Hollein Calling

The exhibition explores the Hollein phenomenon from a contemporary perspective, re-evaluating his work and its relevance to the current discourse through a dialogue with a younger generation of architects.

During his lifetime Hans Hollein was an assiduous curator of his own work, and yet his persona, as a self-proclaimed 1960s avant-gardist and Austria’s only Pritzker Prize winner, often overshadowed any objective assessment of his architecture. Now, nearly a decade after his death in 2014, it is possible to look at his work with the necessary distance. Now, nearly a decade after his death in 2014, it is possible to look at his work with the necessary distance. Hollein Calling opens up new and often surprising perspectives on ostensibly familiar projects, revealing the multifaceted nature of Hollein’s oeuvre through a selection of work spanning from the small scale of exhibition installations and the Retti and Schullin stores to school buildings and museums.

The Hollein exhibits – sketches, models, prototypes, and documents, many of them on public display for the first time – are drawn from the extensive Archive Hans Hollein, Az W and MAK, which the Architekturzentrum Wien has been cataloging and preserving for several years. The groundbreaking projects by Atelier Hollein are juxtaposed with works by fifteen European practices who are shaping the architectural discourse today. Large display tables are used to create fields of association between the projects, grouping exhibits according to shared themes, methods, and interests. Overhead video projections offer a taste of Atelier Hollein’s vast image archive. The inclusion of many photographs and illustrations that are not in the Hollein canon of iconic (and frequently published) images opens up alternative lines of thought and provides new insight into unrealized concepts. These images are in turn in dialogue with large-format photographs conveying the approaches of the contemporary architectural practices, many of whom see Hollein’s expansion of the boundaries of the discipline – “everything is architecture” – as his greatest achievement and understand their own work in similar terms, as part of an emerging critical cultural production. What unites them all is the belief that we need to be talking more about architecture.

Hans Hollein in conversation with: Almannai Fischer Architekt:innen, München / baukuh, Mailand / Bovenbouw Architectuur, Antwerpen / Claudia Cavallar, Wien / Aslı Çiçek, Brüssel / Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich / doorzon interieur architecten, Gent / Expanded Design, Wien / Martin Feiersinger, Wien / David Kohn Architects, London / Kühn Malvezzi, Berlin / Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekt:innen, Zürich / Manthey Kula, Oslo / Monadnock, Rotterdam / OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Brüssel

Curators/Exhibition design: Lorenzo De Chiffre, Benni Eder, Theresa Krenn
Graphic design: Studio Polimekanos
Projekt coordination: Katrin Stingl
Archive Hans Hollein, Az W and MAK, Vienna: Claudia Lingenhöl

The exhibition is accompanied by the book, Hollein Calling: Architectural Dialogues, published by Park Books and edited by Lorenzo De Chiffre, Benni Eder, Theresa Krenn, and Architekturzentrum Wien, with contributions by Mark Lee and Monika Platzer.