Wolf D. Prix: From DECON to AI - online lecture

Lecture Series: Masters of Architecture
Organizer: SARP Katowice
Partner: Cabinet of Architecture / Archikultura 2020

In the last online lecture before the holidays, organized as part of the Masters of Architecture series, we will have the opportunity to meet Wolf D. Prix, the founder of the architectural studio Coop Himmelb(l)au. This online meeting will take place on the YouTube platform, on the Masters of Architecture channel.

Wolf D. Prix is one of the architects who has significantly contributed primarily to the development of deconstructivism. This was a movement whose main aim was to detach architecture from the restrictive creative freedom principles of modernism, which included the rule that "form is the result of function," emphasizing "purity of form" and demanding "adherence to certain materials." Deconstructivists experimented primarily with variously shaped surfaces and different types of cladding, all with the aim of achieving "controlled chaos" and thus disrupting the traditionally conceived mass or structure of the skeleton.

In 1968, Wolf D. Prix founded a studio in Vienna, which he named Coop Himmelblau, which could be interpreted in Czech as "Cooperative of the Heavenly Sky." However, in the 1980s, the letter "l" was exiled into parentheses, and in this new form, the name of the studio Coop Himmelb(l)au acquired a new meaning, which we could understand as "Heavenly Building." For nearly fifty years, Coop Himmelb(l)au has designed objects that evoke extreme emotions and receive prestigious international awards. Among their most interesting and well-known projects are, for example, the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shenzhen, and PANEUM in Asten, Upper Austria.

Wolf D. Prix will speak about his work during his Thursday lecture, which he titled The Himmelb(l)au Experiment #2 | From DECON to AI. He succinctly summarized his view of how contemporary architecture should be:
"Architecture should be as light and changeable as clouds, flexible, mobile, volatile, organic."
This online meeting will also include a space for participants to ask questions, which architect Wolf D. Prix will attempt to answer.

This online event could be included in the program of the 12th edition of the International Festival of Architecture, Design, and Art Archikultura 2020 thanks to the kind permission of the organizers of the Masters of Architecture project and the association of Polish architects SARP Katowice, with whom the Cabinet of Architecture has been collaborating for a long time.

Masters of Architecture:
For more than fifteen years, a highly acclaimed international lecture series has been taking place in nearby Katowice, which started in 2004 and aimed to familiarize directly
with significant personalities in the field of architecture, not only from neighboring countries and Europe but practically from all over the world. The very active and dynamic regional association of the Polish community of architects in Katowice (abbreviated in Polish: SARP Katowice) has been proving for many years that even though it does not enjoy the natural advantages of the capital of its country, it is capable of stimulating both the professional environment and, above all, the general public, even within not overly friendly, and ultimately very similar conditions to our Ostrava. It is not uncommon for over five hundred interested parties from not only Poland but also abroad to gather for their events, especially for the lectures in the Masters of Architecture (MA) series. The fact that the curators of the series have a remarkably good eye for selecting guests is evidenced, among other things, by the presence of the Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura in the series of 60 speakers today, who became the laureate of the most prestigious award in the field, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2011, the same year when French architect Odile Decq lectured here, not only the holder of the Golden Lion from the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1996 but also the laureate of the European Cultural Centre Award 2018, or when Alberto Veiga from the Barcelona studio Barozzi Veiga, which became the recipient of the most prestigious European award, the Mies van der Rohe Awards, in 2015, was hosted here in 2012.

It was only a matter of time before a close collaboration between the Cabinet of Architecture and SARP Katowice was established, allowing the Ostrava side to support the entire master's cycle with personalities and names that have presented not only lectures but primarily their authorial exhibitions in Ostrava. Thus, it was no coincidence that after visiting Ostrava and as part of the MA series, thoughts, visions, and realizations were also presented by Rafi Segal (USA), Zvi Hecker (Israel/Germany), and last but not least, Masaharu Takasaki from Japan.

Link to the YouTube lecture >