New Graz architecture.

The well-preserved old centre of Austria's second city is complemented by a wide range of architectural tendencies that can range from the expressionist to the minimalist, yet maintain a strong historical relation by distinctive contrast.

Graz is the second city of Austria, and the regional capital of Styria, the third largest of the nine Austrian Lander.(1) With a mere 250 000 inhabitants, it is five times larger than any other city in mainly mountainous Styria (Steiermark). It was founded in the twelfth century when Styria became a self-governing Dukedom under the Emperor, and it was for periods in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the imperial residence and capital of Inner Austria. It has always been an administrative centre and a market. It has also been the regional legal centre, a bishopric, and a centre of learning with a long-standing university and various Hochschulen. Communications from the north were difficult until the opening of the Vienna-Trieste railway in 1856, but Graz has long been an important cross-roads of Southern Europe: with the Hungarian border 45 miles to the east, it is an important east-west link, and with the Slovenian border only 25 miles south, it is also the gate to the Balkans. Industrialisation came late, but the region has the best reserves of coal and iron in Austria. Now half the working population is in local industries. The presence in the region of leading specialist firms for steel, glass, aluminium and other building materials has been important for the development of innovative details in recent Graz architecture.

Graz lies on the river Mur at the point where it leaves the southern edge of the Austrian Alps to open onto a wide flood plain. The precise choice of site was presumably due to the defensive possibilities of the Schlossberg, a tail rocky outcrop rising immediately adjacent to the river, around which the city grew. Although Vienna is only 100 miles away to the north-east, the winding, tunnelling train still takes two and a half hours from city to city. In past centuries the Alpine barrier not only hugely exaggerated the distance, but also made Graz more southward-looking, more Balkan and Latin in culture and temperament. It is hardly surprising that many of its most treasured historic buildings were by Italian masters. The climates of the two cities also differ, with Graz tending to be hotter and dryer than Vienna, and getting its rain at different times.

The old centre at the foot of the castle is exceptionally well preserved, for redevelopment plans in the early 1970s met strong public opposition and were axed. The central area is surrounded by 15 designated suburbs, ranging from seedy industrial areas on the flat lands across the river to the west, to the leafy nineteenth-century streets around the university to the east, and more recent residential areas of family houses on the hills beyond.

The city centre has a wonderful skyline of domes and towers, and a wealth of interesting and attractive historic buildings. They are predominantly of Baroque and later periods, but medieval vaults and arches are everywhere observable at ground level. The city has no great masterpieces in the international general histories. There is very little early modern architecture either, for the Modern Movement, which arrived around 1928, had hardly got a grip on Graz before Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in 1938.(2)

Post-war economic recovery was slow, so the '50s produced only a handful of good Modernist works, mainly in a Corbusian idiom.(3) The bulk of new buildings in the city is thus post-1960. They are scattered in the outer areas among the old fabric, and although major destruction is not allowed in the ancient centre, avant-garde shops and bars invade old buildings even there, while bold restorations contrasting new and old are also permitted (AR June 1995, pp56-59).

The New Graz Architecture - sometimes designated Grazer Schule against the wishes of its members who insist there is no coherent 'school' - is recognisably a 'movement', and it certainly centres on the city.(4) This movement is not just architectural but related to the other arts, and it is in no sense narrow-mindedly regional. It predated the notion of 'critical regionalism' and has shown little specific interest in defining a Styrian heritage. From the start it was an international phenomenon, for the founding generation, considering themselves cut off in a provincial hole, looked abroad for inspiration. Most left to work or teach abroad absorbing influences and developing ideas before returning to build in their native city, where in the meantime favourable conditions had developed. Many have moved out again, taking up chairs at other Austrian or German Universities, or setting up satellite offices.(5) In addition, major foreign architects including Lucien Kroll and Cedric Price have visited Graz, planting ideas: Ralph Erskine even built there. The list of visiting lecturers is almost a Who's Who of contemporary architecture.

Taken together, the range of external influences is impressive, and covers most aspects of the international debate over the last 20 years, though curiously the one tendency conspicuously missing is Post-Modern Classicism. Perhaps this is because it is so strongly established in Vienna. The rivalry is important: the Viennese like to patronise Graz as provincial, while Graz architects see the Viennese as paralysed by tradition. As Klaus Kada once put it: 'If you want to do architecture in Vienna, you have to know the shoe-size of Adolf Loos'.(6)

The New Graz Architecture is thus less a strictly regionalist phenomenon than a microcosm of the international architectural debate, a local well-fertilised bed in which international seeds grow and cross-fertilise. This is perhaps more generally the case with apparently regionalist movements than one might expect. For instance Mackintosh, now almost patron saint of Glasgow, could never have created as he did without the examples of Webb, Morris and Lethaby, and his great reputation depended, surely, on discovery by the Vienna Secession.

Graz has long been a place from which cultural movements of one kind or another could erupt. For example, at the end of the nineteenth century there was an internationally known Grazer Schule in Gestalt studies. But the movement we are concerned with dates from the late '50s, and took place across all the arts, representing the revival of Modernism after Fascist repression. It was most spectacularly successful in literature, to the extent that Graz has been called the centre for modern literature in the German-speaking world.(7) The New Graz Architecture has its theoretical roots in the 1960s, but the political conditions that allowed the commissioning of most of the work shown in this issue were not in place until around 1980.

The deadening cultural effect of the Third Reich far outlasted the seven years of Hitler's rule. The late 1940s and early 1950s saw a pragmatic preoccupation with post-war recovery. Styria remained under British occupation until 1955, so its political re-establishment was slow and cultural renovation began only towards the end of the 1950s. It started with a grass-roots movement by artists and writers in search of some kind of union, and resulted in the creation in 1960 of a cultural organisation with a particular location: Forum Stadtpark. Between Graz's old centre and its eastern suburbs, following the line of the old city fortifications, lies the City Park, in the middle of which was a disused and semi-derelict cafe. A group of artists approached the city authorities with the idea that this would make a good exhibition gallery where they might hold discussions and show their progressive works. The city bureaucrats were not amused, deciding instead to demolish the building, which provoked a strong reaction. A society was founded by the artists, incorporating groups of writers, musicians and architects, and a noisy campaign was mounted in the local press. The city authorities were obliged to back down, and the cafe was rebuilt as Forum Stadtpark.

The campaign had welded together a multi-disciplinary group that went on to use it for art and architecture exhibitions, concerts of jazz and avant-garde music, poetry readings, theatrical performances and other events. Initially, confronting a deeply conservative public, the forum's activities were considered highly controversial. But gradually reaction lessened and the frontier of acceptability was pushed outward. The organisation was greatly helped by a progressive politician, the Styrian Kulturreferent Hanns Koren, who opened the way for an annual festival Steierische Herbst (Styrian Autumn), which started in 1968 and soon became the largest avant-garde event of its kind in the German-speaking world.

The architectural component has included exhibitions and summer-school presentations. This year it will exhibit the outcome of the international ideas competition The Last House. This is due to take place in the Haus der Architektur, an exhibition centre and meeting place which opened seven years ago in an old villa off the Elisabethstrasse. This institution was founded by the architectural group within Forum Stadtpark, with various other bodies,(8) for the expansion of specifically architectural activities. A year or so ago a discussion was held there under the gently self-mocking title: 'Why is Graz architecture world-famous in Graz?' This implied some fear that energetic publicity had overblown a phenomenon of no great substance. But there is plenty of substance behind the hype, for Graz has produced at least four firms of confirmed international standing(9) and an astonishingly large number of good housing schemes, mostly completed within the last ten years. While the avant-garde elsewhere in Europe has increasingly been confined to paper, young Graz architects have been able to experiment and learn through building.

There are only three places in Austria in which to study architecture: Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck, so the school of architecture at the Technical University of Graz is relatively large - over 2000 students - and many of them come from elsewhere. Professional qualification is subject to five years of practice on completing the course, and students often stay on to work in the city during this period. The presence of the school is therefore important for the young talent that it attracts, and it must contribute greatly to the size of the city's architect population. Yet the school is clearly not the beating heart at the centre of the movement. Like many such continental institutions it is relatively large and impersonal, working efficiently through a highly structured programme, and until Gunther Domenig became Professor there were no great international designer stars on the staff. Even so, the school had a considerable political impact locally in the 1950s and '60s through a succession of professors who were good if not internationally famous architects, particularly Friedrich Zotter, Ferdinand Schuster, Augustinus Bieber and the former Berliner Hubert Hoffmann.(10)

Domenig and his first partner Eilfred Huth, who both trained at the school in Graz, started their practice in 1963. They produced some good buildings in a Brutalist manner typical for the time, but it was their neo-expressionist works of the 1970s that brought them international attention, particularly the creature-like dining hall in an old Graz convent of 1972-77 and the Z-Bank, built 1974-79 in the Viennese suburb of Favoriten (AR November 1980, p263). The bank seems in retrospect a particularly powerful symbol of the revolt against the establishment, and also against the technical boredom that had then over-taken so much architecture.

With this and his other sculptural works including the perpetually developing Steinhaus, Domenig seemed to outsiders to typify the wild impatience of Graz in contrast with the conservatism of Vienna, and he has been dubbed the father of the Graz movement. He has the greatest international reputation, he certainly provided an important early example of artistic freedom and invention, and he is politically effective. Many younger talents have also passed through his office. But he is a very personal and intuitive designer who scarcely bothers with a theory of his own, let alone an intellectual programme for others. Domenig represents the expressionist extreme in the Graz movement.

While Domenig and Huth were making their first buildings in the mid- to late-1960s, the slightly younger next generation - Konrad Frey, Bernhard Hafner, Heidulf Gerngross, Helmut Richter, Manfred Kovatsch were all students in the school. They were more intellectual and theoretical, and they produced unbuilt project work that in retrospect seems seminal.(11) They acknowledge the importance of their mutual discussions and reminisce about the studio atmosphere, but they also claim to have been largely self-directed, though they credit the staff with being encouraging and tolerant. It was a time of liberation and discovery. They eagerly accumulated magazines from abroad and did their best to follow the international debate. The studio atmosphere continued with a slightly younger group which included the major talents Michael Szyszkowitz, Volker Giencke and Klaus Kada.(12)

This group of architects with their varied approaches represents the essential core of the New Graz Architecture. Some, like Szyszkowitz-Kowalski, Klaus Kada, and Volker Giencke have built extensively, while others such as Heidulf Gerngross, Bernhard Hafner and Konrad Frey have been less lucky. The latter were too early to profit at the most fertile point in their development from new opportunities that Graz began to present only in the 1980s. It fell to a younger generation, among whose leading representatives are Ernst Giselbrecht, Hermann Eisenkock, Alfred Bramberger, Manfred Zernig, Roger Riewe and Florian Riegler - all represented in this issue - to reap the rewards of this change at the optimum moment in their careers.

A big factor in the Graz movement has been a change in the system of state patronage enacted by Josef Krainer, the Christian Democrat Minister for Public Works and Agriculture, but immediately organised by the energetic head of the regional architect's department, Wolfdieter Dreibholz.(13) Trained as an architect in Vienna, Dreibholz moved to Graz in the late 1960s as assistant to Sokratis Dimitriou, Professor of architectural history at the Architectural Faculty of the Technical University. He soon developed a role in the local press as architectural critic, and was outspoken about the poor quality of the public buildings executed by the local state architects. This drew the attention of Krainer, who in 1976 invited him to join the housing panel of a Christian Democrat party initiative called Modell Steiermark. Two years later, he was appointed head of the very regional architects department whose work he had criticised, and he enacted Krainer's radical decision to design no more buildings in-house.

Instead, all work would be commissioned from outside architects, and projects of any size would be put out to competition. The task of the department became to run the competitions, to commission smaller projects and to manage them to the point where all permissions had been obtained. At times this has meant long battles over radical designs with other departments. Far from being dissolved or deprived of all creativity, the department took on a new creative role requiring acute critical judgement.

In 1980 Josef Krainer became Governor of Styria, and the housing policies developed under Modell Steiermark could be put into effect. Significant experiments were made in the area of participation, but the policy of greatest impact was the decision, made in 1985, to put any housing scheme of more than 50 dwellings - and smaller ones in sensitive situations - out to competition. As a result, in the ensuing years Graz saw a very large number. of competitions, and a great deal of radical work has been built. The competitions give young architects a chance, keep older ones on their toes, and generally help to generate a lively debate. With so many, Dreibholz has been able to tune the system and to develop reliable panels of judges. He follows the careers of participants, and can award small commissions to those who have come second several times, or invite into a limited competition those who have made several worthy but unsuccessful bids at open ones. Obviously he wields considerable power and his personal judgement carries a lot of weight, but the whole process is open to public scrutiny and has to be seen to be fair. The best solutions win.

When the competition results are constantly exhibited and published, they raise public interest and awareness, gradually extending the frontiers of taste. The competition system has thus been of immeasurable value to the developing Graz movement, and a substantial proportion of the works by all the leading figures originated from it. Public buildings continue to be commissioned in this way, but in 1991 the Christian Democrats lost their majority and the Modell Steiermark housing initiatives were dropped. The Liberal housing minister still holds some competitions, but with a narrow range of architects and by invitation, without open discussion or publication, and deliberately excluding all the main figures featured in this issue. Under the new system, designs are handed over at an early stage to building society architects for development and execution. Although housing schemes from the old system as shown in this issue are still being completed, housing over the past four years has been carried out under the new regime, with uninspiring results.

Dreibholz is still able to commission public buildings by competition, and his ideas are spreading to other administrations such as the hospital one, but with the European economic recession the number of commissions has dropped. Opportunities available to Graz architects are therefore much reduced. The leaders of the movement are building and teaching elsewhere, and the political ideas are spreading to other Austrian Lander, so what happened in Graz is proving valuable in the larger European context, but whether it will remain as lively in its birthplace remains to be seen.

The vigorous rejection by Graz architects of the term Grazer Schule(14) had a basis that has become ever more evident: there is not one school but rather a range of tendencies spanning all the way from Domenig at his most expressionistic to the cool minimalism of Riegler Riewe. Nonetheless, an outsider sees areas of interest that give the Graz scene a particular flavour. As a guide, I hazard the following notes.

* Historical relation by contrast. No nostalgic or postmodern return to previous eras: respect for old buildings or urban contexts is a matter of distinctive contrast, not of aping the past. The mix of new and old can be a somewhat Scarpa-like contrast as with Domenig's Landesausstellung at Huttenberg or a cooler adding of necessary elements in current technology as by Frey at Schloss Seggau (p86).

* Functionalism. A frequent reference point, even if openly defied (as with Riegler/Riewe, p82) - by a call for some indeterminate spaces. A conscious effort is made with large public institutions such as schools and hospitals to render them legible by a clear articulation of parts. See the school by Giselbrecht (p79) and the hospital by Domenig and Eisenkock (p74).

* Megastructure. The discipline of generality in contrast with a functional specificity. Some seminal unbuilt projects of the late 1960s left their mark, and the structural cage remains a strong preoccupation for architects as different as Domenig and Giencke. The grid appears in another less physical ordering role in Bramberger's Tummelplatz (p90).

* Curves, skews, asymmetry and irregularities. The anthropomorphism and zoomorphisin of early Domenig or early Szyszkowitz/Kowalski is one source of irregularity, while in the case of Giencke the German Organic Tradition, particularly Scharoun, was influential. But skews are also used to great effect in the apparently more rational work of Giselbrecht (p52, 79) to differentiate territories, and there is general interest among Graz architects in the handling of ends and corners.

* Bridges and voids. The articulation of elements finds its strongest expression when they are pulled apart leaving glazed gaps connected by bridges. Bridges are often also used for entrances. This tendency is clearest in the works of Giencke (p48, 66).

* New technology, exposed structures and details. Work with steel firms and glazing firms, and in Giencke's case with an unprecedented aluminium structure (p48), shows a willingness to be led to new architectural arrangements by new technical possibilities. The statements of architects such as Frey and Richter demand that it should be a matter of logical pursuit of principle, not of style.

* Rediscovery of the roof. The old steeply pitched traditional roof is far too limiting in scope and no longer necessary, yet the Modernist abolition of the roof led to the top storey being the same as the rest, allowing no visible relation with weather and sky. Graz architects reintroduced the roof by stressing its underside and capability for shelter, sometimes taking it as an independent applied element as in Giencke's housing (p66), sometimes as an inverted or butterfly roof as in Kada's old people's home.

* Participation. Many radical experiments were made in the 1980s, particularly under the influence of Eilfried Huth (AR December 1988, pp80-83). Huth is now based largely in Berlin, but the torch for a participative architecture is still carried by Hubert Riess (p70).

1 To be precise, third in terms of area, fourth by number of inhabitants.

2 For the illustrated story of early Modernism in Graz see Dietrich Ecker Die moderne Architektur der zwanziger und dreissiger Jahre in Graz, catalogue to the Indianer Exhibition, Stadtmuseum Graz 1988.

3 For a brief survey, again by Dietrich Ecker, see the supplement on p26-28 in his Architektur in Graz 1980-1990, Verlag Droschl 1992.

4 The notion of a Graz school was launched with an exhibition which toured Europe and the United States in the mid-'80s, presenting the work of 13 firms. The 170-page catalogue, which went through three editions, is entitled Architektur-Investitionen: Grazer "Schule", 13 Standpunkte. It was edited by Dietmar Steiner and published by Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 3rd ed. 1986. It is very noticeable that in his introduction, Steiner feels obliged to take a defensive position regarding the title: 'The Graz "School" is a journalistic fact, recorded as such in the media ... It undeniably has news value for architectural journalists, it is even a vaguely defined, but recognisable "brand product". I know the architects are not happy about this, but it determines their role in the discussion, which is to secure their position in their own field of interest both internationally and retrospectively.'

5 Karla Kowalski is Professor in Stuttgart, Eilfried Huth in Berlin, Klaus Kada in Aachen, Volker Giencke in Innsbruck, Hubert Riess in Weimar, Manfred Kovatsch in Munich, Helmut Richter in Vienna.

6 Taped interview with the author.

7 Authors living in Graz are Wolfgang Bauer, Alfred Kolleritsch, Gerhard Roth, Gunter Falk, Reinhard P. Gruber, Alfred Paul Schmidt, Bernhard Huttenegger. Those who began in Graz include Peter Handke, Michael Scharang, Helmut Eisendle, Harald Sommer, Franz Buchrieser, Peter Daniel Wolfkind.

8 Specifically, it was founded by Forum Stadtpark along with the local branch of the ZVA, Austrian equivalent of the RIBA, the Engineering Chamber, and the Faculty of Architecture at the TU. It receives funding and has board representatives from both the Land of Styria and the City of Graz.

9 Usually named are Gunther Domenig and his former partner Eilfried Huth, the husband and wife team Michael Szyszkowitz and Karla Kowalski, Klaus Kada and Volker Giencke.

10 Hoffmann studied at the Bauhaus and in the 1940s was part of the circle of young architects around Scharoun. He wrote influential books about town-planning.

11 A special issue of Bau in 1969 edited by Bernhard Hafner showed their student work.

12 Almost all of these architects dispersed abroad to partake in new developments first hand and to escape the backwater of Graz. Later they returned, bringing the benefits of diverse experience. Frey had worked in London for Arup before setting up a brief partnership with Florian Beigel. Hafner, Kovatsch, Gerngross and Richter spent long periods in the United States, Richter also in Paris where he taught at the Beaux Arts. Szyszkowitz worked for Domenig on buildings for the Olympics in Munich, and there met his German wife Karla Kowalski who was working for Gunter Behnisch, the architect of the main Olympic buildings. Giencke also spent a long, and for him influential, period in Germany working for the landscape architect Merete Mattern, whose father Hermann Mattern was Scharoun's landscape collaborator. Of all the leading figures, only Klaus Kada never spent much time in foreign cities. He is through and through a local man.

13 Administrative structures are not the same from one country to the next, so my translation of Dreibholz's role is not precise. His title is Leiter des Planungsreferates im Amt der Steiermarkischen Landesregierung.

14 In relation to the catalogue Architektur-Investitionen: Grazer 'Schule', 13 Standpunkte ed. Dietmar Steiner, see note 4.