Hans Hollein (1934–2014), Austria’s only Pritzker Prize laureate (1985) and a self-proclaimed avant-gardist of the 1960s, was a meticulous curator of his own work throughout his life. At the same time, the reception of this work was often overshadowed by Hollein’s immense personality. Hollein Calling: Architectural Dialogues explores the Hollein phenomenon from today’s perspective. In dialogue with the positions of a younger generation, this book revaluates and brings back into the current discourse Hollein’s thinking and designs.
The first part offers interviews with 15 European firms in which they talk about their relationship to Hollein and his oeuvre, ranging from profound knowledge or selective admiration of specific aspects to skepticism and criticism. Topics such as cultural identity, visual worlds, design tools, and architecture as an independent cultural production run as a thread through these conversations. The second part features a selection of Hollein’s buildings through sketches, models, photographs, prototypes, and documents from the Archive Hans Hollein, Az W and MAK, Vienna - many of which are published here for the first time - as well as new contextualising texts. The two sections are connected by a grid of key terms formed of pertinent texts and images.