For lovers of art, architecture and nature, the work of Vienna’s green visionary, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, is more relevant than ever. His futuristic designs (incorporating industry, high-tech, art and nature) are still ahead of the curve today when it comes to the imperative to live in harmony with the natural world.

 

I’ve been in Vienna for 5 minutes when I come face to face with one of Hundertwasser’s most mind-blowing works. The Spittelau waste incineration plant. And it’s right alongside the Park + Ride we have chosen in an increasingly car-free Vienna.

I’m not new to Vienna – or to Hundertwasser. But this is the first time I’ve seen the ‘district heating plant’ up close.

Coincidentally, Vienna’s renewed green bent (to cut emissions and traffic and boost public transport) has thrown us in the path of this green visionary. The city has had a dark green shade for a long time, probably inherited from its most famous green artist, activist and architect.

The spaceship-like chimney, topped by a dazzling golden orb, surges up from a typical Hundertwasser facade of mottled tiling and curvy, colourful shapes. Plants sprout from the building along with artworks, etchings and baubled, multicoloured mosaic columns.

‘Artchitecture’ with Energy, Waste and Nature in Mind

Behind the fantastical creation lies a technological wonder – capable of processing about 270,000 tonnes of waste a year. This heats over 60,000 Viennese households and provides them with green electricity.

The ‘eco-architect’  was asked to redesign it in 1989 after a fire. 

“Since then, the former utility building has combined the topics of waste, energy and art in a fascinating way,” notes the Vienna Tourism Board. “Vienna’s waste, recycling and disposal system, as well as the environmentally friendly generation of thermal heat and hot water contribute to the high quality of living in this city.”

And so does Hundertwasser’s legacy.

Industrial Art: Green by Design

Hundertwasser turned several industrial eyesores into beautiful and striking works of art. Bold and eye-catching buildings that blend the realistic with imagination, technology and art in crazily creative, one-off concoctions. He described the Spittelau plant as ‘A piece of nature to balance technology.’ For him, it was ‘a reminder to society to mend its wasteful ways’. 

‘Man feels sheltered and safe again, there where nature and art reunite, and man can regain a tiny part of his good consciousness towards nature.’

Even today, though increasingly necessary, some urban designers find it hard to realise such harmony between ecology and industry, art and technology.

Wien Energie, Austria’s largest regional energy provider, says the incinerator is an artist’s statement on balancing industry and nature. The environmentally friendly plant is a key contributor to waste management in the city, as dumping untreated waste in the country is banned. High-tech equipment keeps pollutants 90% below the legal thresholds set for waste incineration plants, it says … ‘one of the best performances anywhere in the world’.

Its striking architecture and art, the rooftop greenery and planted trees, ‘put this Viennese landmark on a par with St Stephen’s Cathedral and the Riesenrad Ferris wheel.’

Vienna’s Green Visionary Hundertwasser: An Avant-Garde Artist and Eco-Pioneer

A green pioneer and avant-garde artist, Hundertwasser shaped Vienna’s green thinking as well as its artistic urban layout.

A couple of days later, we head to the Hundertwasserhaus. The apartment building he designed in 1983 is another Viennese landmark and one of Vienna’s most visited buildings. Which is saying something in a city known for its Imperial and Art Nouveau Secession wonders.

People live in apartments here. I wouldn’t mind that at all. A pioneer of green roofs too, the rooftop terraces and balconies of the Hundertwasser House boast over 200 trees and shrubs … And it definitely should be a vision more widely replicated today. It’s so humanising and energising to be connected to our inner green!

 

Kunst Haus Wien: Hundertwasser Museum

Amazing how the crowds thin out as we move away from the souvenir and hot dog stalls cluttered around the Hundertwasserhaus towards the Kunst Haus Wien. This is where the real treasures lie. 

The museum houses his most iconic works while providing a great insight into the man through interpretative panels and self-portraits.

Some relatively unsung works fill the exhibition space alongside his iconic, vividly coloured and curvy-formed ‘clichés’

The mosaic, ceramic and brick-clad building is the former Thonet furniture factory. Hundertwasser redesigned it according to his whimsical desires and creative brilliance … Even the toilets here have been Hundertwassered!

Born Friedrich Stowasser, 69 of Hundertwasser’s Jewish relatives were deported and murdered by the Nazis. Did that atrocity help fuel his incredible sensitivities to the world and nature, I wonder.

Organic Vision: Man’s place in the Bigger Scheme

Hundertwasser had an organic view of our relationship with nature and was intuitively in tune with everything around him. And with the way we should be interacting with nature in urban and rural settings, for the better of both planetary and personal health. He applied that to social housing, hospices, private residences, gardens, spas and factories.

For him, a straight line was “godless”, thus his love of curves. Those curves that jump from his paintings and are reflected in nature. 

Organic forms and lollipop trees

Those typical lollipop flowers and wavy building curves are delightful – I can’t get enough of them.

In his vision of social housing, he spoke of ‘tree tenants’, who fight pollution with their green roofs and organically built abodes. He was so totally at home in the natural world that he even looked forward to becoming humus and giving back to nature! 

He spent his whole life listening to nature with remarkable sensitivity. His gorgeous green view of the universe gave him foresight, as well as being a creative force.

I close my eyes halfway as when I conceive paintings and I see the houses dunkelbunt instead of ugly cream colour and green meadows in all roofs instead of concrete.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Vienna’s Green Visionary, Hundertwasser: Natural and exotic influences

As well as portraying a deep environmental and social conscience, his art was rich in cultural and historical motifs. For example, the onion-shaped gilded domes of Islamic mosques and baldacchino, colonnaded roofs inspired by ancient temples.

Some other great, insightful quotes from him at the museum I love:

• ‘Our real illiteracy is our inability to create.’
• ‘To paint is a religious activity.’
• ‘If we do not honour our past we lose our future. If we destroy our roots we cannot grow.’
• ‘We must restore to nature territories which have been illegally occupied.’

Eco-Rebel Humour

Yet as spiritual as his connection with nature was, there is no over-the-top preaching in the paintings – or his posturing. But there was a lot of humour. That is on show in the names of some of my favourite oeuvres by him, so whimsically and lyrically titled …

• Two Envelopes on a Long Voyage
• Who Has Eaten All My Window
• Blobs Grow in Beloved Gardens

I Had a Green Dream

Apart from the green imperative, there is an aesthetic one to see more Hundertwasser-like cityscapes. Decades after his time, more cities should adopt green rooftops … a relatively attainable paradise in the sky! Hundertwasser was extremely cosmopolitan by nature – in subject matter, art and life. He applied his global wisdom to many places and lived in Venice, Paris, New York, Japan and New Zealand.

Reimagining the Australian Flag

In 1986, he proposed a radical redesign of the Australian flag – a twist on the Aboriginal flag. His heart was in the right place, in my mind, even if the design was never taken too seriously. (Perhaps it will now, along with many of his avant-garde, in-tune ideas).

The Union Jack is out of the picture on the flag, while Uluru takes centre place. Australia is ‘holding the earth from down under’. 

‘The big curve – the bend of Australia’s vastness on the surface of the earth takes up the whole length of the flag,’ says the interpretation.

As an Australian, I love his vision for a different, fairer Australian flag. And, as a nature-loving Tasmanian, that for a greener planet … The greener the better.

I can’t help but think Hundertwasser would be happy with the way ‘Vienna Now Forever’ is shaping up.

With its great urban design and mix of history and hip, tradition and trend, its liveability is notched up with excellent public transport and deep green ecology in its communal thinking and daily fibre. And I think we can give a big Vielen Dank thank you to Hundertwasser for that.

Things to Know:

The Spittelau incineration plant/Wien Energie lies on the U6 and U4 U-Bahn train lines in the 9th district of Vienna, at Spittelauer Lände 45, 1090 Vienna. See Wien Info for more information.

Hundertwasser Haus and the Kunst Haus Wien museum lie in a lovely leafy suburban area, easily reached by tram and or bus combo, depending on where you are staying.  They’re a few hundred meters apart from each other in the 3rd district’s Hundertwasser Village zone. It’s advisable to book online ahead of time in busy periods. The Kunst Haus has a lovely garden and cafe.

• Kunst Haus Wien: Untere Weißgerberstraße 13, 1030 Vienna
• www.kunsthauswien.com
• +43 1 712 04 91
• [email protected]

For all things Hundertwasser, a biography and details of his art and architectural projects, I find this site pretty useful.