Coop Himmelb(l)au

Total Projects from Coop Himmelb(l)au: 5

'Architecture Must Burn!' proclaimed Coop Himmelb(l)au in 1980, igniting their huge, 50-metre, steel 'wing' installation in the courtyard of the Technical University at Graz. And burn it obediently did, breaking all the windows in the surrounding buildings. They wanted 'Architecture that bleeds, that exhausts, that whirls and even breaks. Architecture that lights up, that stings, that rips and under stress tears.'

Coop Himmelb(l)au (parentheses added in the 1990s) were once textbook iconoclasts. Wolf D. 'Wolfy' Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky formed Coop Himmelb(l)au - 'Not a colour, more of an idea' - in Vienna in 1968 (they are older than they look, born in the early 1940s in Vienna and Poland). Advocates of architecture-as-rock-music (Prix is the proud owner of a Gibson guitar), they spawned controversial installations with familiar components juddering into built forms like a building pile-up. Hostile public reaction in Vienna to such gentle, classic 1960s projects as living capsules and bubbles drove them, they claimed, into more aggressive work. 'Our architecture is...like a wild animal in a cage,' they said, and 'The tougher the times, the tougher the architecture' - among other things, Coop Himmelb(l)au are lords of the really masterly slogan.

It was the 1980s that defined Himmelb(l)au, as their prolific jagged forms became Deconstructivist icons. Their design process was based on the partners working closely together, setting nothing down until 'the whale was ready to leap', then drawing frantically, simultaneously developing models based on body gestures, and converting it all directly into built form. Their 1989 Lawyer's Office, a shiny, warped, eagle-insect form perched on the roof of a formal Viennese nineteenth-century block, took their work to the world stage and is still their definitive project.

For their museum extension in Groningen (1994) they worked from their second office in Los Angeles, computer-linked to the shipyards cutting the rusty steel: 'Le Corbusier promised it, we did it.' But their jagged dyna¬mism was becoming less subversive, their expanding workload forming part of the Deconstructivist drift into the establishment mainstream - about which they are flagrantly unrepentant. Their slogans - 'Get rid of thinking about clients, get rid of thinking about money, get rid of thinking about codes' - were replaced by equally outspoken manipulation of clients and building regulations: 'Now we are conventional architects, quoting Corb, clients are starting to believe us.'

If Archigram are architecture's Beatles, Coop Himmelb(l)au have always laid claim to be the Rolling Stones. There is some truth in this-great lyrics, sharp rock, big bucks. Coop Himmelb(l)au's skewed, jagged forms are now flagrantly the progressive face of part of the establishment. The locations of their worldwide practice (their third office is in Guadalajara) certainly have rock-star appeal. Their big buildings - like the huge UFA Cinema in Dresden (1998) - look, well, partly like their earlier work and partly like the institutional work of the 1970s that they used to hate so much. They are, after all, in the business of selling records - sorry, archi¬tecture. And they still have 'Gimme Shelter' as their telephone hold music.

website: www.coop-himmelblau.at

Featured Projects

	Akademie der Künste Address: Akademiestraße 2 - 4 , MUNICH - Germany Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au Category: Education



	BMW Welt Headquarters Address: Am Olympiapark 1 , MUNICH - Germany Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au Category: Office \| Industrial



	Groninger Museum Address: Bezoekadres Museumeiland 19711 ME , GRONINGEN - Netherlands Architect: Alessandro Mendini \| Coop Himmelb(l)au Category: Cultural



	Public High School for the Visual and Performing Arts Address: 450 N. Grand Ave , LOS ANGELES-CALIFORNIA - United States Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au Category: Education



	UFA Cinema Center Address: Sankt Petersburger Straße 28 , DRESDEN - Germany Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au Category: Retail