ABRAHAM, RAIMUND 1933-

Architect, Austria and United States
The Austrian-born architect Raimund Abraham has played an influential role in
architectural discourse and education over the last four decades. His challenging oeuvre
of unbuilt work, consisting almost entirely of seductive architectural renderings,
delineates a complex architectural position revolving around subversion, metaphor, and a
fascination with archetypal forms. His recently completed high-rise in Manhattan for the
Austrian Cultural Institute is the most recognizable of a portfolio of built work that has
brought together many of the philosophical themes that have preoccupied this enigmatic
architect over a prolonged period.
Raimund Abraham was born in Lienz, Austria, in 1933 and was educated at the
Technical University in Graz, graduating in 1958. In the early sixties Abraham followed
in the footsteps of avant-garde groups such as Archigram, the Metabolists, and fellow
Austrians Coop Himmelb(l)au in offering proposals for technology-driven Utopias
providing modular living environments capable of embodying the future requirements of
civilization. In these early projects, Abraham imagined cellular capsules that would be
inserted into vast organic communities comprising monolithic megastructures and
colossal bridges. These early idealistic visions demonstrated Abraham’s mastery of
drawing and collage that would suffuse his later work.
In 1964 Abraham moved to the United States to further a career in architectural
education, taking up a position as assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of
Design. Since 1971 Abraham has been involved in education at a range of major
international universities, holding professorships at the Cooper Union, the Pratt Institute,
and the graduate schools of Yale and Harvard. In 30 years of academic life, he has also
held visiting professorships at the University of California, Los Angeles; the
Architectural Association; and various other North American and European universities.
Abraham’s attitude to education, and his architectural practice, is subversive, and his
position is often critical of the architectural establishment and its compliance with the
principles of modern architecture. Abraham sees in modern architectural discourse a
rupture with history that has prevented architects from understanding completely the
elemental process of architecture. For Abraham, the 20th-century preoccupation with
fashion and style has prevented a thorough understanding of the principles of building
and the clarity of thought that they demand. Abraham urges a return to the a priori
principles of construction concerned with the nature of materials, site, and program.
Abraham posits architectural drawing as an equivalent means of expression, where the
paper becomes a site for the poetry of architecture. The intellectual act of building
surpasses the ultimate physical product. For Abraham, built architecture is often endemic
to the forces of compromise.
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Throughout the 1970s, Abraham galvanized his theoretical position by undertaking an
extensive series of unbuilt houses concerned primarily with Heidegger’s notion of
dwelling. Abraham maintains that “collision” is the “ontological basis of architecture,”
offering as an example the horizon as the most basic junction between the earth and the
sky. Abraham defines the process of architecture as either digging into the earth, or
reach-ing for the sky—all building is intrinsically related to these primordial elements.
These elements become central to many of Abraham’s designs of the period, such as
House for the Sun and House with Two Horizons. The abstract house designs sought to
strip architecture down to its most essential state, arranging architectonic elements within
a formal language of rectilinear forms often embedded within the topology of a generic
natural site. Presented largely in rendered axonometric projection, the designs crystallized
complex theoretical principles into simple spatial meditations, as is evidenced by titles
such as House without Rooms, House with Three Walls, and House for Euclid.
In the 1980s Abraham’s attention turned toward monuments, concentrating on historic
European centers such as Venice, Berlin, and Paris. Abraham’s unbuilt projects from this
period interweave themes of juxtaposition and subversion to arrive at a new
monumentality capable of questioning the historical significance of architectural form.
The instability inherent in Abraham’s immersion within the historical landscape is most
evident in his projects for the city of Venice, the Les Halles Redevelopment in Paris, and
the competition entry for the New Acropolis Museum in Athens (for which he was shortlisted).
One of the most poignant projects from this period is the Monument to a Fallen
Building, completed in 1980. The project commemorates the collapse of the Berlin
Congress Hall in the same year, proposing a prism-like vault in which traces of the
former structure are symbolically revealed. Similar themes are inherent in his 1981
project for a Monument to the Absence of the Painting Guernica, which mourns the loss of
Picasso’s masterpiece from its provincial base to another larger museum in Spain.
Abraham also addresses the issue of ownership in his project of 1982 for a monumental
church that would straddle the Berlin Wall, bringing a transcendental spirituality to the
contested space of the wall. All of Abraham’s projects from this period deeply question
the foundations of architecture and languish after a lost or forgotten meaning in
architectural discourse.
As well as his portfolio of unbuilt work, Abraham has also contributed important
buildings both in America and in his homeland of Austria. These include individual
houses, low-cost housing, and several commercial buildings. The completed buildings
demonstrate a fascination similar to his unbuilt work, using archetypal forms, layering,
and concision to question conventional architectural form.
In 1988 Abraham was runner-up to Daniel Libeskind in the competition for the
extension to the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Two years later, he successfully won the
commission to build the New Austrian Cultural Institute in Manhattan (other nominees
included Hans Hollein and Coop Himmelb(l)au). The recently completed 20-story tower
rises in the shape of a dramatic wedge from a narrow and heavily constrained site
obscured almost entirely by neighboring buildings. The front facade is layered with a
sloping curtain of cascading planes of glass punctuated by solid elements. Celebrating the
link between earth and sky, the powerful form of the tower and the heavy plinth of the
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podium reinforces Abraham’s intention to return architecture to its most basic and
primeval elements.
Abraham’s challenging and often confronting work occupies an important place
within architectural discourse, fostering principles of resistance and legislating against
mediocrity. His attempts to return architecture to its philosophical origins in both built
and unbuilt projects are intrinsic of a position that attempts to blend the disparate forces
of philosophy, poetry, and architecture.

Selected Works
New Austrian Cultural Institute in Manhattan, New York City, United States, 2002