Raimund Johann Abraham (July 23, 1933[1] – March 4, 2010[2]) was an Austrian architect.[3]
Early life and formal education
Raimund Johann Abraham was born in 1933 in Lienz, East Tyrol, Austria.[4] Throughout a 40-year career, Abraham created visionary projects and built works of architecture in Europe and in the United States.[5] From 1952 to 1958, Abraham studied at the Graz University of Technology. In 1959, he established a studio in Vienna, where he explored the depths and boundaries of architecture through building, drawing, and montage.[6] Abraham's first book, the 1965 publication "Elementare Architektur" was made at a time of transition between architecture studies and practice.[7] In this early volume on elemental structures, Abraham explores the built environment, absent aesthetic speculation, and determinations about design instead coming from the relative level of knowledge and also the desires of the builder. In 1964, Abraham emigrated to the United States.
Architecture career
Abraham was an influential architect in his native Austria and the New York avant-garde. Abraham's poetic architectural vision was influenced by the Viennese tradition to align architecture with sculpture, and also by the Austrianphysicist and philosopherErnst Mach. Abraham theorized architecture on a collision course with the needs of humans, yet striving for coexistence, in a constant state of creative tension.[8] Beginning in the late 1950s, his enigmatic architecture placed Abraham among the avant-garde, such as Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler and Günther Domenig. In 1958, Abraham collaborated with Friedrich St. Florian, placing third in an international competition to design the Pan Arabian University of Saudi Arabia, and in 1959, placing second, for the design of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Cultural Center in Léopoldville.[9] Abraham criticized mainstream architecture's preoccupation with style, its indifference to history, and the rigid definition of Modernism at that time.[10] Abraham went on to influence generations of professional architects through architectural drawings, projects, and teaching.
A self-described incurable formalist, Abraham's notable built architecture includes House Dellacher (1963–67), in the Oberwart District of Burgenland, Austria, Public Housing Complex, (1968–69), and Experimental Kindergarten (1969-70) in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1973, Abraham was awarded the commission for Rainbow Plaza in Niagara Falls, New York, which he co-designed with Giuliano Fiorenzoli. The same year, Abraham was asked to transform the New Essex Market Courthouse building, located at 32 Second Avenue, New York City, for reuse as the Anthology Film Archives (1980–89), with collaborator-architects Kevin Bone and Joseph Levin.[11] The portfolio Untitled marked the occasion.[12]
In the mid-1980s, Abraham won the architecture competition to build a mixed-use residential and commercial complex, IBABERLIN, in
Friedrichstraße 32-33 (1985–88), a major street in central Berlin, which forms the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. The area was originally constructed to extend the city center, during the first half of the 18th century, in the Baroque style, and after significant damage during World War II, and then partly rebuilt before the division of the Berlin Wall. Abraham explained the work as a tribute to "a city of memories, hope and despair. A City mutilated and fragmented by war, offended through reconstruction and isolated by political manipulations. Historical fragments remain, monuments of the past, elements for a new architectural beginning. New elements are suggested. First independent, then connected to form a dialectical topography of urban Architecture."[13]
Abraham contributed the design for Traviatagasse (1987-1991), in Vienna, with Carl Pruscha. Other buildings designed by Abraham include Residential/Commercial Building (1990–93), in Graz, Austria; House Bernard (1985), Hypo-Bank and Hypo-House (1993–96), situated in the historic center of the small town of Tyrol, in Lienz, Austria.[14] In later years, Abraham designed his own home in Mazunte, Mexico.[15][16][17]
Among Abraham's many well known hypothetical projects is Seven Gates to Eden, a bold hand-drawn analysis of the suburban house, exhibited in the 1976 Venice Biennale, curated by Francesco Dal Co, and included in a 1981 show at the Yale School of Architecture, entitled Collisions, curated by New York architect George Ranalli.[18] Abraham's City Of Twofold Vision, Cannaregio West, (1978–80), is sited in Cannaregio, the northernmost of the six historic districts of the historic city of Venice, Italy.[19][20] Abraham also designed the Les Halles Redevelopment project (1980) for Paris, France, and Interior (2001), and his design for The New Acropolis Museum (2002) in Athens, Greece articulates new ideas about the contextualization of monuments.[21][22] In 2002, Abraham contributed a poetic artistic response to New York's World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. Abraham's proposal is a poignant symbol to regain footing while envisioning a new future architecture for the City of New York.
Perhaps Abraham's best known work of architecture is the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (1993-02), at 11 East 52nd Street; a building ingeniously arranged onto a site only 25 feet wide.[23][24] Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton has recognized the Austrian Cultural Forum as "the most significant modern piece of architecture to be realized in Manhattan since the Seagram Building and Guggenheim Museum in 1959."[25][26] Another notable project, Musikerhaus or House for Musicians (1999), in Hombroich, near to Düsseldorf, Germany. The built atop a former NATO missile base. Abraham adapted the site for reuse as an artists' residence and exhibition gallery. Abraham's Musikerhaus was completed posthumously, under the supervision of Abraham's daughter Una, in 2013.[27][28] In 2015, The German Architecture Museum (DAM) identified Abraham's Musikerhaus as a significant new building constructed in Germany.[29]
Abraham was awarded a Stone Lion (1985), at the 3rd International Architecture Exhibition for "Progetto Venezia," an international competition sponsored by the Venice Biennale, under the directorship of Aldo Rossi.[30] He also earned the Grand Prize of Architecture (1995), and Gold Medal of Honor (2005) for meritorious service to the Province of Vienna.[31]
In 2011, Abraham was part of the ensemble cast in the film "Sleepless nights stories," which included Marina Abramović, Thomas Boujut, Louise Bourgeois, Simon Bryant, Phong Bui, Pip Chodorov, Louis Garrel, Björk Gudmundsdottir, Flo Jacobs, Ken Jacobs, Harmony Korine, Lefty Korine, Rachel Korine-Simon, Kris Kucinskas, Hopi Lebel, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Diane Lewis, Jonas Lozoraitis, Adolfas Mekas, Oona Mekas, Sebastian Mekas, DoDo Jin Ming, Dalius Naujokaitis, Benn Northover, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono, Nathalie Provosty, Carolee Schneeman, Patti Smith, and Lee Stringer.[32] The March 22, 2015 premiere of Scenes from the Life of Raimund Abraham (2013), by film diarist Jonas Mekas, is a cinéma vérité style documentary of the lift of Raimund Abraham which carries its subject, the visionary architect, into the future.[33][34]
Drawing architecture
Abraham's article entitled ''The Meaning of Place in Art and Architecture", published in 1983 refutes the opposition of Art and Architecture.[35] Abraham is known for creating visionary architectural hand-drawings dominated by the elemental and archaic described in a few basic shapes.[36][37][38] Throughout his career, Abraham asserted the autonomous, fundamental value of a drawing as a manifestation of architecture,[39] stating, "The drawing is one of the tools we have available for the realization of an architectural idea." To Abraham, drawing was as much the work of the architect as building. Critics describe Abraham's drawings as architectural poetry on paper.[40] Many of his visionary drawings are exhibited and collected as fine art.[41]
During the 1960s and 70s, Abraham's interest in the typology of the house inspired masterful, visually compelling, imaginative architectural drawings, accompanied by evocative titles and texts, such as Glacier City, from the Linear City Series Project, Sectional perspective (1964) - an invisible city, between walls, on either side of a wide valley;[42]Universal City, project, Sectional perspective (1966);[43]Earth-Cloud House, project (1970);[44] and The House with Curtains Project, Perspective (1972), about which Abraham notes, in the accompanying poem entitled "Elements of the House," the opposing sensations and feelings, natural elements and cycles, and spatial components characterizing his subject,The House without Rooms, project, elevation and plan (1974).[45][46] Abraham's drawn architecture explores human dwellings, the ritual of habitation, and the subjectivity of spatial conditions, especially interiority.[47][48] Abraham's shadowy visions, such as Radar Cities,Terza Mostra d' Architettura, (1985); Jewish Museum Project, Judenplatz, Vienna, Austria Project,Exterior perspective (1997);[49] and Metropolitan Core (2010) propose thoughtful architectural prototypes. The work is a prescient meditation on architectural scale, not only its relationship to the scale of the human body, but also the impact of scale upon multi-sensory perception and imagination.[50]
Abraham explained the inspiration for Nine Projects for Venice (1979–80): "the absence of the mechanical scale of land-bound transportation, Venice, as no other City, has been able to retain a physiological morphology which has consistently reversed all known spatial principles of Cartesian origins."[51] Abraham populates the city of Venice with architectural inventions, such as Wall of Lost Journeys,House For Boats,Square of Solitude, and Tower of Wisdom. Abraham's drawn architecture is symbolic of the mythology for collisions and the potential of architectural expression.[52][53] In the collection Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Abraham's Untitled (1982) drawing of a geometric structure set in a hilly landscape; along the edge is composed (from top to bottom) of an isometric view, a side elevation, and cross-section.[54]
Architecture education
Abraham explained his role as an educator as follows: "Teaching forces me to engage in a critical dialogue with somebody else, and find a level of objectivity that allows me to have a fair critical argument. My role as a teacher is simply to clarify, although that's a bit simplistic. When I give a problem to the students, it's my problem; I am trying to anticipate how I could solve that problem. And my joy is when the students come up with a solution I haven't thought of."[55]
2004: Hombroich spaceplacelab: Laboratory for other modes of living, 9: 1 = landscape: building. International Exhibition of Architecture, Exhibition Palazzo Zenobio, Venice, Italy.[82]
1984: Follies: Landscape architecture for the late twentieth century. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles; MOPU Arquitectura, Madrid.[90]
1983: Trends in contemporary architecture. National Gallery Alexander Soutzos Museum, Greece.[91]
1981: Inventions: Piranesi and architectural fantasies in the present; December 13, 1981 – February 10, 1982, Kunstverein Hannover, German Werkbund Lower Saxony and Bremen.[92]
1980: Ten images for Venice: Raimund Abraham, Carlo Aymonino, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Bernhard Hoesli, Rafael Moneo, Valeriano Pastor, Gianugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, Luciano Semerani; Our projects for Cannaregio West, Venice; Napoleonic Wing, April 1st – 30th April 1980.Museo Correr, Venice, Italy.[93]
1979: Visionary drawings of architecture and planning: 20th century through the 1960s. Smithsonian Institution, Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).[94]
1976: Seven Gates to Eden: Studio in Venice (hommage to Franco della Puppa). Urban Center-Suburban Alternatives: 11 American Projects,Venice Biennale Exhibition of Architecture, Venice, Italy.[97]
^Weibel, Peter, ed. (May 17, 2005). Beyond Art: A Third Culture: A Comparative Study in Cultures, Art and Science in 20th Century Austria and Hungary (1st ed.). Vienna: Springer Vienna Architecture. ISBN978-3211245620.
^Hill, John, ed. (December 5, 2011). New York City, Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture (1 ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN978-0393733266.
^Abraham, Raimund (1980). "10 immagini per Venezia : mostra dei progetti per Cannaregio Ovest : Venezia, Ala Napoleonica, 1 aprile-30 aprile 1980". 2 (Architettura, Progetto). Rome: Officina: 165 pages : illustrations, 22 cm. OCLC7577208. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Archer, B. J; Vidler, Anthony; Abraham, Raimund (1983). Follies: architecture for the late-20th-century landscape : Raimund Abraham ... New York: Rizzoli. ISBN978-0847805105. OCLC165818026.
^Baraona Pohl, Ethel (September 2, 2011). "Reviews: Raimund Abramah [Un]Built: 15 years after its publication, the second edition". Domus.
^Lepik, Andres; Stadler, Andreas; Plakke, David; Polidori, Robert (2010). Raimund Abraham & the Austrian cultural forum New York. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. ISBN9783775727259. OCLC800244451.
^"Raimund Abraham (1933 – 2010)". Austrian Information. 63 (Spring 2010).
^Lepik, Andres; Stadler, Andreas, eds. (2010). Raimund Abraham & the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (in German and English). Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. pp. 128 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), 22 cm. ISBN9783775727259.
^Collins, George R; Smithsonian Institution; Traveling Exhibition Service; Drawing Center (New York, N.Y.) (1979). Visionary drawings of architecture and planning: 20th century through the 1960s : developed for travel and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN978-0262030700. OCLC5450676.
^Klotz, Heinrich; Fischer, Volker (1985). Postmodern visions: drawings, paintings, and models by contemporary architects. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN978-0896595699. OCLC11782670.
^Brillembourg, Carlos (October 1, 2001). "Raimund Abraham". BOMB Magazine. No. 77. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
^Miller, Norbert (2011). "Imagination and the calculus of reality. Raimund Abraham [UN]BUILT". Springer.
^Riley, Terrance, ed. (2002). The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. p. 116.
^McQuaid, Matilda, ed. (2002). Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
^Abraham, Raimund (1982). "Negation and reconciliation". Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal. 19. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale School of Architecture: 190 pages : illustrations, 31 cm. OCLC35749940.
^Klotz, Heinrich, ed. (1985). "Raimund Abraham". Postmodern visions : drawings, paintings, and models by contemporary architects. New York: Abbeville Press. pp. 357 pages : illustrations (some color), 29 cm. ISBN978-0896595699.
^Sky, Alison; Stone, Michelle (1976). Unbuilt America: forgotten architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the space age : a book. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN978-0070577602. OCLC2332125.
^Sky, Alison; Michelle, Stone, eds. (1976). Unbuilt America: Forgotten Architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age. New York: McGraw Hill.
^Whitten, Theodore; Osman, Michael, eds. (September 19, 1999). Retrospecta, 98/99: The Annual Retrospective of the Yale School of Architecture. ISBN978-0967402109.
^"Grenzlinien : eine Odyssee = Borderlines : an odyssey" (in German and English). Graz: Technische Universität. 1989: 119 pages : illustrations, 28 cm. OCLC21308500. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^"SCI-Arc NEWS: ARCHITECT RAIMUND ABRAHAM (1933-2010) Dies in Car Accident in Los Angeles". Southern California Institute of Architecture. March 4, 2010.
^Abraham, R. (1986). Fingerle, Christoph Mayr (ed.). "Raimund Abraham : Ungebaut". Bozen: Forum AR/GE Kunst. OCLC875488333. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Abraham, Raimund; Campo, B.A (1983). Raimund Abraham: Obras y proyectos, 1960-1983. Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Escuela T.S. de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Madrid: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid, Comisión de Cultura. ISBN978-8485572564.
^Abraham, R.J.; Ott, N. (1983). "Raimund Abraham Berlin Projekte [1980 - 1983]; Kirche an der Mauer, zwei Monumente, IBA Projekt; Ausstellung vom 27. Mai bis 2. Juli 1983". Berlin: Aedes. OCLC615123352. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^"Raimund Abraham, Collisions : exhibition October 26-December 4, 1981; Art and Architecture Gallery". New Haven, Connecticut: Yale School of Architecture: 24 pages : illustrations, 28 cm. OCLC9559117. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^P. Adams Sitney (1976). "Raimund Abraham : Seven Gates to Eden". London: Art Net: 8 unnumbered pages, 21 cm. OCLC63169912. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Abraham, Raimund (1975). "Raimund Abraham : la casa, universo del hombre". Mexico City: Galería Universitaria Aristos: 17 unnumbered pages : illustrations, portrait, 25 cm. OCLC174570958. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Pettena, Gianni (2013). "Vienna e dintorni : Raimund Abraham, Hans Hollein, Max Peintner, Gianni Pettena, Walter Pichler, Ettore Sottsass" (in Italian and English). Milan, Italy: Galleria G. Bonelli. OCLC847553191. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^"Hombroich spaceplacelab : laboratory for other modes of living, 9:1=landscape:building". La Biennale di Venezia. 2004. OCLC888762634. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Oron, Ran (1996). Planes. New York: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. ISBN978-1884300028.
^"13 Austrian positions : [Austrian Exhibition "13 Austrian Positions"]; September 8 - October 10, 1991" (in English and Italian). Biennale di Venezia: Fifth International Exhibition of Architecture. 1991. OCLC633116065. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Dal Co, Francesco (ed.). "Dieci immagini per Venezia : Raimund Abraham, Carlo Aymonino, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Bernhard Hoesli, Rafael Moneo, Valeriano Pastor, Gianugo Polesello, Aldo Rossi, Luciano Semerani; nostra dei progetti per Cannaregio Ovest, Venezia Ala Napoleonica, 1. aprile - 30. aprile 1980" (in Italian). Venice: Officina Edizioni. OCLC630366233. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^"Architecture: Seven Architects". Institute of Contemporary Art University of Pennsylvania. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved January 8, 2015.
^Apraxine, Pierre; Castelli Gallery, Leo; University of Pennsylvania (1977). "Architecture I : Raimund Abraham, Emilio Ambasz, Richard Meier, Walter Pichler, Aldo Rossi, James Stirling, Venturi and Rauch". New York: Leo Castelli. OCLC4155863. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Sitney, P. Adam. "Seven gates to Eden". London: Art Net. OCLC63169912. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)