Hundertwasser House
Each guest of the Austrian capital should look at the amazing architectural structure – the house of Hundertwasser. The building is located in the center of Vienna at the intersection of Kegelgasse and Landstrabe Streets.
Appearance
Brightly painted in all colors of the rainbow, the house covers an uneven "cold" roof, also covered with a whole park of trees and bushes. Thick vegetation is also present in niche rooms and in stairwells open for eyes. The facade of the building is covered with a network of lians and shrubs. The main architectural feature is the lack of straight lines, rounded corners, windows of various shapes and sizes, uneven floors and stairwells, handprints of builders on the walls of the house.
Home appointment
The most amazing thing is that the house is residential, there are 50 apartments ranging from 30 to 150 square meters, where about 200 residents live. In addition to apartments, the house has a cafe, a doctor’s office, playrooms for children, a winter garden, several private and public terraces.
Artist concept
It is also surprising that the house is named after the artist Hundertwasser, and not the architect who built it. The originality of the artist manifested itself already in his name, which he changed more than once. A young man entered universities many times, and then dropped out, could specially wear different socks, loved everything grotesque and bright. Perhaps in this way a boy with Jewish roots wanted to leave behind his horrified military childhood in the territory occupied by the Nazis. From early childhood, he was interested in architecture, although he was not an architect and did not understand the construction. The artist hated right angles and straight lines. The straight line, according to Hundertwasser, does not occur in nature, which means it should not dominate architecture. It destroys a person, creates an unfriendly, constantly annoying habitat. A person should influence nature as little as possible, and in the houses he built, one must find a place for copies of the plant world. Among the artist’s architectural ideas are – “roof forests”, “detached wood”, “right to the window”".
Construction history
In 1977, Vienna Mayor Leopold Graz invited Hundertswasser to design a residential building in accordance with his views. For some time I had to look for a suitable piece of land. Then we needed an architect who could realize the artist’s plans.
The years of finding a suitable land plot followed. Since Hundertwasser was not an architect, he asked the city authorities of Vienna to provide him with a specialist who would be ready to bring his concept to life. Architect Joseph Kravina had difficulty imagining how to do this, as he was used to working in a linear architecture system. On this basis, acute conflicts arose between the artist and the architect. Only in 1980 did Kravina create a house project that was fundamentally different from generally accepted building codes, which satisfied Hundertwasser. However, further disputes continued regarding the design of the facades, and the artist and architect ceased to cooperate. The construction of the famous house was completed by another architect. Well, the building is called the Hundertwasser's house.
