A 1969 cover of Bau designed by Hans Hollein.

Everything is Architecture: Bau Magazine from the 60s and 70s

29 Jul 2015 – 27 Sep 2015

The ICA is delighted to present the first significant presentation in the UK of the influential Vienna-based architectural magazine Bau: Magazine for Architecture and Urban Planning, published by the Central Association of Austrian Architects. The seminal architect Peter Cook, founder of experimental group Archigram and former ICA Director discussed the period around the exhibition on 19 June 2015. 

Bau: Magazine for Architecture and Urban Planning, issue 1/2, 1968. Courtesy the architects, artists and their estates.

The display includes original issues of the magazine published between 1965 and 1970; a period when a group of influential Austrian architects and artists, Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler, Günther Feuerstein, Oswald Oberhuber, Sokratis Dimitriou and Gustav Peichl, took over its editorship. The magazine became a platform to explore new experimental ideas which considered architecture beyond mere concrete and instead ventured into the realms of art and politics. This radical interdisciplinary approach to architecture was crystallised in the 1968 issue of Bau in which the highly influential architect Hans Hollein boldly claimed that 'Everything is Architecture'. From a lipstick, a portrait of Che Guevara to an astronaut suit and the performances of the Viennese Actionist Otto Mühl, all could be considered architectural, aiming to question the pre-war functionality that defined modernist architecture.

image via ica.org.uk

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