It's a Boys' Club

Although the Austrian architectural scene around Günther Domenig was characterised by the breaking of structures, the rethinking of architecture and its societal function and its questioning of forms of coexistence, it was still predominantly male. Where were the women?

Architecture shapes and forms spaces of possibility. It helps define what is visible and what remains invisible. It is a site of social power relations. As in so many fields, female positions are underrepresented and difficult to find in 20^th-century Austrian architecture.

Thus ​“the female” may serve as inspiration, as in the case of the multi-purpose hall of the Graz Schulschwestern school, which is reminiscent of a uterus in its formal language, or, in the words of Walter Pichler, represented ​“the connecting elements” between the various groupings of architects. But women architects themselves are rare. However, Angela Hareiter (also as part of ​“Missing Link”), Karla Kowalski, Elsa Prochazka and Eva Rubin should most certainly be mentioned here.

It is all the more important to show and name Domenig’s work in its entirety. Not exclusively, but also as space-occupying, white, male paws – sometimes more obviously, as in the Z‑Sparkasse, sometimes more subtly, as with the jetty at the Steinhaus – or as a penetration, as in Heft, in Nuremberg or the T‑Center St. Marx in Vienna.

One of the aims of the exhibition is to re-locate Domenig’s formal language. It is placed in a context with contemporary positions that mirror these elements, break them, throw them back at us and allow us as viewers the opportunity to re-contextualise and critically reflect.