Urban gardening: Vienna

A few weeks ago I went for a long weekend to Vienna and wanted to share with you what I’ve seen in terms of urban gardening. As you know, I have started some urban gardening myself here in London and so I thought it would be a great inspiration to see Vienna’s world famous Hundertwasser Haus and its approach to ‘urban gardening’. And in fact it was well worth it!

On the Sunday I wanted to visit the house, it was pouring with rain, but I couldn’t leave Vienna without having seen it with my own eyes and photographed it.

To give you some context, Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an Austrian artist who in the early 1970s was a firm believer in the need for “forested roofs” and “tree tenants” to maintain “harmony between nature and man”. He also advocated the “window right” of every tenant to embellish the facade around his window. The City of Vienna invited Hundertwasser to build a housing project to implement his ideas and the Hundertwasser Haus was built between 1983 and 1985. A few years later (1989-91) Hundertwasser also built a museum nearby, called Kunsthaus Wien.

I went to see both buildings and this is how they look:

This is the first one I saw and it is also my favourite one of the two: the Kunsthaus Wien.

[Kunsthaus Wien, Weißgerberlände 14, Vienna, Austria]

You can see the museum has uneven floors, asymmetric shapes, “dancing windows” and bright colors, which are in great contrast with the surrounding neighbourhood that is rather grey and anonymous. But – most importantly for me – Hundertwasser planted a dozen trees on the roof. And if you look closely, you can see that one tree is growing out of a window from inside the house! [at the top right-hand side of the photo] This is what he called a “tree tenant”.

Inside the museum you can find the only permanent exhibition of Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s work worldwide. There is also a beautiful café that has both inside and outdoor space in an inner court-yard with plants and colourful tiled floors.

[Inside the CafeRestaurant Dunkelbunt, Kunsthaus Wien]

[The inner court-yard at the CafeRestaurant Dunkelbunt]

[Uneven floors]

[The mosaic staircase which leads to the exhibition gallery]

[A “tree tenant”]

And this is the Hundertwasser Haus:

An expressionist apartment complex housing 52 apartments, four offices, 16 private terraces, three communal terraces, and a total of 250 trees and bushes.

Unfortunately, it is a bit more over-run by tourists than the Kunsthaus Wien, so I didn’t like it that much. BUT! as you can see it also has uneven floors and grass is growing on the roof, so I took some pictures: [the grass is on the top right-hand side of the picture here below]