I have admired Hundertwasser for a while, ever since seeing the incredible incinerator at Spittelau in Vienna, but until last week I had not visited his other two architectural masterpieces here. The museum of his life and work and the series of flats called the Hundertwasserhaus are a stunning example of this artist's style and ideas, utterly different from their surroundings, but designed not to visually impress (although they certainly do) but to serve the needs of their inhabitants (both human and tree).
The above quote is a good indication of Vienna-born Hundertwasser's incredible talent for manifestos and declarations. Although these incorporate a good deal of the revolutionary and belligerent language one often finds in published and signed artistic outbursts, Friedrich Hundertwasser manages, by virtue of his obvious desire to make the modern world habitable for humans again, to come across as relevant and compassionate, rather than as awkward for the sake of it. Although he is deadly serious, there is a good natured and poetic hint in his writing, which I think is conveyed well by this short excerpt from an piece he wrote about stamps and stamp collecting (himself having designed a large number for various countries and organisations):
''A stamp must experience its destiny. A true stamp must feel the tongue of its sender when its glue is licked. It must experience the dark inside of the letterbox. The stamp must bear the postmark, it must feel the Postman's hand - a stamp that has not been sent on a letter is not a stamp as it has never lived. It is a precious piece of art that reaches everybody as a present from afar. The stamp must bear witness to culture, beauty and human creativity. The most viable mark of national identity becomes the most effective way to convey the message of harmony"
The artworks inside the Hundertwasser museum are brightly coloured and often naive seeming, with no sense of perspective or particular attention to accurate details, but the sheer energy of the compositions is really something else. However in many ways, I don't love Hundertwasser because he made really cool pictures (although he did). I love him because he dedicated himself to pointing out the unnatural eccentricities of modern life and the necessity of living closer to nature in the future for our physical and mental wellbeing, and because he made practical suggestions as to how we might go about it.
Consider: Hundertwasser promoted the idea of Baummieter, 'tree tenants', who would inhabit their own flats, outfitted for the needs of the tenant with waterproofing, open windows and deep soil. Every street would have trees projecting out into it at every level, and every building would have a roof of soil and vegetation. In summer these trees provide shade, shelter from rain showers, and a trap for the unhealthy ultrafine particles which continually plague the lungs of every city dweller. In the dark of winter, the leaves fall away and so we are left with a view of the sky. Throughout the year water can be channeled into the dwellings of the trees to be filtered before reaching the drains of the city. If any of this seems familiar it is because in today's densely populated and climate change threatened world, where over 50% of the world population lives in a city, the idea of a vertical garden and city agriculture is at the forefront of many forward thinking planners' minds.
Hundertwasser also believed that the straight line was a thing of the devil, and that flat floors were made to accommodate machines, not humans. For this reason the museum of his work famously boasts a serious of undulating floors to ensure that you have to use your full complement senses to get around. 'It is good to walk on uneven floors and regain our human balance'. This too might seem familiar, following studies examining the effect of hard, flat flooring on the development of our joints and muscles*.
Hundertwasser travelled often, including several long voyages in his boat 'Regentag' or 'rainy day', so called because of his love for the rich colours of a wet day. This boat took him as far as New Zealand, where he fell in love with the abundance of greenery and nature on show in the country, even designing a possible alternative flag for it. In his later years he spent 6 months of the year in a small house there, and is now buried there according to his wishes, straight in the ground, under a tree. I think it is this fact which gets at why I think Hundertwasser was so interesting. Yes he was a fabulously wealthy artist given to rather naive sounding proclamations, but what sets him apart is the amount of effort he went to to put his ideas into practice, from building blocks of flats with tree tenants to researching and implementing composting toilets.
Hundertwasser believed that the design and decoration of a house should begin AFTER the first tenants move in, because how can you design a house for somebody, they need to have free reign to change it as they wish. That is something that never struck me as strange about the way we treat design and buildings, and something I am grateful that Hundertwasser and his buildings brought to my attention!
You can all use the internet, I encourage you to check him out! Here are my own photos from my visit and some wandering I did afterwards (summary: Vienna continues to be very pretty).
Der Tom
*this is one of those things I'm sure I have read in a New Scientist somewhere, but it is listing dangerously into unjustified 'everybody knows' territory. I did some googling to look for literature or articles, but getting the right combination of words proved near-impossible. If anyone has any concrete evidence (for OR against) my wild claim, please let me know!
