‘’All is Architecture’’Confirmed!
A Pioneer of Postmodernism:
Hans Hollein
Hans Hollein undoubtedly is a classic master of postmodernism in architecture world and he passed away,aged 80, just at the point where his works inspire next generation architects to a large extent.Hans Hollein born on March 30, 1934 in Vienna,Austria and he is an architect,artist, theoretician,curator,teacher.Of course,these words are not enough to describe his whole works or contributions he has made to Austrian architecture but when we look at his body of work,it is certainly understood that Hans Hollein was an interdisciplinery architect who impresses other members of architecture world.Indeed,his career left us a huge legacy about his irrefutable polemical manifestos as well as other impressive works and when he highlighted his declaration ‘’Everything is Architecture’’ in 1967,-yes he was right.’’Everything was Architecture’’ because we could easily see that how he has dealt with design from teaspoon to city.So,the most important thing what I want to emphasize here is to analyse his architecture with some specific works lost in the history in terms of perceptual,haptic,sensual or maybe pricking.
[Re-entry]
When he was an architecture student in 1955’s at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; he was in Clemens Holzmeister’s master class and in 1960,Hans Hollein completed his Master of Architecture degree at the University of California, Berkeley. During his educational period, the people who he has met like Frank Lloyd Wright,Mies van der Rohe,Richard Neutra affected his architectural approach as an indication of pluralist forms. After living and working with some architectural studios in Sweden, his architectural vision and virtual pursuits started to be more concrete. Although Hollein’s drawings and collages were exhibited in collection of Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960’s,Hollein always adopted a particular attitude against Functionalism in his speeches and in his drawings, clearly stressed the ‘’monumentality’’ in an urban landscape. These special transformations and transpositions were so prosaic that no one could inject a meaning to these collages.
In each of Hollein’s transformations,the site itself becomes a monumental object and visually dominates the space that stand in it.Also,they are not just standing as an object,the images present the superiority of technology as a model representation.Hollein’s works collected in the book ‘’the Changing of the Avant-Garde’’ dogmatize that all images are directly related to the maltitude of meaning that you will be included in each layer of them.To say more clearly,he was underlying the terms ‘’utopia’’ and ‘’megastructures’’ of that time.
‘’We are building what we want, making an architecture that is not determined by technique, but that uses technique – pure, absolute architecture’’¹ expressed his ideas about architecture in 1963.In his ideas, the way of producing architecture had become more infinite and free-regardless of other inputs.
[Small Scaled:Design Matters]
The Retti Candle Shop was the first implemented project designed by Hans Hollein in 1964–65 in the center of Vienna.This candle shop was a small sales and display area and had a unique appearance as compared to other designs of its time.The most distinctive factor here is that it stands on a limited size and use also the material -aluminium used,startes from outside and continues to the inside.Besides,there is no barrier between customer and staff;with Fraudan’s own words,its phallic entrance voids,provide a spatial flow with the same material without changing perception coming from outside-but also this can be interpreted as architectural ego.Because of the best representation of the product of its time,the Retti candle shop was choosen as the winner of Reynolds Memorial Award in 1966.In this sense,gaps on the facade,continuing niches inside and arcadia displaying areas were very pure and functionless and could be expressed as the return of Hollein’s first statement ‘’everything is architecture’’.
The second small design of Hans Hollein was extremely screaming the predominance of graphic art out with the polished aluminium facade and Christa Metek Boutique designed in 1966–67,to attract the attention from outside intentionally.After his prestigious fame in an international era with the Retti candle shop ,Hollein designed this small shop by integrating graphic art to an architecture and this rounded graphic symbol was so powerful that this motif was dominating this tiny,naive facade from outside.All these elements,show off windows combined with air conditioning gaps,grilless divided into three parts and linear expressions acts like a part of the main facade with different vivid colors and transparency.However,the interior of this small shop is very simple;different partitions of shelfs,flexible polyester elements and different modulating systems in panels do not interrupt the effect of facade perception.
Hans Hollein was very keen on traveling by car around the world that redounded to his architectural credits in a positive way and he almost seen every part of the city from India, Mexico to Egypt and all architectural details he has gained from his travels made him a pioneer of postmodernism because he was producing architecture in a more pleasurable or sarcastic way rather than American Postmodenists.In 1950–60’s, we totally lost in montage theory creating a new doctrine just at the point where connects architecture to urban design and advertising.This specialized way of transferring architectural information was full of aesthetic,changeable and informal but-still was liberated.When he was the editor of ‘’Bau’’ magazine between the dates of 1964–1970,the pages of ‘’Bau’’,with expanded architectural history,media and technology, were emphasizing the Hollein’s first statement once more ‘’All is Architecture’’!
During this period,while discussing the broader definition of architecture through different mediums,Hollein,in his specific issue of ‘’Bau’’ magazine,included several works of Frei Otto, Oldenburg, Christo, Wesselman and a portrait of Che Guevara ² as an indication of changing nonphysical perception in terms of both ‘’meaning’’ and ‘’effect’’.Actually,as Hans Hollein’s verbal symptoms indicated,today’s architecture is much more integrated to digital media that sets it’s position intensively anywhere and most of people share/submit their own visuals,details,photographies,projects via social media feeds that previously never seen before.Even,the flow of specific images takes place in some student dissertations since catch some details that architect can not see in their projects.So,in this regard,Hollein’s manifesto is a certain proof which reveals the validity of old phenomenon and it becomes more physical reality today,- also formulates contemporary architecture.
Hans Hollein was always an interface between art and architecture. His early works were decisive about creating a minimal environment by taking into consideration the human body, temperature, isolation and movement in its own space. While other architects designing some pneumatic structures in 1960’s, he created his real inflatable mobile office which can be seen from outside with full of transparency. This mobile device was made of a plastic bubble and connected to it telephone and telefax. Hollein’s fondness of minimal spaces caused to design other small products-the telephone booth was one of them. As regarding this issue, we should also add that all prototypes he designed for experimenting were also related to materials are being developed in those years. The most important thing here is that although Hollein constantly criticizes functionality, he always designed practical, functional, simple but haptic environment with maximum rationality in terms of applicability.
[Peak Point in Postmodernism]
As it is well known we have witnessed quite a few architectural styles in 1960’s and 1970’s and all of them were interrogated and criticized with holistic approaches but there were already some terms available underlying historicism which directly refers to the past and pastiche, irony and elegiac attitudes took part in the center of postmodernism to a great extent. When Hans Hollein attended to the Venice Biennale in 1980,he officially declared his leadership in postmodernism because what he presented here is to agglomerate certain pluralist competing ideas in a concrete manner. Hollein designed a facade of street ‘’street of styles’’ called Strada Novissima³.All these columns he set in this street, had become different pieces of major element like brick, concrete, tree, marble, a classical ruin and was showing the smooth transformation from primitive to modern. For this very reason, we could easily read the reassessment of history through physical permeability.
Hans Hollein’s career continued with the most prestigious project called the Stadtisches Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach,Gemany which made him famous leader of postmodernism in an international area.He had proved himself anymore.The Museum Abteiberg completed in 1982 and design principles once more showed that Hollen’s artist-sculptural skills had become more apparent in this project.Linearity upward,a good integration with the context,neutral,a large open surface for public use and being part of the landscape as he did in his collages before,is the most assertive aspect of the project.Hans Hollein played an important role in Austrian architecture and was the inheritor of that time and we keep in mind that his avant-garde attitude exactly fitted the society and always advanced Austrian architecture.
‘’one who with wit and eclectic gusto draws upon the traditions of the New World as readily as upon those of the Old. An architect who is also an artist, he has the good fortune to design museums that are then eager to place within their walls works of art from his hand, whether in the form of drawings, collages, or sculpture.’’ 4 says The Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury in their citations in 1985.Finally,Hollein was awarded with the most prestigious prize what he deserved.A good combination of materals,colors,monumentality with the sculptural works could distinguish him from other architects.
Haas House is one of his several projects designed by Mr.Hollein revealing his eclectic style emphatically to the audience.It is a five-story building locates in Vienna’s downtown and is the best example of postmodernism.Attaching to the existing structure with the curvilinear form,changing configuration with materials on the facade,metal claddings and mirrors were hitting to the face of audience like a knife.
Mr.Hollein had a passion on using columns in his designs but here,we seen a fragmantation of materials rather than columns even if columns little bit come out on the facade and this complex symphony on the corner immediately drew an attention for people walking on the street and become enjoyable stop.Although Haas Hause originally designed as an office or commercial building with shops and offices,it is currently used as a hotel,restaurant and fashion-outlet.
Mr.Hollein was more than an architect-not was just a paper architect and his genetic code was always reflecting the way of his plastic or interdisciplinary thinking in his buildings,products,documents, even exhibitions.When he participated in Austriennale XIV.Triennale, Milano in 1968,he designed several hallways like a pill creating different architectural perceptions inside through technology.Hollein could provide the control of environment by augmentation so each space could be exposed to different architectural effects thanks to simulation and he also introduced his new design ‘’sunglasses’’ for this exhibition which was a new tool framing the colored space by the user.Hollein’s first experimentations and projects with technology proved the wider effects of simulation and the possibilities of use but it was not much more ironic or debated;it was tested,experienced and worked very well in reality.At the same time,this interdisciplinary approach caused people to think about alternative ways of producing architecture because they were the first traces of architectural developments as the proof of ‘’virtual real
Hans Hollein become the most important public figure in Austrian architecture,he developed very important ideas,projects,test beds and exhibitions all over the world and his versatile architecture challenged to his postmodernist fellows which formalizes the new way of thinking in architecture;he substantially expanded the limits of architecture and created a new discourse what he believes.Even if Mr.Hollein was in the center of some balloon-polemics in 1950’s,being a detailed architect and dealing with several tentative projects has given to him a momentum as related to his evolving new world.Concordantly,Hollein is the inheriter of contemporary culture in our modernized world because his trajectories will ispire next generation architects since he already drew a colorful iconic map of his various works.
Keywords: Hans Hollein,postmodernism,architecture
Notes
1.Lilli Hollein and Max Hollein, ‘’Hans Hollein’’,Hans Hollein Last accessed June 7, 2014 http://www.hollein.com/eng/Writings/Texte/Architecture
2.Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi, ’Socks’’,Last accessed June 9,2014 http://socks-studio.com/2013/08/13/hans-holleins-alles-ist-architektur-1968/
3.Victoria and Albert Museum, ‘’Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990’’ Victoria and Albert Museum Last accessed June 10,2014, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/postmodernism/about-the-exhibition/
4.The Pritzker Architecture Prize ‘Jury Citation’’ The Pritzker Architecture Prize Last modified March 24,2014 ,http://www.pritzkerprize.com/1985/jury
