This exhibition explores the Retti Candle Shop project by Hans Hollein, a significant work from 1964-1965. It re-evaluates Hollein's architectural contributions from a contemporary perspective, examining his relevance to current discourse through dialogue with a younger generation of architects.
The exhibition delves into Hans Hollein's "Retti Candle Shop" project, a design from 1964-1965 that is presented and re-evaluated from a contemporary viewpoint. Nearly a decade after his death, this exhibition offers a chance to look at Hollein's work with necessary distance, opening up new perspectives on ostensibly familiar projects and revealing the multifaceted nature of his oeuvre. Spanning from small-scale exhibition installations and iconic stores like Retti and Schullin to school buildings and museums, the exhibition highlights Hollein's significant contributions. The pieces displayed, including sketches, models, prototypes, and documents, are drawn from the extensive Archive Hans Hollein, Az W and MAK. These groundbreaking projects are juxtaposed with works by fifteen European practices that are currently shaping architectural discourse. Large display tables facilitate the creation of associations between projects, grouping exhibits by shared themes, methods, and interests. Overhead video projections offer glimpses into Atelier Hollein’s vast image archive, showcasing photographs and illustrations beyond the commonly published iconic images to provide new insight into unrealized concepts. These visuals engage in a dialogue with large-format photographs representing the approaches of contemporary architectural practices, many of whom consider Hollein’s expansion of the discipline's boundaries – "everything is architecture" – as his greatest achievement and view their own work through a similar lens of critical cultural production. This collective approach underscores the belief that there is a crucial need for more discussion about architecture.
