THE SKYLINE

Friedensreich Hundertwasser


The absolutely straight, dead skyline is an ignominious heirloom of the Bauhaus. If the boundary between the earth and the sky, as it were the transition from man to God, is murdered by the ruler, all the bridges are broken down between man and a higher order.


The skyline made straight by the ruler weighs on us with a levelling, despotic egalitarianism. Woe to the chimney, the ledge or cupola, to the gable, dormer, turret or statue that dares to break through the skyline.


Man is beaten from above by the straight-edged ruler.

Man is squashed between the straight skyline and the flat floor.

 

Written as an explanation of the architectural characteristics of the residential building of the city of Vienna, the so-called Hundertwasser-House, 1985.

Published in:

Das Hundertwasser Haus, Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag and Compress Verlag, 1985, p. 236 (German)

Hundertwasser Architecture. For a More Human Architecture in Harmony with Nature. Cologne: Taschen 1997, p. 266 and Edition 2007, p. 192