Art and Architecture In Austria

If you have an interest in architecture then you will love Austria. Austria has always been a melting pot of creative ideas and various artistic and architectural styles. Drawing both from the rich local cultural legacy and a thriving art scene, Austria in recent years recaptured its role as a leading art center in Europe. Museums, galleries and spectacular exhibitions make Austria a favorite destination for every art lover. Vienna's museum quarter is the worlds 9th largest arts complex, housing several art institutions containing works from some of the Great Masters. The newly reopened Albertina hosts the worlds most impressive graphic art collection.

The architecture of churches are dominated by Baroque styles with complex floor plans, rich ornamentation and illusionistic frescoes. The palaces and civic buildings of Austria reflect the wealth and power of its past rulers. The Emperors, nobility, and the church were responsible for commissioning much of the incredible work seen around the country. Hildebrandt's Upper Belvedere Palace, Vienna Hofburg (Imperial Palace), Fischer von Erlach's Schönbrunn, the Convent of Saint Florian and the imposing Monastery of Melk, by Jakob Prandtauer are just some of the examples of Baroque styles of architecture in Austria.

In Austria the Rococo style of architecture combined both Italian Baroque and French Rococo. It became popular with architects in the 18th century and was a great favorite of Empress Maria Theresa.

The Mur, a floating island on Graz’s main river was designed by New York architect Vito Acconci as a 150-foot long giant shelled creature. It features a glass and steel domed restaurant that complements an upturned outdoor plaza and amphitheater. Graz’s historic city center reflects onto the mirrored-glass panels of the dome. Acconci says he wanted to create a building that was a landscape, a landscape that would wrap into a building, and vice versa. The Kunsthaus Graz, a new contemporary arts center is another architectural feat that challenges the traditional Graz landscape of red-tiled rooftops. Its biomorphic shape was designed by the British architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier to correspond to the Baroque and Rococo architecture of the city.

Romanesque architecture can be seen in many monasteries of the Benedictine and Cistercian orders. This style is characterized by compact walls and windows defined by rounded arches. Imposing churches, precious manuscripts, the remains of extensive frescoes, and valuable examples of Treasure Art bear testimony to the Romanesque period during the High Middle Ages.

During the second half of the thirteenth century, the closed buildings of the Romanesque era disappeared. Multi-part supporting systems carrying high vaults with imaginative net and sling ribbing became common and the Romanesque rounded arch was succeeded by pointed Gothic windows and portals.

The patrons of the extravagant Austrian architecture were the aristocracy and the church, and in the nineteenth century it was the bourgeoisie. After 1918 the workers confidently took over this function. The Social Democratic response to the bourgeois mansions of the Ringstrassen era were modern housing programs of “Red Vienna,” with “People’s Living Palaces”. Architecture became mostly utilitarian, characterized by the use of unornamented industrial materials, like steel, glass, and concrete to make simple buildings. More recently some strange multicolored, haphazard-looking structures have been erected in Vienna, the work of the maverick artist and architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

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