The Hundertwasserhouse in Vienna
cannot be applied with normal standards
An excerpt from a press conference
(1980) with Friedensreich Hundertwasser in Vienna
...without an environment that is humane and without peace with nature, humane existence would not be possible. This house shall represent a first attempt of conversation with nature. We and nature shall be equal partners and none must suppress the other.
...Consequently the ecological house needs to re-establish the window right and the obligation to have trees. WINDOW RIGHT means that the inhabitants have the freedom to creatively design those areas they have been assigned.
...This applies especially to the outer wall of their flat. "A human kind must have the possibility to lean out of their window and paint everything pink they can reach with their arm, so that one can see from far from the street: there lives a human."
...The human being has got three kinds of skin: His own, his clothes and his abode. All of those three skins have to grow and change constantly, otherwise the organism will die.
...The creative inhabitants’ construction activity must not be completed before they start moving in, but it should only begin then.
...If he is forbidden to let its architecture grow like his own skin, this is a dangerous act of choking life. The obstructed energies discharge somewhere else: in aggression, depression, disease, being discontent, divorce, suicide, terrorism, vandalism, mental disease.
...OBLIGATION TO HAVE TREES signifies the re-establishment of dialogue with nature. It is about a fundamental turnaround, a fundamental re-orientation.
...Daily life without intimate contact with trees, plants, soil and humus is inhumane. It is not about placing increased numbers of authorised plants like decorative furniture in authorised vases, buckets and tubs all over the place, nor about creating a bigger area of lawn cared for by the state. Only a wild tree is a genuine partner who gives us more than we can imagine.
...Standardised prefabricated construction elements allow quick and seemingly cheaper construction work; they render creative and natural irregularities impossible, though. A humane house must resemble an old farmhouse. All windows are of different size, not arranged in one building line, not on one level, but on different, harmonious spaces. The storeys should be of different height, the lower ones higher, the upper ones lower. Some balconies of different styles and shapes are placed ornamentally and organically.
...The outer walls should not be perfectly smooth like laminated wood, but natural, subtly humpy, smeared with one’s hand or covered with mosaics and ornaments. The steps should vary in height and breadth and be made of different materials. Wild vine, ivy and trees have to be included in the construction plan right from the beginning. The trees have to be planted even before or at the moment of the laying of the cornerstone.
