Collection
The collection of the partial bequest of Wolf. D. Prix in the Archives of Contemporary Arts includes personal documents such as drafts from the year 1968 to 2011, complete bundles from selected projects, manuscripts and models as well as images and publications.
Wolf D. Prix Collection
Time period: 1968-2011
Personal documents
- Personal drafts 1968-2011
- Complete bundle for “Villa Rosa”, 1968
- Complete bundle for “Flammenflügel”, 1980
- Complete bundle for (Uno Genf Cloud #9”, 1995
- Manuscripts
- Models
- Miscellaneous items
Collections
- Photographs
- Publications
Catalogue search
The collection of the Wolf D. Prix Collection is recorded in the Austrian Library Network Catalogue of Estates and Autographs. For queries on materials that have not yet been made available, please feel free to contact us. Digitised inventory materials can be transmitted electronically.
Biography
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was founded in 1968 in Vienna and has since been operating under the leadership of Wolf D. Prix as its CEO and design principal in the areas of architecture, urban planing, design and art. In 1988 a further studio was opened in Los Angeles, USA. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU currently has more than 100 employees from 19 countries. The team has realised museum, concert house, school, conference centre, scientific and administrative buildings, as well as residential building projects in numerous countries and is currently working on projects in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Wolf D. Prix, born in Vienna in 1942, is the Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, the Architectural Association of London as well as the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.
Amongst others, Wolf D. Prix is a member of the Österreichische Bundeskammer der Architekten und Ingenieurkonsulenten (Austrian National Chamber of Architects and Engineering Counsels), the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA) (Association of German Architects), the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as well as the Chamber of Architects in Santa Clara, Cuba. He is also a fellow of the American Institute of Architecture (FAIA).
Wolf D. Prix has received numerous awards, for example the Grand Austria State Prize and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art. He is a permanent member of the Austrian Artistic Senate and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Of all of the many international lectureships, his tenure at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna was the most formative: As the head of the Institute of Architecture and vice rector of the university (2003-2012), Prix has set international standards in architectural education. He had already been appointed as professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1993 and had led the “Studio Prix” there.
As a visiting professor, he has lectured at the Architectural Association in London in 1984 and at the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990. From 1985 to 1995, Wolf D. Prix was assistant professor at the SCI-Arc in Los Angeles where he still gives guest lectures today. He has been a faculty member at the Columbia University in New York since 1998. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he took over the Harvey S. Perloff professorial chair in 1999 and a guest professorship in 2001.
Two universities have awarded him an honorary doctorate: the Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2001) and the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bukarest, Romania (2014).
Wolf D. Prix is considered one of the creators of the architectural direction of deconstructivism. The invitation to the exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” at the MoMA New York in the year 1988 signified the international breakthrough for COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.
Over the last decades, Wolf D. Prix and his team were recognised with several international architectural awards.
Awards
Work
Projects
Some of the best known COOP HIMMELB(L)AU projects are the rooftop remodeling in Vienna's Falkestraße (1988), the multifunctional UFA Cinema Center in Dresden (1998), the Academy of the Fine Arts (2005) and the BMW Welt in Munich (2007), the Akron Art Museum in Ohio (2007), the Central Los Angeles Area High School #9 of Visual and Performing Arts in California (2008), the Busan Cinema Centre in South Korea (2011) as well the Dalian International Conference Center in China (2012) and the House of Music in the Danish city of Aalborg (2014).
In the past years, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU has also completed important projects in Vienna, such as the SEG Apartment Tower (1998), the SEG Apartment Block Remise (2000), the apartment building Gasometer B (2001), the apartment and office building Schlachthausgasse (2005) as well as the apartment building "Liesing Brewery" in Vienna, Austria (2011).
Among its current projects that the studio is working on, there are the Musée des Confluences in the French city of Lyon, the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as well as the MOCAPE Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition in Shenzhen and the Dawang Mountain Resort in Changsha, both located in China.
Further details can be found on www.coop-himmelblau.at
Exhibitions
The works of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU are pathbreaking for contemporary architecture and are the topic of international exhibitions time and time again. Among the largest and most renowned are the exhibitions “Deconstructivist Architecture” in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1988, which was curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, and “Construire le Ciel” in 1992 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Internationally renowned institutions such as the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, the Austrian Museum of Applied Art/Contemporary Art (MAK) in Vienna and the Centre George Pompidou, Paris show works of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU in their permanent exhbitions.
1996 COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was invited to represent Austria the 6th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Ever since, the atelier has been represented there regularly and has presented projects such as the BMW Welt, the Lyon Musée des Confluences and the Guangzhou Opera House. In 2104, the studio was invited to present two projects in the Austria Pavillion themed “Plenum. Places of Power”: the plan for the Albanian Parliament in Tirana and the conference centre in Dalian/China, which was built as a place for the Asian edition of the World Economic Forum.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was also represented in the Aedes East Galerie in Berlin several time, for instance in the 1985 exhibition Skyline, The Vienna Trilogy + One Cinema 1998 and in an exhibition revolving around the competition for the BMW Experience and Delivery Centre in 2002. On the occasion of Wolf. D. Prix' seventieth birthday, the Aedes Forum for Architecture Berlin dedicated an exhibition to the team titled “COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: 7+ Wolf D. Prix & Partner Projects Models Plans Sketches Statements”.
2007/2008 the work exhibition COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. Beyond the Blue was presented at the MAK in Vienna and moved to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, USA. In 2009, the TT InterCommunication Center [ICC] in Tokio, Japan presented the two installations „Astro Balloon 1969 Revisited - Feedback Space“ und „Brain City Lab“ from the exhibition COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Future Revisited. In 2011, the exhibition „Architecture is the Media and the Media is the Message“ in the Busan Design Center, South Korea, followed.
Last but not least, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU has also been responsible for several exhibitions. Among one of the well-known works are „Paradise Cage: Kiki Smith and Coop Himmelb(l)au“ in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles 1996 and the exhibition „Rudi Gernreich: Fashion will go out of fashion“ at the Styrian Autumn 2000 in Graz, which was later exhibited in Philadelphia, USA.