Description

Not far from Vienna, a museum for the most extensive collection of Austrian post-war paintings, recently supplemented by foreign works, came into being within a very short time and without any public support. A knowledgeable critic of architecture has interpreted its puzzling design as the embodiment of the genuinely Austrian ambivalence between baroque sensuality and Enlightenment sobriety manifested here in particular in the personalities of the client and the architect.

The white-plastered volume rises above a high plinth of rough concrete on the ground plan of a right-angled triangle broken open into a trapezium that follows the form of the site – situated between the railway line and a tributary of the Danube – and points to the baroque convent Klosterneuburg to the northwest, with the tip of the triangle capriciously dissolved in a fan of concrete slabs. Visitors enter the building at the opposite end, the narrow access wing to the southeast, and are led directly from the foyer to the next level where a real architectural landscape unfolds. On the right, the long exhibition wing – organized by walls positioned crosswise and an inserted rotunda – opens onto a garden in an inner courtyard. The wing’s wall of windows also lights at least partially the enormous storage area underneath it, into which we can see by means of a shaft that the architect calls a “room cut-out.” A narrow ramp leads along the outside of this wall of windows to the great hall for temporary exhibitions above it (which is also accessible from inside). Its curving roof, shot through with narrow bands of light, presents an exciting contrast to the glass lanterns on the opposite side that mark the silhouette of the longest building wing in a meaningful way. Through these lanterns falls conventional light from above into seven variously-sized gallery rooms – all trapezoid because of their orthogonal grid. In an eventful rhythm – which, however, eventually submits to a straight sequence of rooms – the rooms are linked to each other and open gradually toward the courtyard, from which lateral light also comes in through high, narrow openings.

Sammlung Essl. The first view, Cologne, 1999, pp. 352-369 • architektur aktuell 237-238/2000, pp. 130-143 (Matthias Boeckl) • Bauwelt 2/2000, pp. 30-35 (Friedrich Achleitner) • Gottfried Knapp, Heinz Tesar. Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Stuttgart/London, 2000

---

Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.