Austrian architects say there is more to their snow-capped country than Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and "The Sound of Music."

Besides its great musical and operatic heritages, Austria also has produced major architectural achievements recognized across the world. The Austrian eye for architectural detail even goes back to late 17th-century China, when Austrian Jesuits sketched maps of the Forbidden City, the Potala Palace in Lhasa, and of bridges in Fujian, Shanxi provinces.

These old works, together with examples of modern Austrian architecture are on display in a new exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in downtown Beijing.

Occupying three spacious exhibition halls on the first floor of China's top venue for fine art shows, the exhibition presents more than 300 drawings, models, photographic hangings, renderings and projections for architectural plans. The show is a joint project realized by the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria and the Ministry of Culture of China.

It focuses on Austria's contemporary "sculptural architectures" in which the art genre of sculpture, once considered outdated by some, becomes autonomous architecture with a psychological and physical use, world-renowned Austrian architect and exhibition curator Hans Hollein said.

"Austrian contemporary architectures have an internationally important role in sculptural architecture an architecture of strong, mostly non-euclidian, spatial three-dimensional complexity today a phenomenon of global dimension," Hollein said.

The phenomenon of sculptural architecture in Austria is illuminated from various perspectives in the exhibition, starting with its historical roots, such as the Gothic style of the Middle Ages to Baroque and early Modernism, to the trend-setting contemporary architecture, the major course of the architectural art show.

The exhibition also features architectural projects by Austrian architects related to China, including a strong competitor for the bid of the Grand National Theatre architectural plan in central Beijing in 1999, designed by Hans Hollein and Heinz Neumann.

"This exhibition visualizes the historical changes of Austrian architecture with a multitude of extraordinary works of Austrian architecture," said Fan Di'an, director of the National Art Museum of China, which was the co-organizer of the exhibition.

The beginning of the 21st century has seen architecture in China as an important visual sign of social development. Flourishing architecture and dramatic urbanization are changing the living space and living style of local people, Fan told China Daily.

He believed the exhibition would meet the academic interest of Chinese architects and would also awaken public interest.

The exhibition runs until August 23 in Beijing and will be staged at the Guangdong Museum of Art between October 14 and November 16 in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province.

(China Daily August 14, 2006)