragraph, Abraham and Pichler can see, instead, more like Masonic initiators for their younger colleagues.

The history of architecture has been important in the world of Austrian Radicals since the beginning, but in its final phase, it took on different shades based on individual positions. Despite the formal differences of their works, the relationship among Hollein, Abraham and Coop Himmelblau is stronger than that of other Austrians who moved along more individual trajectories.

Especially in this context, the interest in the past focuses on shared history through which these three can find a common ground within the esoteric, psychoanalytic definition of functionalism, continuous flow of human needs as a design matrix, and geometrical prototypes.

At the end of the 1970s, Raimund Abraham, Hans Hollein and Coop Himmelblau (and Gunther Domenig), consistently practiced within the remit of Radical architecture. Although they developed different designs, a consistent pattern of cultural references united their architectures.

Prix often relies on Lars Lerup’s statement (Designboom, 2012; Prix, 2014) to describe differences such as the aspiration towards a technological utopia (what Coop Himmelblau calls “cloud roof”), Hollein’s ubiquitous and Abraham’s archaeological attitude: “Lars Lerup divides the thinking and the works of architects into three categories and compares it to a building. There are architects who are primarily occupied with the basement. Here, from an Austrian standpoint, Raimund Abraham is mentioned. There are architects who are primarily occupied with the central structure of the building. Rem Koolhaas comes to my mind. And there are architects who deal with the roof as utopia”, such as Coop Himmelblau. “Hans Hollein claimed all three categories for himself.” A position shared by Thom Mayne: “Abraham is a digger, he’s a carver, and he starts with these primitive ideas” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 99).

Abraham developed the keenest interest in the Arche, an interest he shared with Aldo Rossi, his friend since 1972 (Brillembourg, 2001). Rossi’s interest in subterranean archetypes is well known (Trentin, 2008); we may assume that Rossi’s description of the Sardinian Well “as an ancient presence, so ancient as to be future” (Rossi, 1986;. Author’s translation) offers a shared interpretation of Arche, in architecture, as something that takes place out of time. We might think Rossi’s exposition inspired Abraham’s connection with the Holy Well. Instead, in an interview with Woods (2007), Abraham speaks of it as a discovery:

I was in Sardinia and we found this water temple. It was one of the most reduced, minimal architectural structures I’ve ever seen. There was a triangle in the ground, it was maybe 15 feet on a side, and in the triangle, there was a stair going down, and the stairs became a triangle and the walls followed that triangle so it was a very complex and inverted pyramid going down. And then on the outside of the triangle it was a hole on the ground and the hole was a light source for the water, because it was a water temple for the water which was at the end of the stair. So you couldn’t photograph this.

This is a noteworthy statement given Abraham’s reluctance to describe external influences on his work. It explains that the use of pure geometry in Abraham’s work is not coincidental to his interest in the well. He repeatedly used the triangular shape to cut into the façades or roof surfaces of architectural bodies to achieve a sense of tectonic penetration and dramatize the shadowing effects of the light source. Traces of this approach can be found in virtually all his projects: the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York (Frampton & Abraham, 2011), the Bank in Lienz (Tirol), the design of a church in the Berlin Wall, and the Musikerhaus in Düsseldorf. In the latter building, a sloping roof, with a central triangular cut, rests on a massive cylindrical structure recalling the false dome of the well (Abraham, Miller, Hejduk, & Groihofer, 2011).

This description also shows his distance from the interpretation of the archetype, as a settling of successive layers, typical of the historical approach to architecture corroborated in Italy by Brandi’s seminal Theory of Restoration (Brandi, 1963) and Rossi’s Architecture of the City, published only three years later, in Padova (Rossi, 1966).

The interest in the esoteric works of the archetypes explains other heterogeneous references cited by Abraham, such as Kahn, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Kiesler (Noever & Prix, 2011; Woods, 2007). It would appear inconsistent and contradictory if we did not consider his chronologically destructured perspective²⁴ of history in which all the precedents represent a meeting point between rationality and the unconscious²⁵.

The concept of “collisions” and the predominancy of drawings on construction, both included in his “Un-built”, express the idea of a clash between reality and imagination that respectively reflect today and the past (Noever & Prix, 2011).

The Sardinian Well is more than a direct representation of his interest in “collisions”. Fascinated by the esoteric ritual practices that were supposed to have taken place in the Well (and by the precision of the carved stone), Prix developed an interest in making a full-scale model of the Well for the unrealized Festarch architecture festival in 2009, in collaboration with one of the authors.

Though stimulated by Abraham and Hollein, who are more interested in the genotypical quality of the well, Prix is instead attracted by the geometric complexity of the site’s two main elements—the truncated pyramid that houses the access staircase, or dromos, and the water tank with a circular base, or the tholos—and the manner in which the two are connected.

Hollein’s Vulcania Museum (located in a theme park at Saint-Ours-Les-Roches, Auvergne, France) not only reflects the role of architecture in resuscitating ruined sites but specifically invokes the spirit and the tectonic of the Well (Haddadin, 2012).

A question could arise here on the simultaneous influence of archetypal architecture, such as that of the well temple, and Endless House of Kiesler, which he saw in 1964 (Weibel, 2005) and became a constant reference for him. The interpretation that underlies this influence also helps one understand why, despite the affinities highlighted, Italians and Austrians developed divergent positions²⁶.

The Endless House is for Abraham (and Prix) the spatial representation of existential continuity that modern architecture had instead bent to the logic of single-purpose, or even multi-purpose spaces (rooms). This continuous flow of life is, for Abraham, a condition that can also be found in the zero degree architecture (Arche), as in his House without Rooms (1974) preserved in the MoMA. The “architect as a seismograph”, to use the words of Hollein for the Venice Biennale (1996), records through construction human needs in the broader sense but also his feelings of disinterest in deterministic definitions of programmatic scopes, as appears in most his works (Abraham et al., 1988).

The building as a gradient of condition is also consistent with Hollein and Prix, which explains their shared interest in the Arche and its representations, such as in the Holy Temple, despite the fact that their design outputs are often presented in diverse architecture streams, such as Postmodernism (Hollein), Deconstructivism, and digitalism (Coop Himmelblau).

Kiesler’s project became Wolf Prix’s principle reference and the cloud roof model featured in many of Coop Himmelblau’s projects after 2000. Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column, with its iconic, primordial monumentality, is among those paradigmatic constructions used as a common reference by Prix and Abraham. Watermark traces of the Endless Column can be found in the ascending configuration of the back staircase of Abraham’s Cultural Forum in New York (Abraham & Wien, 1999; Frampton & Abraham, 2011) and in Coop Himmelblau’s double-cone, which has been present in almost all their projects since the 2000s.

Consequently, we can again find here the roots of Viennese radicalism, namely the need to reinterpret design outside the frame of the abused, mechanistic phenomenology of the Modern. Through the Arche, they got moved to constructions like the well, that can simultaneously be a temple and an infrastructural facility, a meeting place and storage. This undeterminism played a leading role in their architectural vocabulary, as did the unconscious in creative associative thinking processes that often drew inspiration from a psychoanalytical interpretation of functionalism (Rispoli, 2004) for Hollein and Coop Himmelblau²⁷ and even anti-functionalist, for Abraham (Brillembourg, 2001; Woods, 2007)²⁸.

7. A retrospective understanding of the Austrian Phenomenon: Discussion on the relationship with the Italian Radicals

Unlike the Austrians, the Italians were rather generous with writings, more stressed, probably, by the dimension of the architectural debate stimulated by the Italian magazines during the Seventies. Through the relationship and communication between Austrian and Italian Radicals, it is, therefore, possible to compensate the shortage of primary sources within the Austrian environment.

Although retrospectively, since the Austrians have been the inspirers of the Italians in many ways, the present paragraph can provide documentary confirmation of the oral witnesses previously cited. In fact, in the writings of the Italians, including articles, books, notebooks and memoirs, we can find explanations on the notion of the Arche, according to a political key that contributes to an understanding of its architectural significance in a formal and historical perspective.

As stated at the beginning of the paper, the Arche is superimposable to the zero degree concept (Barthes, 1967), which can be explained as the “architecture stripped of all traces of uniqueness and specificity” (Lootsma, 2006). As such, according to Gargiani (2007), the Italians borrowed from the Austrians the desire to explore the archetypes, as a representation of the architecture emptied of all the significance that had been attributed to it by the society, over the course of modern history. However, for the Italians, the emphasis shifted even further towards political thought on account of the engagement of Manfredo Tafuri in the debate (Martinez Capdevila, 2017). Thus, the search for the principles of architecture before they were corrupted by modern societies (also understood in Marxist terms) often turns into a destruction of the semantic of the object to free it from meanings that represent “the fetish” of bourgeois authoritarianism.

Critics of the Modern Movement are another point of encounter between the Italians and Austrians, complementary to the previous one. In this respect, the Modern Movement was the transposition of bourgeois authoritarianism, despite obvious contradictions with the vast literature that indicates, in its origins, the influence of Socialism as well (Benevolo, 1992).

However, the dispute initiated by the Austrian Radicals with the Modernists was focused on a specific aspect generally defined by Radicals as functionalism that, according to their interpretation, was the attitude of considering architecture as a series of watertight compartments to meet the primary needs of its users. Thus, in the search of the archetype, the non-corrupted form, the Viennese do not exclude the existence of the function (or better said “use”). They see themselves, instead, as more open to the metaphysical needs (and uses) neglected by Arbeitesgruppe 4, such as the psychoanalytic needs, the contamination between religion and primary necessity as represented by the Sardinian Well, and the spatial hybridizations expressed, for example, by Kiesler’s concept of “collision”. Hence, they contended the meaning that the word “function” has taken, throughout history, to its ultimate authoritative and fundamentalist definition as represented by Functionalism.

They therefore saw in the functionalist architecture two major weaknesses. The first was to consider mechanistic uses only and to leave little space to those more metaphysical, spiritual, or even non-functional elements (as expressed in Abraham’s “proposta-non proposta”). The second flaw was not to consider the intersection and contamination spaces between different uses, or rather the flow of needs that cannot be enclosed in a box. Evidently, this approach does not take into account all the facets of the Modern Movement²⁹, either of its expressionist origin or of its organic components (Zevi, 1996).

Although the Austrians were not the only radicals to stand against functionalism, they were certainly pioneers, and became the inspirers of the Italians³⁰. This critical approach became the basis of the political perspective of the Italian Radicals. The themes of the abandonment (“azzeramento” in Italian, from “zero”) of architecture and the attack, both on Modernism and on the urban structures of bourgeois capitalism, often occur in the archival documents of Archizoom members such as Gilberto Corretti’s (1969a, 1969b) and in Andrea Branzi’s writings.

Evidence of the Superstudio’s criticism of the illusion of functionalism is also found in Adolfo Natalini’s notebooks of the period 1971–1973 and it is especially evident in Atti Fondamentali (Life, Education, Love, and Death) and Il Viaggio nelle Regioni della Ragione, made for the exhibition in Providence together with St. Florian, and Abraham (as found in Natalini’s notebooks in Archivio Natalini and Archivio Frassinelli, Florence)³¹.

Thanks to the Italian sources, it is also possible to better understand, again retrospectively, the connection between political vision and the use of photomontage as a design tool. Gargiani speculates that the inspiration of Archizoom’s photomontages comes from both the sublime and essential imagery represented by Boullée and Rossi, but also by Hollein’s surrealism, which, like Claes Oldenburg, transcended all kinds of objects out of context (Gargiani, 2007). Through the Hollein’s photomontages deconstructing the scale and the meaning of the architectural object, theItalian Radicals learnt how to transfer from theory to practice the idea of the destruction of authoritarianism’s common use of the object. Schattemberg Castle (1963), representing a Rolls Royce’s radiator as a building within a hilly landscape, is a clear example. Following Archizoom, Superstudio (and later Rem Koolhaas and others) also started using photomontage as a political weapon. Even the initial idea of the Continuous Monument comes from a montage, which, in turn. Archizoom borrowed from Hollein’s Sixties works (Gargiani & Lampariello, 2010)³².

The common political intent, beyond the photomontage, was finally ratified in 1971, on the occasion of the issue of IN by Pierpaolo Saporito (1971) on the “the destruction of the object”, “the elimination of the cities” and “the end of the work”. It was meant as a choral publication that allowed, among others, Abraham, Coop Himmelblau and Haus-Rucker-Co, to express themselves on the idea of an architecture that surpassed the “fascist fetishism” of objects due to “semantic redundancy” (typed note sent by Saporito to Ugo La Pietra in 1971, Archivio Deganello, Milan). Neutrality, Emptiness and Reduction to Zero were also recurring terms in the discussion between Branzi and Celant about the latter’s idea of a book on Radicals, including the Austrians³³, exploring the destruction of the power structures.

The first direct contact in 1969 between the two movements, in Graz, during the “Italian Jugoslawien Osterreich dreilandbiennale Trigon” (1969), is also the occasion for a passage of witnesses. If the Sixties were the years of propagation of ideas by Hollein, Abraham and Pichler, the Seventies were the years of the international success of Superstudio and Archizoom.

In Graz Superstudio presented the Architecture Viaduct, their first montage and first idea leading to the Continuous Monument (letter by Superstudio from Graz, on the theme of Architecture and Freedom. Domus, December 1969, n. 481, pp. 49–54)³⁴. The Viaduct was drawn in various landscapes also taken from photographs included in Hollein’s article, Technik, published in Bau (1965). The techno-morphism of the Viaduct is also inspired by the photos published in Hollein’s article, such as the NASA Vertical Assembly Building and the spherical radar stations in Yorkshire, (Hollein, 1965, pp. 40–54) and clearly recalls works such as Abraham’s Transplantation I (1964), and Universal City (1966), as well (Abraham collection; MoMA Archive).

Abraham and Pichler’s drawings also inspired other Superstudio works. Abraham’s Glacier City became the model of the “View of a Canyon” (1969–70) representing the filling of a valley with a quadratic stereometry (Archivio Toraldo di Francia, Filottrano, Ancona). The Superstudio’s spheres in mountain landscape are actually variations of Abraham’s dream houses published in a Natalini’s article (Natalini, 1971) and also recall the pneumatic spheres designed by Pichler in 1967 (Rouillard, 2004, pp. 234–235).

In the early Seventies, interaction between Superstudio, Archizoom, Hollein and Abraham continued in the occasion of the Venice Biennale (Natalini’s letter to Jorg Mayr, 26/9/1971. Archivio Superstudio, Florence)³⁵ and the Triennale (Manuscript, 1973. Archivio Bartolini, Florence)³⁶ and were also extended to Haus-Rucker-Co (Letter 11/1/1970, Archivio Deganello, Milan)³⁷.

Two episodes in particular show how, even from abroad, the Italian and Austrian Radicals were seen as linked by common roots, and, to some extent, that the Austrians were the inspirers of the Italians. Interested for the first time in Archizoom, Charles Jencks contacted Branzi for Supersensuals, published by Architectural Design in 1972, which focused on Death, a subject relevant even to the Austrians, and including precedents by Hollein (Branzi, 1971). Further evidence of the link between the Austrians and Italians seen from abroad can be found in the bulletin of the travel to Florence, organized by Rem Koolhaas and other students of the Architectural Association fascinated by the Continuous Monument, that states: “We want to move away from a too pragmatic Base and hope to join with Austrian experiences on a more extended platform” (Bulletin, 1970, Archivio Deganello, Milan).

The relationship with the Italians is bi-directional: although the Austrians had an inspiring role, during the 1970s their international celebration is mainly due to Italian publications. Thanks to Pettena, Franco Raggi, Bruno Orlandoni and Andrea Branzi, including the latter’s “Radical Notes” in Casabella, we have the chance to see the published works of Friedrich St. Florian, Frantisek Lesak, Haus-Rucker-Co., Missing Link, Max Peintner and Mario Terzic. Natalini also intended to begin, in 1974, an article series in Casabella, with the title Sasso, paper and scissors. The series would cover monographic themes, discussed by Superstudio friends and colleagues such as Pichler, Hollein, Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass Jr. and Koolhaas.

Hollein’s first built works, the Schullin and Retti shops, influenced a new generation of European architects, especially the Italians who oriented themselves more decisively towards architecture characterized by symbolic elements and an almost mannerist attention for detail as well as the combination of precious materials and metals. For these reasons, the interest in Hollein’s work was ubiquitous, not only among radical colleagues but also among the protagonists of the postmodern “Tendenza” (Rossi, 1966). Consequently, Hollein was immediately launched in the Architecture Olympus (Obrist, 2015); in 1975, in the space of a single year, Domus published three of his projects³⁸. The seminal books of Bruno Orlandoni (Dalla citta’ al cucchiaio, 1977) and Pettena (1998) followed the journals’ publications³⁹.

8. Conclusions

This paper has highlighted the importance of Austrians, particularly the Viennese, within post-war Radical movements. The Austrians questioned the modernist movement, proposing an alternative architecture in which utopia became a term that linked the future and primitive, timeless models. The interest in the past was not attuned to the recovery of stylistic features but rather to the discovery of a lost, ritualistic, mystical dimension.

The “hic et nunc” of Le Corbusier’s “machine à habiter” had, until then, played a primary role in architecture in the Austrian capital. From a radical perspective, it had to be challenged as not responding to the perceived needs of space and time where “everything is architecture” (Hollein, 1968).

Due to its limited space, this paper does not provide a complete overview of the Austrian Radicals. Instead, it has drawn the lines of convergence between three of its members, Abraham, Wolf D. Prix/ Coop Himmelblau, and Hollein. It considers their shared interests, relationships and roles within radicalism and, lately, even realizations which at that time seemed like pure utopia.

This paper has also highlighted the influence of Abraham in the panorama of Austrian Radicalism, his interest in archetypes, as a design tool, and ultimately in Kielser’s Enldess House and the Holy Well as important precedents. This is not to say, however, that there are no other influences acknowledged in the literature on Radicalism.

Abraham, described here as a leading architect of the Radicals, explains his interest in primitive architecture in the foreword of Elementary Architektur, a photographic journey into the primitive architecture in search of timeless models: “The purpose of this book is to extract natural techniques from primitive buildings … to see how the pure construction is. Cones, cubes, cylinders are recurrent elements of architecture that obey to an order without time. Those examples are meant to show how simple primitive architectural ideas were clear and convincing in their geographical boundaries”.

As we have described, this view was initially shared more with Aldo Rossi’s “Tendenza” than the Italian Radicals. Nevertheless, Abraham’s references involve architects neglected by the “Tendenza”, such as Friederich Kiesler. Kiesler’s Endless House became for Radicals the masterpiece of organic architecture and was held as an alternative to those of Rationalism.

This architectural journey to the origins of architecture, along with the search for a ubiquitous model of architecture, brings the Austrians out of the confines of history to explore a model outside of time, in which human nature was, from the point of view of the Radicals, not fractured into multiple pieces, as was the case with functionalism. The first generation of Austrians Radicals (Hollein and Abraham) pursued this theory, which was extended by the second generation (Coop Himmelblau). They recognized the experiential and operational value of ancient archetypes, such as the sacred Well of Santa Cristina in Sardinia, and used their reinterpretation as a tool for their forward-looking architectural visions.

In the final part we have explored the relationship with Italian Radicals. The Viennese activities were complementary to the Italians with whom they shared a certain historical and cultural background, the influence of the Hollein’s manifesto, and the scarcity of work opportunities. Influenced by pop art, performances, installations, theoretical texts, photomontages and drawings are other well-known similarities of the transalpine Radicals.

Despite the commonality of interests and political engagement, the use of history and archetype are the most neglected elements of scholars, distinguishing the Austrian Radicals from their peers. Even though it is not part of this paper, however, in the discussion, we have also pointed out that common aspects between the Austrians and Italians, such as the use of photomontage aimed at the de-contextualization of the object of common meaning, or the criticism of functionalism, regardless of the historical interpretation in the political sphere that actually places the Austrians in the position of the pioneers. Other aspects, such as the interest in the archetype, as a historical element, prior to modern history, are comparable to non-radical movements, such as the Tendenza, with which, however, the Radicals moved in antagonism. This apparent contradiction is an evidence of the complexity and multifaceted thought of the Austrians who acted outside of conventionality and often outside of the canons generally attributed to other radical movements.

We also believe that the confrontation between the Transalpine Radicals has the potential to be resumed and developed in a forthcoming paper.

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Dedication

Dedicated to Diane Lewis (New York, 1950–2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Melis

Alessandro Melis has taught architecture at the University of Portsmouth since 2016 and, at the University of Auckland since 2013. Previously, he was a guest professor in Austria (die Angewandte Vienna) and Germany (Anhalt University Dessau). He has been honorary fellow at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and a keynote speaker at the China Academy of Art, at the MoMA New York and at the Venice Biennale.

Michael John Davis

Michael John Davis is Director of Architecture programmes at the University of Auckland, School of Architecture and Planning where he teaches and researches in the areas of architectural design and architectural media. Mike holds a PhD from RMIT, Melbourne and a Master of Architecture in Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association, London.

Allan Balaara

Allan Balaara is a current PhD candidate and research assistant in the School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland.

Notes

1. See for instance: Porsch, 2009.

2. The interest in the history of architecture is not unique to the post-war period. The Austrians, however, interpret it in the discipline of heteronomy. Historicism in Italy, for example, converges towards autonomous discipline, called “Tendenza” (Rossi, 1966). Hence, it moves on positions antagonistic to those of the radical movements.

3. The use in the text of “Austrian” and “Viennese” terms depends on the tradition that sees Vienna as an architectural aggregator that is unparalleled in Austria.

4. According to Webster’s dictionary, “archai” in its plural form denotes the principle of the beginning. To the ancient Greeks “arche” represented the primary elements of beginnings. Aristotle further described arche as the actualising principles of the beginning (Cohen, Curd, & Reeve, 2000). Across disciplines, including architecture, Arche consequently generates three levels of meaning. It invokes principles in time and space as the source or beginning from which new paradigms or knowledge are constituted in present times. More significant than its designation as the source or origin are the principles it represents, the rational thoughts that ultimately frame the beginnings of something anew. A primary concern that constitutes a third meaning ascribed to Arche is that point in history which forms an ideal referential axis. This Arche encompasses both the beginnings and the end (Burnet, 1968). The end principles in time may constitute the beginnings of something else entirely. By extension, it is argued here that the Viennese Radical invocation of ancient principles in contemporary architecture, constitutes a return to Arche.

5. The Holy Well of Santa Cristina in Sardinia served as an inspiration especially for Raimund Abraham, Hans Hollein and Wolf Prix. It is probably the most advanced architectural structure of the Nuragic population, a Bronze Age native civilization of Sardinia. The dry stone construction technique of the sacred well is the same as other giant monuments of Nuragic origin but with underground development. The temple is divided into three main parts: the vestibule, the access stairs and the actual well. It is probably linked by its relations to the Mycenaean tholos and characteristic dromos. The Temple, dedicated to the water cult, also performs a primary function as a water tank and, according to some experts, served as an astronomic observatory (Lebeuf, 2011).

6. Gianni Pettena, Bruno Zevi and Leonardo Benevolo awere vanguards of the Italian Radical movement that developed between 1960 and 1980, with particular reference to the period 1968–1976 (Benevolo, 1967, 1992; Pettena, 1996; Zevi, 1996). The strength of the Italian Radicals was reflected in, and stimulated by, the positioning of Italian artists and architects at the forefront of theoretical and design debates at the time. The year 1963 was particularly significant as students in Italian Schools began to attack the order of architectural practice. Inspired by the rejection of the modern movement of the 1950s in England by Alison and Peter Smithson and Team X, they began to theorise a utopian consciousness of their own, culminating in the birth of groups such as Archizoom, Superstudio, Ufo and others (Pedrabissi, 2013).

7. The 1968 exposition “Utopia e/o rivoluzione” held in Turin and the 1972 exhibition, curated by Emilio Ambasz at MoMA under the theme “Italy: the New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and problems of Italian Design”, put the Italian Radical movement on the map (Ambasz, 1972; Celant, 1972). Modernist logic led to several demonstrations across Universities in Europe in which students in architecture departments (for example at the Turin Polytechnic) considered how to rethink the role of architecture beyond the sterility of modernism, resulting in the 1969 and 1972 exhibitions. These exhibitions were primarily held in response to the emergence in Italy of a humanistic emphasis in the work of Italian designers (Branzi, 1972). These were forums of like-minded architects who sought to question the meaning of contemporary architecture around the world.

8. The Radicals’ ideas came together around key events. Archigram came to prominence after the 1963 exhibition “Living Cities” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Inspired by the works of Buckminster Fuller and Yona Friedman and concerned with the sterility of modernism, leading architects such as Peter Cook, Warren Chalk and others modelled a neo-futuristic, high-tech utopia. The ideas of Archigram were advanced in the early works of Norman Foster and the iconic Pompidou Centre by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, works that owe a debt to The Fun Palace, Cedric Price’s 1964 watershed project (Cook, 1999; Mathews, 2005; Sadler, 2005). Similarly, in Japan, the work of the Metabolists peaked with the exhibition “Metabolism 1960; Proposals for a New Urbanism” at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960. Led by young Japanese students Fumihiko Maki, Masato Otaka, Kiyonori Kikutake and Kisho Kurokawa under the tutelage of Kenzo Tange, the exhibition presented a vision of the city as a living organism with replaceable cells (Lin, 2010; Schalk, 2014).

9. Although a broader Austrian context remains relevant, this article refers to the Viennese architectural climate and collaborations of the period. An exception was the Graz School, with Gunther Domenig as the most prominent Radical figure. Domenig was among the first to recognize the talent of the Vienna-based Coop Himmelblau. At the Technical University of Graz, he hosted the Flammenflügel (“Aktion am 9. Dezember 1980, 20.35 Uhr.”), to highlight the performance of the Vienna-based firm. Similarly, Wolf D. Prix has always recognized the pioneering role of Domenig and his most iconic building, the Zbank, as the first example of a three-dimensional (and parametric) facade.

10. Hollein’s manifesto Alles ist Architektur plays a critical role in “any debate within the field of architecture and shows a centrality that theoretically led to the overcoming of all spatial and temporal barriers” (Pettena, 1996).

11. Increasingly, the rationalism of the modern movement did not seem to be able to confront the issues of third world space and the consequences of social and economic transformation in Western society and the Americas (Bristol, 1991). As in other periods of history, some architects moved to rear-guard positions, taking refuge in history, while others pushed towards the limits, sometimes proposing deliberately visionary and unrealizable solutions (Zevi, 1985).

The Sixties also saw a concern over the actualization of Malthusian predictions for the first time. Aptly, architecture moved its sphere of action to a global scale and, perhaps for the first time, turned its focus to the phenomenon of globalization (Club Rome, 1968). Some architects deliberately pushed their commitments beyond real, professional opportunities. The twenty-year period between the 1960s and 1980s was, therefore, characterized by the “mannerism-utopia” dilemma. Consequently, young Radicals continued to question the principles and masters of the Modern while simultaneously seeking new, radical ideas for the rapidly changing city (Zevi, 1996).

12. Author’s reference.

13. It was not until the late 2000s that a few publications emphasized the value of Radical Viennese architectural thought. These included Porsch’s “Austrian Phenomenon” and the “Serial Invocation of the Ancient in ‘radical’ thought” (Melis, 2011). This also refers to several articles and monographs, such as the work of Hans Hollein, Ortner and Ortner (former Haus-Rucker-Co) (Orlandoni, 1979; Ortner, 1977), Adolf Krischanitz (former Missing Link) and Coop Himmelblau.

14. The terminology used to describe the different moments is a precise critical choice meant to contextualise the focus of the paper. As said in the previous paragraph, the aim is not to provide a brief history of the whole Viennese phenomenon (which would not be possible to do in one article) but rather to highlight nuances among its protagonists, depending also on the aforementioned different moments of activity.

15. The objective of the present text is not necessarily (or it is only partially) to underline the inconsistency and incongruences in the consequential use of history in the declared battle against modernism. The main interest of the paper lays in the attempt to read the state of the architecture from their perspective, therefore also indulging towards the contradictions.

16. Kiesler’s utopia brought to life a metaphysics founded on the principles of correlation, connectivity and bio-technique. Kiesler coined “corealism” in 1939 with “corealism and biotechnique; a definition and test of a new approach to building design” as the dynamic field of continual interactions between man and his natural and technological environments. He discounts functionalism as static responses in architecture, which he held should be a non-static continual interaction between humans, nature and technology, which led to the idea of an extended and powerful functionalism (Kiesler, 1966; Yoon, 2004).

17. The comparison with Italy is particularly helpful here because of its complementary relationship with Austria. In the 1970s, Italy became an amplifier for the Austrians ideas because of its internationally recognized journal and critical mass.

18. So, at the end of Radical phase, when even the founder of Superstudio, Adolfo Natalini, turned to historicism, the organic architects (Leonardo Savioli, Leonardo Ricci, Luigi Pellegrin and Vittorio Giorgini) were marginalized by critics and academia, except for Bruno Zevi, who, for the same reason, was doomed to isolation.

19. Cooperation among artists is certainly not a novelty in architecture, nor in Austria. However, it is not a distinctive feature of most of the European Radicals and therefore it makes the Viennese more similar to the European pre-war avant-garde. Collaboration among Hollein, Abraham and Pichler defined successful research streamlines such as the use of the body as an artistic canvas.

20. See Colomina, Choi, Galan, & Meister, 2012.

21. According to Rotondi, the preference for the latter tells alot about Abraham’s personality: the villagers “were here to see their ancestors and reaffirm their faith in the deeper mysteries and forces of the universe. It was somewhere between surreal and uncanny … We were immersed in a ritual we had merely observing a moment before. We were between an ideal world of faith and the real world defined by gravity. This was Raimund’s world reaffirming that the most profound experiences occur unexpectedly. He knew his good friends well, and wanted us to ‘see’ and experience a ‘world’ that would enhance the world we already knew. It worked” (Noever & Prix, 2011, p. 105).

22. Under the influence of a Feuerstein future, Coop Himmelblau moved to the Architectural Association in London. In 1966, Feuerstein promoted Urban Fiction, an exhibition that included the works of his young students in addition to those of Hollein, Domenig & Huth and others (Feuerstein, 1988; Scheuvens, 2016).

23. Groupe Utopie, Structures Gonflable, exhibition and catalog presented at the ARC/MAMVP, Paris, March 1968. That same year, Coop Himmelblau “gave birth” to the “Cloud” and Hollein and Peter Noever published Svobodair, a conceptual work whose theme, a spray for “environmental control”, produces a “good mood” with the aim of solving the problem of collaborations in architecture and other socially “suffocating” conditionsCoop Himmelblau, who designed Villa Rosa, recalled the historical prestige of the Viennese surgery school: “These elements of Coop Himmelblau seem playful but represent something clinical and erotic at the same time, and once again we can refer to Sigmund Freud that can explain the various psychic overlap” (Feuerstein, 1988).

The late 1960s were also the time of the “Aktionsveranstaltung”, the expression of Vienna’s actionism, which presented “Art and Revolution”, organized by the “Vienna Aktionists” Otto Muhel, Gunther Brus and Oswald Wiener and caused a huge scandal in the press, resulting in the arrest of Muhel and Brus. Although Gunther Brus subsequently served six months in prison for the crime of “defamation of state symbols”, Vienna still remained one of the few European capitals relatively quiet in the run-up to the Paris May, the barricades in Italian universities, and the tragic and revolutionary events that characterized the late 1960s (such as Jan Palach’s suicide).

24. Abraham’s figure as that of a nonconformist and as a central figure of Radicalism emerges in the publication edited, after his death, by Peter Noever and Wolf Prix (In the Absence of Raimund Abraham, 2011). As curator of the MAK in Vienna, Noever has opened an exhibition section of the museum dedicated to the Radicals in which he draws a common thread among the Austrians, highlighting Abraham’s role. He included in the group, in addition to Domenig and Kiesler, also Lebbeus Woods, whose Viennese proximity is due to his long-term academic activities at the Angewandte, promoted by Wolf Prix and the MAK (Noever, 1997). Noever’s attraction to Austrian Radicalism is reflected in his philosophy of the “percept” as opposed to the “concept” and the idea that deconstructivism is not only the physical deconstruction of architecture but is also a systematic destructuration of history (Noever & Haslinger, 1991), as intended by Abraham too. The Breitenbrunn Pit is a work of art representing his philosophy and a reinterpretation of the water temple.

25. Especially in Italy, prevailing positions are still dominated by the Laugier’s interpretation of the Origin.

26. Abraham, Hollein and Pix’s interest in the origin of architecture takes an unstructured path that, despite the common ground, is distant from the layered city, a collection of monumental elements described by Rossi with his projects and drawings, such as in The Architecture of the City.

27. In 2008, Wolf Prix founded the Brain City Lab program (Urban Strategies, University of Applied Arts Vienna) based on the theories of Wolf Singer (Max Planck Insitute, Frankfurt) regarding similarities between neuronal autopoietic systems and architecture (author’s reference).

28. On those aspects, see also Abraham’s projects such as the “House for Euclid” (1983) and the mentioned proposal for New York.

29. The interpretation of the Modern Movement in Austria was, in fact, influenced by Arbeitesgruppe 4 functionalism. It is a fact that, subsequently, Prix, for instance, collected his archetypal shapes even from the work of Le Corbusier (i.e. the Cloud 9 pyramid, in Los Angeles, is retrieved from the Tourette section).

30. According to Raggi, in Vienna, as in Italy, architecture in the 1970s “has limited opportunities to express itself in a city where the rate of building development is very low … Missing Link and Himmleblau try the decryption of an internal message, alien to the use, of objects, transforming them in conceptual ready-made”. The same research can be found in the invention of the “audiovisual helmets” and the inflatable architectures of Haus-Rucker-Co. Both the helmets and the inflatable elements “criticize the temporariness … contest, ironically”—in short, the functionalism of static architecture (Raggi, 1974, p. 176. Author’s translation).

31. The story of Cerimonia is accompanied by the apocalyptic Supersuperficie (Notebooks, Archivio Natalini. Florence).

32. Compare with the exhibition “Architektur” organized by Hollein and Pichler in Vienna in 1963.

33. In coincidence with the famous Moma exhibition (1972), Celant’s intention was to include Archigram, Superstudio, Ant Farm, Archizoom, Hollein-Pichler-Abraham and Haus-Rucker-Co. (Gargiani, 2007, p. 243).

34. A column of the Viaduct was also the only piece of architecture (36) exhibited in a large room of the Kunstlerghaus, nestled in the park, transformed through synthetic green material into an illusionistic sloping lawn, designed by Jorg Mayr (29), to support the objects of the participants, including Hollein and Coop Himmelblau.

35. Natalini refers to a relationship with Hollein’s works, such as “Werk und Verhalten, Leben und Tod, Alltgliche Situationen”, presented at the XXXVI Venice Biennale in 1972.

36. Archizoom and Hollein were both involved in similar projects on fashion and design interaction at the 1973 Triennale. The former with a film titled Come e’ fatto il cappotto di Gogol and the latter with the Austrian section which featured the Hans Krank Casts film entitled Dressing Design.

37. Klaus Pinter of Haus-Rucker-Co obtained Archzom’s contact from Superstudio and contacted them in 1970 to involve them in the publication of Environmental Design.

38. Museum of Monchengladbach (Domus, 548, p. 17); Media Linien in Munich (Domus, 550, p. 1); Siemens building in Munich (Domus, 561, p. 25).

39. On the other hand, is the fate of Domenig after the publication of the Z-Bank (1974–1979) by Domus in 1980. Considered a heretical work, it was not adopted by the younger generation as a model, unlike the works of Hollein. his article describes all the elements that make this building a model, in an anticipatory key, of twenty-first century architecture. The basic concept is to turn a bank from a mono-functional building to a multi-purpose architecture that “absolve even at community functions, useful to the neighborhood.” It also expresses “the interest in contemporary culture, not through the usual purchase of works of art but through a building that is a real contribution to contemporary art. You feel like comparing the building to a large steel-armored insect, with internal organs visable from level to level. You can pass in front of caves, balustrades, ducts, tubes, a giant hand (that of the architect), a waterfall (concrete) and so on. A car, a cave, a sculpture? The right angle does not exist in this building. Outside, a steady stream flows upwards” (Domus 602, pp. 14–16. Author’s translation). Yet three years before (1977), Domus had also detected Domenig’s interest for the organic experimentation (Interview, Domus 576, p. 66).