Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000)

‘There is no energy crisis. There is only an extravagant squandering of energy.’ These words were written in 1983 by the Jewish‑Austrian artist, environmental activist and ‘architecture doctor’ Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Throughout his life, he developed his art and ecological ideas to offer new utopian and imaginative ways of thinking about human interconnectedness with the natural world. 

Originally named Friedrich Stowasser, Hundertwasser was born in Vienna to a Catholic father, who died when he was a baby, and a Jewish mother. Following the Anschluss in 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, he and his mother were forced to leave their home and share an apartment with his aunt and grandmother. He was baptised a Catholic in 1935 and joined the Hitler Youth. These acts saved his and his mother’s lives; his grandmother, aunt and remaining Jewish relatives were deported to death camps. 

This biographical note is often overlooked when interpreting Hundertwasser’s art, though it is key to understanding his work as these childhood experiences deeply affected his ideas, writing and ecological consciousness. His first paintings of nature appeared during the war years, when he was presumably living in fear and perhaps felt more comfortable in the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) than in the city, where he constantly had to hide his identity. Even in these early works, he made a clear distinction between nature, authentic living and moral goodness, and the non-natural, geometric rationality and moral bad.

Hundertwasser’s artistic journey led him to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts in 1948, though he resigned after three months, feeling uninspired. The following year, while still widely unknown, he delivered a speech at the Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg: ‘Art must fight with us; art must be an ally of mankind. The world was never so turbulent as just now and art should not escape or flee this world.’ These words set forth his artistic mission; throughout the rest of his life, his art addressed the everyday, exploring alternative and creative ways of living and promoting ecological ambitions.

He started travelling in Europe and Africa. His art from this time focused on quotidian life and propounded an alternative lifestyle and the place of nature within it. His style was colourful and spontaneous, but the one consistent feature in his work was a loathing for straight lines and right angles, which he saw as inorganic and pathogenic, associating them with geometric rationality and the Nazi swastika.

Hundertwasser started exhibiting his art in the early 1950s, with major exhibitions later in the decade, and he exploited his international recognition to raise ecological awareness. From the mid-1970s, he was engaged in various environmental campaigns, from local Viennese initiatives such as Mehr Grün für Wien (‘More Green for Vienna’) to conservation projects and anti-nuclear campaigns. His posters and paintings were admired for their vitality and resonant catchphrases, such as ‘You are a guest of nature – behave’, and their sales profited the various environmental organisations he produced them for. 

Hundertwasser’s oeuvre gradually developed from painting to applied art and architectural conceptions; in the 1950s he began producing architectural sketches and models, and set forth ideas for ‘healing architecture’. He sought to raise ecological awareness through his architectural projects, which embodied his vision of an alternative urban environment. Bruno Kreisky, Austria’s federal chancellor from 1970 to 1983, and Leopold Gratz, mayor of Vienna between 1973 and 1984, supported his vision and granted him the opportunity to realise his architectural‑ecological ideas for residential construction in Vienna: in 1983, the cornerstone of the Hundertwasserhaus was laid.

‘Our current moment calls for a reassessment of Hundertwasser’s principles’

The ensuing building, designed in collaboration with Joseph Krawina and Peter Pelikan, is the three‑dimensional manifesto of an ecological urban dwelling that elicits ongoing interaction between the resident, the building and the surrounding urban environment. According to Hundertwasser, a person’s house should be a unique creation – functional but expressive, relating to its (inner) inhabitants and (outer urban and natural) surroundings. Hundertwasserhaus tenants have the contractual right to alter the building’s interior and exterior design – something uncommon in Vienna and in many cities around the world. Though this right remains mostly theoretical, presumably due to the anxiety involved in painting over Hundertwasser’s work, tenants do use their right to draw and paint in the dedicated areas that run all along the building’s hallways and interior spaces. 

In 1988, the subsequent mayor of Vienna Helmut Zilk commissioned Hundertwasser to redesign the Spittelau waste incinerator after it burned down in 1987. Hundertwasser turned it from an industrial-functional building into a monumental work of art that is visible from all corners of the Austrian capital. Inaugurated in 1992, the incinerator plant is still integral to Vienna’s waste management system and transforms the energy of household waste into heat for more than 60,000 households a year. The beautification of a waste incinerator might be seen as a ‘greenwashing’ of over‑consumption and the waste-dependent society that Hundertwasser opposed. However, he decided to take on this mission based on the energy production capacity of the plant and its contribution to urban sustainability. In fact, it is probable that Zilk introduced waste separation in the city only because it was a condition set by Hundertwasser to take on the project. 

Hundertwasser’s architectural principles redefine relations between urban space and nature to imply interconnectedness, modesty and interdependence; these are manifested in the way he designed and justified the incorporation of green roofs, which feature in all of his architectural projects. The practices of green roofs, roof gardening and urban agriculture date back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and traditional farmhouses and vernacular architecture across Europe, as seen in Austrian and German Schrebergärten (workers’ allotment-garden houses). The phenomenon has since been sponsored and promoted by municipalities such as Chicago, Toronto, Munich, Portland and Singapore, providing biodiversity, effective storm-water management, reduced urban heat island effects, better insulation and air quality, roofs that last two to three times longer, and the beautification of the cityscape. 

Hundertwasser’s ideas constitute an alternative justification for green roofs based on a more humble and modest sharing of land. For him, the idea of ‘belonging’ to either nature or human beings does not indicate ownership. Instead, it concerns the reciprocal and interdependent link between the human and non-human worlds by reconceptualising them from an urban perspective. Hundertwasser insisted that ‘the horizontal belongs to nature, the vertical to man.’ He believed that urbanity, with its problems associated with population density, high-rises and urban infrastructure, could respect ecology if nature were restored horizontally. Acknowledging vertical building as humanity’s place in the world is a counter‑argument to misanthropic and anti-urban trends, mistaken at times for environmentalism. Restoring nature to cities horizontally, across rooftops, leaves the vast vertical realm for human creativity and self-expression.

The practice of vertical forestry and redefining the relationship between nature and humans in urban centres was also pioneered by Hundertwasser. In the Milan Triennial of 1973, he introduced the idea of ‘tree tenants’ when he planted 15 trees in apartments on the Via Manzoni. Tree tenants are not just trees planted in urban areas, but trees that live in an apartment building and are integral to its facade. Planting flowers the traditional way at the base of a vertical facade is one thing; planting trees around the building is another, primarily due to the space required. The horizontal/vertical principle sees the vertical as the human domain, so making space for tree tenants who occupy part of the vertical domain becomes a practical and symbolic act implying care and concern for nature. Hundertwasser saw tree tenants as ‘ambassadors of the forest’; in the same way ambassadors are sent or invited to represent a particular party’s interests, tree tenants were seen to represent the interests of non-humans while silently reminding us of the reciprocity between humans and nature. 

During his lifetime, Hundertwasser built in many locations throughout Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand (where he lived from the 1970s) among many others,  and his works were exhibited in the world’s most important museums. At the peak of his career, his work was admired for its authenticity, playfulness and environmental awareness. But despite his popularity and innovative ideas, his architecture is often not taken seriously by mainstream architects, and his works are seldom studied as part of the core architectural curriculum. This may be explained by his often harsh criticism of modern architecture (although he perceived Gaudí’s buildings in Barcelona as examples of ‘healthy’ architecture) and the fact he benefited from opportunities to realise his ideas through the popularity and political connections that others did not have. 

His dismissal by mainstream architects is not without exception: architect Stefano Boeri mentions Hundertwasser as his first source of inspiration and offers one example of a pragmatic interpretation of Hundertwasser’s ideas in his ‘vertical forests’. The extent to which ‘vertical forests’ and ‘tree tenants’ actually live up to their energy-saving and ecological promises is of course disputed and often critiqued due to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with construction, use of concrete, intensive maintenance, and for a possible ‘greenwashing’ of high-value real estate. Yet it is worth mentioning that the Hundertwasserhaus is used for public housing, and that Hundertwasser insisted on working to the same budget as any other 50-apartment public housing building in Vienna, to show that an alternative architecture was possible. 

Our current moment – of rapid urbanisation and multiple environmental and climatic crises – calls for a reassessment of Hundertwasser’s architectural principles, offering critical tools to assess the delicate interplay between ecological, climatic, urban and aesthetic values. Hundertwasser died of a heart attack on board a ship on 19 February 2000. He was given an ‘ecological burial’ – according to his specific instructions – in the ‘Garden of the Happy Dead’, on his land in New Zealand, under a tulip tree.