Zankel solar house in Prévessin in France, near Geneva, designed from 1976 by the Graz architect Konrad Frey and built in 1978–85 by the CERN physicist Karl Zankel for his family, is the result of a congenial partnership that is very rare in architecture: the architect and the builder delighted equally in the risky experiment, enabling the project to become a raison d’etre and the building to become a work of art. The result can only be described in terms of contrasts: experimental solar workshop and vernacular estate, expressive spatial sculpture, and ecological research station, representative social stage and alternative daycare center for children, postmodern collage and technoid residential machine, mannerist “folly” and monastic cell. It is all the more surprising then that this unique building has not yet been given a noteworthy mention in architectural criticism—it is the unknown masterpiece of the “Graz School.” This book was created as part of the masterclass at Graz University of Technology for documenting the building that is facing demolition.

Essays on the History of Ideas

Rem Koolhaas has been part of the international avant-garde since the nineteen-seventies and has been named the Pritzker Architecture Prize for the year 2000. This book, which builds on six canonical Koolhaas projects, traces the discursive practice behind the design methods used by Koolhaas and his office OMA. It uncovers recurring key themes—such as wall, void, montage, trajectory, infrastructure, and shape—that have structured this design discourse over the span of Koolhaas's oeuvre. The book moves beyond the six core pieces, as well: It explores how these identified thematic design principles manifest in other works by Koolhaas as both practical re-applications and further elaborations.
In addition to Koolhaas's individual genius, these textual and material layers are accounted for shaping the very context of his work's relevance. By comparing the design principles with relevant concepts from the architectural Zeitgeist in which Koolhaas has operated, the study moves beyond its specific subject—Rem Koolhaas—and provides novel insight into the broader history of architectural ideas.

Published with the generous support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Despite the prominence and notoriety of Rem Koolhaas … there is not a single piece of scholarly writing coming close to the … length, to the intensity, or to the methodological rigor found in the manuscript by Ingrid Böck… (Ole W. Fischer, University of Utah, Salt Lake City)

… an innovative and comprehensive analysis of all existing interpretative frameworks of the work of Rem Koolhaas. (Albena Yaneva, University of Manchester)

… an excellent exploration that could pave the way for an advanced study of … recent architectural history.  (Carsten Ruhl, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)

Even for a reader familiar with the literature on architecture theory, Ingrid Böck's book offers countless fresh observations and intriguing new associations. (Kari Jormakka (†), Vienna University of Technology)

For the 75th anniversary of Austria's liberation from the Nazi regime, teachers and students at the Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultural Studies at Graz University of Technology spent a semester conducting intensive research on the history of resistance to National Socialism in Styria. Employing tools of forensic architecture, four selected case studies—in Deutschlandsberg, Leoben, Eisenerz and Graz—form the starting point of the extensive research. The new insights based on the results of the archive inquiries were presented in an exhibition in public spaces of each city in the summer of 2020, including 3D visualizations, plan representations, diagrams and graphs. The publication at hand documenting the four exhibitions compiles research and design results, alongside with contributions by relevant scholars who categorize and contextualize the case studies within national and international academic discourse.

With contributions by Janika Döhr, Lisa-Marie Dorfleitner, Ema Drnda, Florian Eichelberger, Christian Fleck, Flora Flucher, Max Frühwirt, Daniel Gethmann, Nicole- Melanie Goll, Heimo Halbrainer, Georg Hoffmann, Matthias Hölbling, Thomas Hönigmann, Waltraud P. Indrist, Thomas Lienhart, Lung Peng, Anna Sachsenhofer, Alice Steiner, Milan Sušić, Katharina Url, Viktoriya Yeretska, Armin Zepic

The graphic design of this volume is by Soybot—Marie Vermont, Gerhard Jordan