COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

Architecture firm Austria
The Viennese architecture and design firm Coop Himmelb(l)au was founded in 1968
by Wolf D.Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky. The name Coop Himmelb(l)au (Heavenly Blue
Cooperative or Heavenly Building Cooperative) is a play on words that reflects the
linguistic and philosophical nature of their work best expressed through the postwar
international deconstructivist movement.
The roots of Coop Himmelb(l)au’s work are markedly futuristic and organic. Wellknown
early projects include the Reiss Bar (1977) and the club café Roter Engel (1981),
with its fractured and fissured facade in the First District of Vienna, as well as the
inventive Humanic shoe store branches (1979–81) in Vienna and in Mistelbach. The
Kon’yo Arts and Crafts Shop in Tokyo (1986) and the two Funderwerk factory-glazedentry
additions in St. Veit/Glan (1988) are also significant statements of their design
thinking.
The Falkestrasse rooftop addition of 1988 in Vienna, with its winglike winter garden
roof and aquiline attitude, created an international sensation, raising the international
community’s awareness of Coop Himmelb(l)au as an established design entity.
Coop Himmelb(l)au’s 1987 competition-winning entry for the new town of Melun-
Senart, located on the southern periphery of Paris, is an urban-planning scheme to
connect three small settlements. The three-phase proposal defined a triangular region
composed of a dense settlement node completed by radial “force lines” created by the
TGV railway lines and the N6 emanating from this center. A “web” of streets of small
houses would be built, and two dense “beams” of loft apartments would be interlaced
with the scheme, activating the urban environment. Finally, the long housing blocks
would also be vertically separated and horizontally interconnected to allow for enhanced
public circulation.
In 1987 Coop Himmelb(l)au developed a challenging scheme for the renovation of the
classical Viennese theater, the Ronacher. A modern and flexible theater facility was to be
located in a strictly historically protected 19th-century theater facade. Coop
Himmelb(l)au created the perfect inwardly turned “black box” environment—high-tech
and accessible for both the public and its personnel. The opening of a multilevel interior
volume and utilization of a flexible assembly system for the stages ensured that spaces of
differing sizes could be custom configured. Additionally, two restaurants and bars were
planned to alleviate high-traffic conditions. The tension and the counterbalancing forms
to ease this transition are clearly evident in the execution of the added facade elements
that function as vertical circulation to the roof terrace with its open-air stage, videothek,
and café/ bar. The rooftop theater, with new stage house below, cantilevers and pivots
over the classic Ronacher’s roof, sheltering the terrace and adding to the drama of the
interplay of old and new.
The Groniger Museum’s East Pavilion (1993–94) was Coop Himmelb(l)au’s
contribution to a tripartite museum scheme with overall design by Studio Mendini, Milan,
Italy. In the museum the need for spatial exhibition volumes using natural light and
artificial lighting was combined with the primary intention of providing multiple
viewpoints from which to experience the art. The flexible exhibition system that
comprises the “interior skin,” as well as the varying levels of the interior circulation,
allows the possibility of several viewing platforms from which a given work of art can be
experienced. The museum was prefabricated and was assembled economically, using
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 584
computer-directed shipbuilding methods. The original architectural sketch was greatly
enlarged to create the evocative signature graphic on the exterior.
The commanding UFA Cinema Center (1998) in Dresden, Germany, sited on an
unusual polygonal area, directly addresses with its crystalline lobby void the solid drumshaped
kinetoscope of the former UFA Palace. The building, which houses eight cinemas
in its solid mass, acts as a foil to the glazed atrium volume of the lobby with its
circulation canyon of staircases and lift shafts. The café spaces located on the ground
floor, combined with the hourglass-shaped suspended bar composed of tension cables and
rings, provide quiet zones in the public interior, allowing the lobby to be reacted to in an
urban manner as one would a “passage.” The constant movement of movie patrons and
casual visitors electrifies the space, as persons are in perpetual movement through the
lobby as if in a clockwork.
Located in the southern Simmering district, the Gasometers (the original
natural gas depot for Vienna) now stand void of their equipment. In 1999
one of four aligned cylindrical brick masonry buildings with spacious
interior atrium volumes was developed for adaptive reuse. Coop
Himmelb(l)au’s proposal includes commercial space and maintains
cultural activities in areas that attend the new residential spaces. The
multipurpose utilization, combined with spatial density, creates a complex
urban node on the periphery that is strengthened by its prominent
historical reference. Buried in the body of the Gasometer volume is an
encapsulated theater rising in height to the equivalent of three adjacent levels. Adjoining the theater is commercial and entertainment space
that includes a café with an underground garage directly below. From this base the 15-
story apartment tower grows. The semicircular plan is concealed behind a clamshellshaped
curtain wall that allows light penetration whereas atrium views allow sunlight to
penetrate through the dome of the Gasometer.
Showcased under a great arcing roof floating above the spacious plaza level, Coop
Himmelb(l)au’s Entertainment and Shopping Complex is one of nine buildings being
developed by a team of prominent international architects for the JVC Center in
Guadalajara, Mexico (in planning). Sixteen cinemas, along with diverse restaurants and
clubs, exist as independent solid elements punctuating the volume between the ground
plane and the protective sun-filtering roof. Vertical circulation in the solids is clustered
with restaurants and clubs, and a series of connecting cross-decks unites the multiple
solids on a variety of different levels. One of the most prominent of the structures, a
structurally complex twisting “beak,” dramatically cantilevers over a serenely expansive
reflecting pool, mirroring its arc in reverse and providing a respite from the center’s
activities. In addition to architecture and design, Coop Himmelb(l)au has developed a
portfolio of household products and furnishings, thus completing a diverse and
comprehensive architectural practice.

Groninger Museum, the Netherlands
(1993–94)

Peter Cook

Architects, Great Britain
Peter Cook is best known as a member of the infamous (but famously talented and farreaching)
collaborative, Archigram. After studying architecture at the Bournemouth
College of Art and the Architectural Association in London under Peter Smith-son, Cook
worked at the office of James Cubitt and Partners in London.
In the early 1960s Cook, along with Ron Herron and Michael Webb, self-published
the journal Archigram. More than a critical review of architecture, the magazine served as a vehicle
to exhibit their own futuristic house and urban plans through their beautiful, colorful,
collaged drawing styles. The group was formalized as Archigram Architects in 1968—a
partnership that lasted through 1976. The power of the Archigram group, as Cook has
said, was “its creative creation of the antidote to boredom.”
In 1976 Cook opened a practice with his former student Christine Hawley. Though
many of their collaborative efforts remain strictly in the “project” category, Cook’s own
work is still geared toward the city and echoes Archigram’s experimental city studies.
“At various times I have delighted in the idea of the anti-city,” he says. “Plugged-In,”
“Instant,” and “Layered” are just a few of Cook and Hawley’s joint, unbuilt projects.
Cook has had several teaching appointments at the Architectural Association in
London, where he still works as a consulting critic. He is presently professor of
architecture and head of the department of architecture at both the Bartlett School of
Architecture of the University College in London and at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt.
Christine Hawley is professor of architectural studies and dean at Bartlett School of
Architecture, where they both encourage experimental student work. The few built
projects the two have embarked on exhibit a broader design than their imaginary cities, in
spite of the built work’s logistical constrictions.