Kunsthaus Graz Building, Austria, Styria Architecture, Architect, Design, Photos

Kunsthaus Graz : Building

Contemporary Austrian Architecture – design by Spacelab Cook-Fournier

28 May 2013

Kunsthaus Graz Building

Location: central Graz, Austria

Kunsthaus, Graz
2000-03
Design: Spacelab Cook-Fournier

photos : Maleen Diestel

The Kunsthaus Graz, also known by the name “Friendly Alien”, was built in 2003 to mark the city being named European Capital of Culture for that year.

The exhibition building has a technoid media facade of just under 900 conventional fluorescent lamps on which images and animations can be shown in rough definition.

photo : Landesmuseum Joanneum

The Graz Art Museum was built as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2003. Its icnonic shape and difficult hanging (and to an extent viewing) conditions for art inside evoked the Bilbao Guggneheim: an iconic building drawing tourists to a slightly out-of-the-way city but presenting a challenge to the artists in that the interior is not the pure white box many curators seem to crave!

Peter Cook was known for many years as the head of the Bartlett School of Architecure, UCL, London (Ed. – he was head in the 1990s when I did my Diploma of Architecture, and brought a lot of energy to the school). He then teamed up with Kevin Rhowbotham to form CRAB, but now Kevin Rhowbotham is Professor of Architecture at University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), a new architecture school announced 28 May 2013.

Kunsthaus Graz
photo from RIAS 2004 – no larger image