Kl_L28_.jpg

Hans Hollein in his Mobile Office, 1969. Copyright: Atelier Hollein Vienna.

Of Pop and Prostheses: Vienna 1965-72

By Jon Cummings

Concerning the brief but intensely focussed design interest in pneumatics and transient environments affecting avant-garde European scenes in the late 1960s, Vienna’s comes down to us today as arguably the most prolific, poetic, and hermeneutically opaque. This paper positions the work as demonstrating pop sensibilities concerned with prosthetic expansion of the architect’s space-making capacity, its origins steeped in Semper’s notion of clothing as the original architectonic device, and its cultural moment inflected by cold-war anxieties and liberated sexualities. The material nature of these transparent, bodily responsive devices were dually architectures for survival, and clean prophylactic environments for the sex act.
TV_Helmet_Portable_Living_Room.jpg

Walter Pichler, TV-Helmet (Portable Living Room), 1967. Courtesy Generali Foundation (c) Archiv Walter Pichler

AD_April_68_Utopie2_copy_2.jpg

Utopie, Dyodon House, 1967, configurations in non-urban environments.

300_Mind_Exp_05.jpg

Haus Rucker Co., Mind Expander, Vienna, 1967.

Hieronymus_Bosch_036.jpg

Hieronymus Bosch, detail, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Brussels, 1503-1504.

Vienna_Auto_Expander.jpg

Zünd-Up. The Great Vienna Auto Expander, 1969. Unbuilt. Copyright Zünd-Up: Timo Huber, Bertram Mayer, W.M. Pühringer, Hermann Simböck

Hot_Tar_and_Level.jpg

Zünd-Up. Hot Tar and Level!, 1969. Photocollage. Copyright Zünd-Up: Timo Huber, Bertram Mayer, W.M. Pühringer, Hermann Simböck

300_Gelbes_Herz_01.jpg

Haus Rucker Co., Yellow Heart, Vienna, 1968.

VP_6801_P5.jpg

Coop Himmelb(l)au, Villa Rosa, Vienna, 1968. Coyright Coop Himmelb(l)au

300_Fly_02.jpg

Haus Rucker Co. Environment Transformer, 1968.

Gunther_Brus_performance.jpg

Günther Brus. Wiener Spaziergang, performance 1965. Courtesy Gallery Heike Curtze.

A_7102_F09_KV.jpg

Coop Himmelb(l)au Basel Event, 1969. Image Copyright Katharina Vonow.

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