Hermann Czech - Approximate main direction
Hermann Czech is one of Austria's most renowned architects. His diverse work combines theory and practice and ranges from urban planning to residential, school, and hotel buildings to small-scale interventions and exhibition designs. Czech's design approach is based on methodically developed planning decisions that simultaneously embrace the unexpected and the everyday. The exhibition presents a selection of his projects from the 1960s to the present, conveys his theoretical work, and also addresses Czech's critical engagement with the architectural avant-garde of the 1960s, which was present, among other things, in the trigon exhibitions in Graz.
Hermann Czech is one of Austria's most renowned architects and is a profound voice in contemporary discourse. His architectural work encompasses urban planning, residential, school, and hotel buildings, as well as small-scale interventions and exhibition designs. Czech understands architectural theory as "thinking about design": His critical texts on the protagonists of Viennese Modernism, on architectural themes such as "conversion," or on the methods of architectural production testify to a close relationship between theory and practice. Czech's design thinking follows the conviction that
planning decisions are only sustainable when they are not based on "intuitions," but are methodically developed, while at the same time being open to the unexpected and the everyday. The exhibition "Hermann Czech – Approximate Main Direction" is dedicated to this "multi-layered" nature of designing and producing architecture in a diverse selection of projects. Based on designs and realizations from the 1960s to the present, methods ("how something is created") and spatial effects ("how something looks") are presented. The pointed juxtaposition of the work examples reveals richness even in the inconspicuous, and also illuminates aspects of participation, which in Czech's work is linked to a conceptually grounded position of Mannerism. Czech's architecture doesn't aim to seduce, but rather to convince through profound planning decisions and the experience of space itself.
The exhibition in Graz also explores Czech's critical stance toward the avant-garde architecture of the late 1960s in Austria, which later became internationally known under Peter Cook as "The Austrian Phenomenon." An important focal point for this scene was the Trigon Architecture Exhibitions of 1967 and 1969 in Graz. Hermann Czech also submitted a project, "Spatial Urban Planning," to Trigon in 1969, but it was rejected. Around the same time in 1971, Hermann Czech summed up his criticism of the architectural trends of the time with the text "Don't Panic." The exhibition in Graz also features previously unpublished projects, such as his contribution to the competition for the Trigon Museum.
An exhibition by fjk3 – Space for Contemporary Art in cooperation with the Architekturzentrum Wien. Curators of the exhibition "Hermann Czech – Approximate Exhibition" in Vienna: Claudia Cavallar, Gabriele Kaiser, Eva Kuß, and Fiona Liewehr in cooperation with Hermann Czech.
The exhibition was newly developed for the HDA – House of Architecture in cooperation with fjk3 – Space for Contemporary Art by Eva Kuß and Zerina Džubur, together with Hermann Czech.
Opening: 17.9.2025, 7 pm