Josef Lackner_Habitable Landscapes

speakers at the opening:
Dietmar Steiner, director of the Az W: welcome address
Monika Platzer, curator of the exhibition for the Az W: introduction
Otto Kapfinger, architecture critic: on the work of Josef Lackner

Josef Lackner (1931–2000) numbers among the most significant architects of the Austrian postwar generation. Educated at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Clemens Holzmeister, Lackner worked independently in Innsbruck from 1961. Housing developments are among the core briefs in Lackner’s oeuvre, which is presented for the first time on the basis of numerous models from the Az W collection. The first works from the 1960s were still completed under the influence of Classical Modernism, while at the same time Lackner engages critically with the realities of planning in his time. The Anti-Stadt (Anti-City) from 1967 is to be understood as a critical contribution against the functional development of metropolises; housing projects as architecture becoming landscape, not matching the topography but entering into a dialogue with it. People’s — still topical — yearning for a home in the countryside provided Lackner with over 60 commissions for single-family homes. Interesting in this context is the wide diversity of the houses, which are frequently orientated in formal terms on elementary geometry.

With this exhibition, marking the 80th birthday of Josef Lackner, the Az W pays tribute to one of the great figures of Austrian architecture.