Hundertwasser House in Vienna
Hurrah, I'm going to Vienna! Urgently, from the mezzanine I get out a German self-study book, old guidebooks to Austria, maps – everything connected with this charming Alpine country. There is very little time, and I need to review so much to be able not only to smile sweetly and say 'Gruess Got', but at least to express myself a little in German. I really love this small country in the very center of Europe. Between the Alps and Neusiedler See it stretches from west to east for a distance of just 579 km. The language is uniquely beautiful, and the attitude towards its culture is reverent.
Sheremetyevo – Schwechat and in just about two and a half hours I am on Austrian soil. The wide ribbon of the autobahn rushes back at high speed. Small towns and gas stations fly by. At such a station you can not only fill up the car, but also have a decent snack while the car is washed. There is everything a traveler needs: oil, passenger and truck tires, and other important accessories.
Vienna appears suddenly. Clean, well-groomed... captivating. Vienna can be different – sleepy on the outskirts and pompous in the center. And there is another Vienna, incomprehensible – the Vienna of Hundertwasser. That Vienna where a riot of colors, uneven lines, asymmetry, and trees on the roof reign. Vienna where the incineration plant is decorated with blue tiles and its chimney is topped with a dome in the shape of a golden onion.
This amazing Austrian architect created very unusually. Perhaps he cannot be understood right away. 'The ravings of a madman,' one will say. 'Gingerbread houses for gnomes,' another will say. 'It's simply impossible to look at,' a third will say.
Take a look at the 'Hundertwasser House' in Vienna. It will make an indelible impression on you. First, this house is residential. And second, in this amazing house, as if from a drawing of a mischievous child, there is not a single identical window. Windows, Hundertwasser believed, 'have the right to self-determination.' So he created 13 types of windows that differ in color, shape, size, and seem to be scattered across the facade very chaotically.
And also in the house there are 'falling columns' and... trees on the roof. Third, this house, like other creations of the master, is a protest against ordinariness on one hand and the pompousness of imperial Vienna on the other.
If I have intrigued you, here are a few more places where the famous artist 'made his mark' – the incineration plant in the 9th district of Vienna, St. Barbara's Church in Bernbach, the House of Arts, the complex at the Rogner-Bad Blumau spa. Vienna recognized Hundertwasser's talent – the architect received the city's Honorary Gold Medal. I think I understood him. Try to understand Hundertwasser too.
Traveler.