Synopses & Reviews
Since 1968, Coop Himmelblau has been practicing a form of architecture which provocatively breaks away from traditional structures to expose inherent tensions. The principles of deconstructivism can be seen in many of their most famous buildings and projects: the seminal Falkestrasse roof extension in Vienna, the east wing of the museum in Groningen, the JVC New Urban Entertainment Centre in Mexico, the spectacular UFA cinema centre in Dresden and the SEG residential tower in Vienna. Their work has been the subject of international exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and in 1996 they represented Austria in the Venice Biennale.
Synopsis
To combine architecture and imagination in a fashion as light and variable as clouds was the credo proclaimed by Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky when they founded the practice of Coop Himmelb(l)au in 1968 in Vienna (Himmelblau = heavenly blue). Their radical, iconoclastic and deconstructivist approach to architecture expresses the energy and tension of each site and location in spectacular fashion. Among the projects that established their international reputation are the Groningen Museum pavilion and Dresden UFA Cinema Complex. Their work has also featured in numerous exhibitions and they have represented Austria at the Architecture Biennial in Venice. This monograph is the first publication to present the theoretical and conceptual content of Coop Himmelb(l)au's oeuvre.