The coloured façade
Blocks of colour, mismatched columns, trees out of windows — the least Viennese building in Vienna.
C.Stadler/Bwag — CC BY-SA 4.0 · C.Stadler/Bwag — CC BY-SA 4.0 · P e z i — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Martin Abegglen from Bern, Switzerland — CC BY-SA 2.0
Worth twenty minutes if you're already on this side of town or heading to Kunst Haus Wien. Not worth a dedicated cross-city trip on a tight schedule.
No. The building is entirely residential with no show apartment. The closest you get is the Village opposite and Kunst Haus Wien, designed by the same artist and open to visitors.
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A municipal housing block designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser in 1985 as an open declaration of war on the straight line: undulating floors, façades broken into coloured squares, no two columns alike, and trees growing from inside the flats and out through the windows. His argument was that the straight line is an architectural "godlessness" and that a tenant has the right to alter the façade around their own window. The result looks like a child's drawing executed with complete architectural seriousness — and it remains social housing where ordinary people live today. Which gives the one rule that matters: this is someone's home, not a monument. You cannot go in, photograph through windows, or linger in the entrance. You look from outside, take your picture, and cross to Hundertwasser Village opposite — a commercial building in the same style with shops, a café and famously designed toilets.
Blocks of colour, mismatched columns, trees out of windows — the least Viennese building in Vienna.
The same style but open to the public — you can walk its sloping passages for free.
In the building opposite you walk on deliberately undulating ground — "an uneven floor restores human balance," as its designer put it.
Kegelgasse, Vienna