K.U.SCH. :
Gerasdorf Kindergarten

A dream (an artistic dream) became a reality for us with this building. We were able to implement a building as a piece of sculpture. And it was not just a beautification or a shell but a whole – I mean, we were able to develop it structurally. Together with the devoted architect Ernst Mrazek. It was originally his idea to fan out the building from one point. An idea which we found most accommodating, since it gave us a lot of scope to develop sculptural volumes. And in practice we found we were able to realise almost all of our ideas. It became a really fruitful collaboration, going far beyond what we had hoped for. One might say, almost achieving the ideal of the architectural cultural imagination (if one now ignores shortcomings in the details). To speak of ideals is of course rather a tricky matter. After all, standpoints vary. The ideals of modernism (of modern art) have developed and changed, and some valuable things have once again been lost – in our opinion. Within the framework of our context, a quote from Adolf Loos is interesting here (approximately): "Architecture and interior design have to serve convenience – painting inconvenience." In the 1970s, we (and of course this not only applies to us) took a significant step further, not actually superseding Loos' doctrine but putting it in relation. The new standpoint of "interdisciplinary tendencies", e.g. of object art and concept art, claimed, for instance, that the things of art and life cannot really be separated from each other and pigeon-holed, and that all meanings overlap and are interwoven. In the case of artistic interventions, it is therefore a matter, if you like to see it this way, of tipping the scales of actual perception beyond the triviality of accustomed reality – precisely without limitation through picture frame or pedestal, or vice versa: only through the solitary aloneness of the picture frames. A thing can therefore be both convenient and inconvenient at one and the same time. What we mean by that is: it makes sense to have a building that is also a piece of sculpture.
(K.U.SCH.)