Subject: ? Co-op

From: [email-masked] (Jason Alan Pfaff)
Date: 2 Sep 1996 15:50:37 GMT

A few months ago during a crit, the juror mentioned a firm then went by
the name *something* Co-op.  He mentioned that they tend to have a big
party where they do a bit of drug-induced design and then go back do it
when sober and try to sort it out.

Anyone know the name of this firm?  I gather they're somewhat well-known. 
Anything about them available online?

-- 
J.A.Pfaff / 3737 Wheatlands / Sylvania OH 43560-3550 / [email-masked]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Rocky Horror Picture Show FAQ  -  http://www.faq.rhps.org/
     Project:Denny's  -  http://www.concentric.net/~p7a77/dennys/

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin)
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 19:15:43 GMT

I guess they were talking about Coop Himmelblau (thats blue sky
cooperative). They are a couple of Viennese architects called Wolf
Prix (he's the one that gets inteviewed all the time) and Helmut
Swiczinsky. 
I personally haven't heard of them in the last couple of years, so I
don't know what they are doing now, but they did jobs in Vienna,
Japan, Germany and competitions all over.
There's even a (quite) well known project in Malibu, called "open
house", which I don't know if ever got built. The preliminary sketch
for this house's design was done with closed eyes, so as to "truly"
convey the feelings of the place. The design process is the issue
here, and in all their projects. 

They (especially Prix) love making controversial statements. They even
wrote a Manifesto back in '84. But thats gossip. <g>

Usually their work is regarded as deconstruction, thou I'm not sure if
that is what they'd like to be called. There are many similarities to
deconstructionist work or theory, and they share similar ideas about
classicism as, say, Eisenman. Or even Derrida himself.

I could quote some of their _many_ statements here, but just couldn't
decide on which one would do them the most justice ;-), so I wont !
But I do strongly recommend getting acquainted with their work, both
the architecture and the ideas behind them. I loved most of their
projects (from photos!) of the single building scale, but didn't care
much about their large scale, urban projects. Corbusier comes to mind
in this aspect.

I don't know of any information online, but there are many books and
magazines which dealt with them. I you can get a hand on a+u of July
1986, they ran a very comprehensive article (100+ pages) on them ("CH
1968-89").

The part about the party and the drugs is undocumented information :-)
afaik! Nice to learn new things, thou.

--
Martin Magal