Wolf D. Prix

The theme for the 6th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 1996, under director Hans Hollein, was "Sensing the future. The architect as seismograph." For Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au, their exhibition "From Cloud to Cloud" in their country's pavilion apparently responded to this theme, though how I'm not really sure (one senses the future by the appearance of clouds on the horizon, perhaps?). Of course for the young me, smitten with Coop Himmelb(l)au in undergraduate architecture school, this handsome book was appealing for its collection of projects, not for any conceptual relationship to the exhibition it documented. A decade-and-a-half later, and having visited a couple Biennales, I wish the book had photos of the exhibition, but at least it does have photos of their installation for the 1995 Art Biennale, showing their distinctive Deconstructivist transformation of Josef Hoffman's 1934 Austrian Pavilion.… (altro)