Hans Ulrich Obrist: You’ve frequently worked at the junctures between art and architecture. Could you tell us about your early work in exhibition design as well as exhibitions of your own art?Ê ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHans Hollein: My earliest endeavors in that direction date to 1956, when I’d completed my 01/10 architecture studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. I hadn’t received any commissions, but I started to develop ideas. My first studies for a purposeless or – my term at the time – absolute architecture were located on the boundary between architecture and visual art or, more specifically, between architecture and sculpture. I never believed in a neat division between Hans Ulrich Obrist architecture and the other visual arts. I fleshed out my ideas in drawings and models and then won a fellowship to go to the US for two years. I In Conversation used the time to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and get a master’s degree with Hans at Berkeley.Ê ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: Who were your teachers in Chicago? Hollein ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: I started studying with Mies van der Rohe, but soon after I got there he withdrew from the IIT due to internal differences, although I continued to see him privately. I then took urban planning classes with Hilberseimer and Peterhans. In my second year, I moved to California. But the real main purpose of my stay was to work free of constraints and really get to know America. I logged around sixty thousand miles driving around the country, with a wide variety of intentions and research foci. For t s i example, at one point I went on a trip to visit r b O every Vienna in the US. I also looked at every h c single building by Frank Lloyd Wright. That was i r l U when I was first confronted with the reality of his s n designs. I’d known his architecture only from a H Ê photographs, so the three-dimensional reality 5 1 was very imposing. I looked at everything he’d 0 2 r done, down to the pigpens he’d built in Alabama. e n b i Shortly before his death, he invited me to come o e t l l c o up to Taliesin in Wisconsin for a weekend. o H — s Another subject I was interested in very early on 6 n 6 a was Native American architecture. I went to the # H h — t Southwest several times to study the pueblos i 6 w 6 more closely.Ê n # o l i ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: Did you document your research?Ê t a a n r s r ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: I accumulated around two thousand u e o j v slides, a pretty extensive collection. The n x o u l C f University of California wanted to buy it, but I - n e I declined their offer. Unfortunately, almost all the slides were stolen from my car three days before I flew back home. All I was left with was a series of pictures of Schindler’s buildings I’d deposited at the Museum of Modern Art. I’d seen a photograph of Schindler’s Beach House in an old issue of Architectural Record, which made a big impression on me. I asked around, but no one in my acquaintance knew anything about the 09.18.15 / 19:53:24 EDT architecture. So I drove to Los Angeles to see over my own creative activities. In today’s more of his buildings and take photographs. I parlance, what I was doing at the time, especially met his widow and his former lover, who in my environments, would be described as introduced me to his circle of friends. Schindler crossover. Take, for example, my early drawings himself had died in 1953. I brought out the first and collages from the late 1950s and early ’60s, books about Schindler in 1960 and 1961. I also which were acquired by the Museum of Modern obtained access to his archive, which was stored Art. In Berkeley, I did a master’s thesis on “Space in his son’s garden house. All his drawings were 02/10 in Space in Space,” a subject I examined in texts, there, in big stacks, with the models sitting atop drawings, and models of various sizes. After them, and I was able to document some of that in coming back from the US, I gave a lecture on my photographs as well. I took the material to the works and ideas. To my mind, I was a sculptor Museum of Modern Art in New York, gave them much more than an architect. In 1963 I presented an introduction to Schindler’s work, and my work in a joint exhibition with Walter Pichler suggested that they should preserve his archive. at Galerie nchst St. Stephan.Ê They replied that Schindler wasn’t important. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: Was that your first exhibition? Then, in 1964, I also published an article on the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: No. In 1959, I’d done a modest show of pueblo in which I discussed the basic principles work related to my thesis and other pieces I’d and the complexity of this architecture and its created during my time in the US. And I’d put interaction with the landscape and nature. together a small exhibition on Schindler at the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: These were the beginnings of your Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna in 1960. work as a documentarian? But the show at Galerie nchst St. Stephan in ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: Yes, but I never planned on becoming 1963, which was on display for all of three days, an architecture historian or critic. I called my was the first presentation of my art. It elicited a publications on Schindler a “contribution to a very intense reaction. People rushed into the corrected architectural history.” Same with my gallery determined to destroy the models. The work on the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann: Kronen Zeitung, an influential tabloid, launched a When I was a student, in 1954–56, art historians massive attack as well. Although the exhibition had lost sight of his significance. You could pick closed after a few days, it triggered a up furniture designed by Hoffmann at estate fundamental shift in the situation in Vienna at sales and from dumpsters. Drawings by Klimt the time. It was also documented in a little and Schiele went for ten dollars apiece. I thought catalogue. The Museum of Modern Art got in it was my duty to restore these pioneers of touch and purchased some of the exhibits, and I modernism to their rightful place in art history. was offered a visiting professorship at But my work as a writer never took precedence Washington University in Saint Louis, which had A study for an extension of the University of Vienna designed in 1966 by Hans Hollein. 09.18.15 / 19:53:24 EDT 03/10 Hollein's interior design for the Marius Retti candleshop (1965) won the R. S. Reynolds Award that year. 09.18.15 / 19:53:24 EDT 04/10 Hans Hollein, Museum Abteiberg, Mnchengladbach, Germany, 1982. 09.18.15 / 19:53:24 EDT a very progressive architecture institute at the to experiment than those who had major time where Aldo van Eyck, Frei Otto, and others commissions to award. For example, I outfitted were teaching. one boutique with an interior made of synthetic ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: So the press response to your first materials. A year after I’d designed the candle exhibition at Galerie nchst St. Stephan and the shop, Beuys knocked on my door in Vienna and catalogue really set your career in motion. said, “You’ve got to become the new architecture ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: I’ve always seen the medium of writing professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art!” We about exhibitions and catalogues as an 05/10 spent two days together. My candidacy was important multiplier. In this case, it allowed me supported by the artists and opposed by the to spend another year in the United States, architects, and eventually, in 1967, I was where, besides teaching, I pursued my projects appointed professor of architecture. further. When I returned to Vienna, I decided to ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: The next field you then went into was set up shop as an architect. In 1964, Mr. Retti, a museum architecture. manufacturer of candles, asked three architects ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: Yes, that was something no architect to submit proposals for the design of a small was interested in at the time. Museums were store, just 150 sq. ft., on Vienna’s Kohlenmarkt seen as fusty institutions. On the and chose my design. The shop was completed in recommendation of Monsignor Mauer, the 1965, and in 1966, it received the R. S. Reynolds director of Galerie nchst St. Stephan, I was Award, then the most highly renowned invited to do an exhibition in the old building of architecture award. My design competed against the municipal museum in Mnchengladbach, skyscrapers by Yamasaki. which had recently held the first Beuys ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHUO: Apparently the store’s microstructure exhibition. Johannes Cladders, the museum’s really impressed people!Ê director, wanted me to create the new building. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHH: When Bakema saw it, he said, “But But first I designed Richard Feigen’s gallery in that’s a built manifesto!” And it was, because it New York. Feigen had bought a house in 1967 and wasn’t just a shop, it was an architectural wanted to convert it into a large gallery and statement. Which was very much my intention. private residence.