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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in which the art genre of sculpture, once considered outdated by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)
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