Hundertwasser Architectural Project
The Third Skin
Man is surrounded by three layers, his skin, his clothing and walls, the building.
Clothing and the walls of buildings have in recent times undergone a development which is no longer in keeping with the individual's natural requirements.
Windows are the bridge between inside and outside. The third skin is interspersed with windows as the first one is with pores.
The windows are an equivalent of the eyes.
The facade is not perfectly straight and flat, but humpy and interrupted by irregular mosaics. A black-and-white, irregular checkerboard pattern signals the disbanding of the grid system, its break-up.
What we urgently need are barriers of beauty; these barriers of beauty consist of uncontrolled irregularities.
Paradises can only be made with our own hands, with our own creativity in harmony with the free creativity of nature.
Hundertwasser, April, 1991
The Uneven Floor
The flat floor is an invention of the architects. It fits engines ̵ not human beings.
People not only have eyes to enjoy the beauty they see and ears to hear melodies and noses to smell nice scents. People also have a sense of touch in their hands and feet.
If modern man is forced to walk on flat asphalt and concrete floors as they were planned thoughtlessely in designers' offices, estranged from man's age-old relationship and contact to earth, a crucial part of man withers and dies. This has catastrophic consequences for the soul, the equilibrium, the well being and the health of man.
Man forgets how to experience things and becomes emotionally ill.
An uneven and animated floor is the recovery of man’s mental equilibrium,of the diginity of man which has been violated in our levelling, unnatural and hostile urban grid system.
The uneven floor becomes a symphony, a melody for the feet and brings back natural vibrations to man.
Architecture should elevate and not subdue man. It is good to walk on uneven floors and regain our human balance.
April, 1991
Hundertwasser
on the Cupolas
The rich and the powerful always had towers.
But for a modern average person to have towers, even golden ones, that is new.
Architecture should elevate man, not humiliate, oppress and enslave him.
A golden onion tower on your own house elevates the resident to the status of a king.
The grey mass misery is over.
The Golden Age has dawned.
Vienna, 1985