Symposium: Ambivalences of Modernity

Symposium: Ambivalences of Modernity

The Architect and Urban Planner Roland Rainer Between Dictatorship and Democracy

Fri 22.11., 15-20h & Sat 23.11., 09-13h, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Anatomiesaal

How did modernist architecture interact with political systems? And how can biographical gaps in architectural archives be explained and filled? Taking Roland Rainer as an example, both of these questions were the subject of investigation in an FWF research project. This symposium presents a discussion of the results of this cooperation between the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Architekturzentrum Wien.

The acquisition of the estate of the Austrian architect Roland Rainer (1910–2004) by the Architekturzentrum Wien in 2015 made it possible to scientifically contextualise this central oeuvre of architectural modernism. The architect, urban planner, theorist and university lecturer, who was influential after the Second World War, had already developed many of his ideas and concepts in the 1930s and 1940s, including during his eight years in the service of the Nazi administrative apparatus in Berlin and Breslau. Ingrid Holzschuh, Waltraud P. Indrist, Monika Platzer, Susanne Rick and Angelika Schnell discuss their research findings in a critical debate with respondents at the Architekturzentrum Wien and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The two-day symposium presents both the latest findings from archival research, and comparative visual analyses of various urban planning concepts. The focus is on the question of his modernity, his place in the controversial discourse on Modern architecture and its political and ideological involvement.

A cooperation by Az W and the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Supported by Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF, P 34938)